Fashion: Expression of Group Identity - Essay Example

Fashion: Expression of Group Identity 2006 Introduction One of the most distinctive features of visual culture in any society is the evolving dress code, with its variety of fabrics, styles, colors and trimmings. From clothing to footwear, accessories to make-up, body images to hairstyles, the conglomerate that is known as fashion reflects largely the cultural mores of the society. The origin of the word, fashion, may be traced to the Latin word, factio (which is also the origin of the political term, faction, thus hinting at fashion as a means for political statement) or to facere, which means to make or to do (implying that the word originally signified what people do instead of signifying as now as what we wear). The word facere is also the origin of the word fetish and, ironically, clothes are perhaps the most ‘fetished’ commodities in today’s society (Bernard, 1996). Over the ages, fashion has become a strong means of communication. Fashion trends have variously been rebellious, conformist, convention-breaking, innovative or pluralistic depending on the historical perspective. In this paper, I will trace the evolution of western fashion through stages of sociological backdrop and its relation to ideas of gender, beauty, sexuality, power and identity. Typically, fashion is the ubiquitous tool of morphing culture in the capitalistic social structure that is defined by commodity fetishism. Hence, the use of mass media to influence fashion trends that suit the capitalist purpose of developing group identities will be explored through examples from television programs and fashion magazines that in essence embody popular culture. Sociological Evolution of Fashion Till recently, the body was a neglected aspect of western philosophical discourse perhaps as a result of the tradition of intellectual pedagogy of the split between mind and body. Individualism, originating from the mind, was then thought to be distinct from the body. In the postmodern times, however, there is a significant increase in the study of the sociology of body with the replacement of, as one scholar says “the notion of the body as a productive agent by the hedonistic body with its various manifestations” (Bethelot, 1986, quoted in Jeacle, n.d). While in the Victorian ages, the preoccupation with the body was considered to be restricted to the elites society alone, the consumerist society has seen the unification of body and individualism on a mass scale with the advent of ready-to-wear clothing, departmental stores, diet and physical education options. Further, in the consumerist society, the wide variety of fashion commodities that are available to all sections of the population – not necessarily limited to the elite and the bourgeois – means that the expression of the body through commodities follow some standard patterns. For example, the standardization of clothing sizes and mass produced garments mean that the link between the garment maker and the garment wearer is broken, unlike in the era of tailor-made haute couture specifically for the elite, and adoption of the standardized products means that individualism is expressed essentially through solidarity with an emerging cultural identity (Jeacle, n.d). Davis (1994) discusses how fashion has evolved in the modern society, defining gender roles, social status and sexual identities. Much of what apparently seems to be individuality, however, is shaped by societal roles, especially in the modern society (Davis, 1994). Crane (2001), too, shows that the way men and women clothe themselves has transformed over the years such that fashion has become a means of communication that is quite different from what it was earlier. In the nineteenth century, clothing signified social identity, particularly in France and America. In contrast, late twentieth and twenty first century fashion has followed the multi-code societal norms, in which fashion signifies lifestyles, gender identities, ethnicity and age but much less the social status. While nineteenth century French designers made clothes specifically for the local elite, the designers of today generally cater to the global markets, the sensibilities of which are constructed through the use of popular cinema, television and music. Entwhistle (2000) further argues that fashion as a means to identity formation cannot be discussed in isolation to the body since it is through the articulation of bodily identity – gender and sexuality – that clearly situates one’s societal identity. The typical feminist view of female fashion is that it signifies male oppression. The Victorian corset, for example, is supposed to be the male fetish with constriction of the body that serves the purpose of sexual gratification. Wilson (1995), on the other hand, poses the thesis that through history, fashion has been used for a complexity of purposes, from developing an identity to subverting it and not just as a means of establishing social norms. She dismisses the feminist view of fashion as a monolithic male view and seeing popular culture from a sociologist’s eyes, by saying, “In all these arguments the alternatives posed are between moralism and hedonism; either doing your own thing is okay, or else it convicts you of false consciousness. Either the products of popular culture are the supporters of a monolithic male ideology, or they are there to be enjoyed and justified”. To Wilson (1995), the corset, for the Victorian elite women, was a symbol of rebellion – rather than submission – to masochism as it was typically the ambitious and aggressive woman instead of the subjugated middle or lower class women who adopted the use of the corset. Hence, instead of the popular notion of bourgeois conformity, Victorian dress, in Wilson’s view, was a symbol of rebellion though through a group identification. Wilson (1995) carries the theory of fashion for sexual nonconformity even to the 1950s and 1960s, when wearing tight girdles and well-fitted high heels had become the norm. During the period when the second-generation feminists were making a mark in society, wearing high heels were, according to Wilson, a mark of sexual aggression. “Walking in high heels makes the buttocks undulate about twice as much as walking in flat heels with correspondingly greater sensation transmitted to the vulva. Girdles can encourage pelvic tumescence and, if they are long enough, cause labial friction during movement” (page 97). Acknowledging that fashion may be an instrument for rebellion and non-conformity, Wilson (1995) also argues that the mass production of ready-to-wear clothes for the women who were joining the workforce after the First World War meant that there was a trend towards a uniform pattern. “The blouses – or shirtwaists, as they were called in the United States – worn with the coat and the skirt, formed a staple of the sweated industry” (p 78). During the short-lived economic boom after the First World War, American women – including immigrants – found cheap fur coats and cosmetics within their reach, leading to an increase in the factory production of standard designed clothes. By the 1920s, the specialized tailoring industry that had earlier thrived on personal measurement clothes had broken down, mass production of factory-made clothes. The wearer of the standardized clothes thus adopted unconsciously an attitude towards solidarity with the social class that it belonged to. Fashion and Cultural Identity Establishing fashion as a medium of communication, it remains to be seen whether it expresses an attitude towards individualism or a group identity. In this context, it would be interesting to take a look, as Miller et al (2005) have done, at the play (also filmed later) Educating Rita by Willy Russell (1991). In Act 1 Scene 1 (page 101), Rita, a naïve hairdresser tells her Open University teacher Frank, “But they expect too much. They walk in the hairdressers’ an’ an hour later, they wanna walk out a different person. I tell them I’m a hairdresser, not a plastic surgeon. It’s worse when there’s a fad on, y’now like Farrah Fawcett Majors”, a character in a television soap opera. In her characteristic style, Rita explains what fashion should intrinsically mean, “these women, you see, they come to the hairdresser’s cos they wanna be changed. But if you want to change y’have to do it from the inside, don’t y? Know like I’m doin’. Do y’ think I will be able to do it?”. The exchange between Rita and Frank demonstrates the fashion attitude towards developing a group identity, often initiated by popular stars in the mass media, not a style statement that emerges from the inner self. Postmodern youth culture is more of an imitation of general trends than creativity. As Leitch (1996) says, even subversive fashion is an expression towards group identities. “Punk fashion, with its torn tee shirts, orange hair, safety pin piercings, necklaces of toilet chains, plastic pants with multiple exposed zippers, and mask-like makeup, effectively demonstrates not only the simultaneous systematicity and disorganization of late twentieth-century dress codes, but the spectacularized heteroglot visual culture characteristic of postmodern social regimes”. Since dress typically represents the political economy of the time, postmodern fashion has come to signify all the elements of commodity fetishism in a capitalist society – standardization of products, commercialization of culture, globalization of production and large-scale use of advertising and mass media (Leitch, 1996). Even subversive fashion like punk or the bra-burning fashion during the Vietnam War years are tendencies towards developing group identities and making explicit political statements. The IRA paramilitary uniform inspired clothing adopted by Irish rebels or tribal costuming are directed towards mirroring political ideologies by adopting alternate group identities that resist the imperialist fashion trends. Similarly, retro fashion tries to rekindle older values and identities as opposed to current trends, inspiring adoption of identities of yesteryears. While combining of fashions from different eras may lead to a identification with a number of groups – as Silverman illustrates a typical retro fashion as combining “jeans with sawed-off flapper dresses or tuxedo jackets, art deco with 'pop art' jewelry, silk underwear from the thirties with a tailored suit from the fifties and a body that has been 'sculpted' into androgyny through eighties-style weight lifting" (quoted in Leitch, 1996) – the culture battle is inherently an attempt to escape the current order of stability by adopting various earlier orders. Alternatively, the hip-hop fashion derives the style statement from the defensive attitude to assert group identity, that of black American existence in a hostile environment. Thus, Leitch (1996) quotes Ross, "Popular style, at its most socially articulate, appears at the point where commonality ends and communities begin, fractioned off into the geography of difference, even conflict. That is the point at which visual forms of creative consumerism, no matter how tidy or ingenious, are less important than the shared attitudes and social values that come to be associated with the wilfully sundry use of consumer culture.” Embodiment of Popular Culture Leitch (1997) describes the pop star Madonna’s image building exercise through her use of a diverse range of fashion identities – ranging from post-punk trash to vintage Hollywood - in her extravagant stage performances. She has guided western youth culture, selling various Madonna memorabilia including t-shirts, make-up kits and endorsed merchandise. But, the fashion identify that Madonna signifies is a combination of the modernist – through her extravagant subversion of normative culture – while also postmodernist – upholding the dominant culture without destabilizing the existing fetish. With no dramatic political statements being made, the postmodern society hinges on to the tendency of forming group identities in a narrowly focused commodified society. While liberating fashion from the clutch of the elite by making designer labels and Madonna-type fashion to all and sundry, democratization of fashion has meant that symbols of individualism – which would perhaps earlier be considered acts of rebellion – has reached the previously marginalized groups. Fashion has, therefore, come to reflect a collectivized global attitude and not simply as that of individual creativity. Women fashion magazines like Vogue, Glamour and Essence have been powerful vehicles for carrying the capitalistic fashion trends ahead. While these magazines have been vocal about sexual abuses on women and the development of the independent identity of women, they have also been the platform for exhibition of the male gaze through the sexuality of the photographs carried. Through photographs, two streams of identity construction are evident – one that subjugates the woman in the domain of economic, cultural and physical power relations and the other that is independent and willful, particularly through the deliberate use of fashion clothing and make-up (Leitch, 1996). The development of group identities can be viewed from the trends in television programs that specialize in lifestyle learning. For example, BBC’s What Not to Wear is one of the first programs that is directed towards a makeover of individuals towards a group identity. Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall, who have been writing on style tips in the Daily Telegraph, present this show and following its immense popularity, have followed up with a best-selling book on the same topic. The program, in the form of a reality show, picks on an individual – typically an unfashionable person recommended by friend and family for a makeover – whose sartorial style provokes horror to the presenters. Subsequently, the individual is handed over a 2000 pound check and guided through a shopping experience directed to make her sexy and beautiful in the ordinary sense of the term. Contradicting Rita’s view of inner self-identity in Educating Rita, the presenters aim to make over the personality and increase in self-esteem in the individual through developing a typical group identity in fashion. While the individual initially resists (perhaps a mock resistance) in the transformation, each episode of the show ultimately ends happily, with the individual acknowledging greater confidence and friend and family satisfied with the makeover. Various other lifestyles programs, like 10 Years Younger (Channel 4) and You Are What You Eat (Channel 4) promote such group identification (Miller, et al, 2005). Besides clothing, the tendency in postmodernist society towards group identity through fashion is also evident in the obsession with slenderness. As Bordo (1995) says, "To be slim is not enough----the flesh must not ‘wiggle.’" While in the nineteenth century, the body and clothing signified social status, in the present capitalist society, slenderness has come to be a show of power without the explicit depiction of material wealth. Just as managing wealth has become as important as amassing it, the lack of slenderness in body has come to symbolize the lack of will and control. The group identification with slenderness is further promoted through the mass media with unending streams of commercials regarding diet supplements and physical fitness equipment. Just like in clothes fashion, the consumerist society constructs the identity that the group aspires for. Conclusion Thus, fashion has evolved over historical sequences as a tool for conformity or subversion. Whether it is the social backdrop of conformity of societal norms or there is rebellion in the air, fashion follows the dictates of expression of group identity. In the Victorian sartorial style, the body-hugging extravagant fashion can be read as either a symbol of male oppression or female sexual aggression, but in either case it gave rise to a group identity. Similarly, in the capitalist consumerist society, the mass production of standardized fashion and easy reach of designer labels have democratized fashion towards a global culture. Even the apparently rebellious fashions that reflect political agenda are really expressions of solidarity with group identities formed through the political ideologies. Works Cited Bernard, Malcolm, Fashion as Communication, London: Routledge, 1996 Bordo, Susan, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, University of California Press, 1995 Crane, Diane, Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing, University of Chicago Press, 2001 Davis, Fred, Fashion, Culture and Identity, University of Chicago Press, 1994 Entwhistle, Joanne, The Fashioned Body: Dress and Modern Society, Polity Press, July 2000 Jeacle, Ingrid, Accounting and the Construction of the Standard Body, retrieved from http://les.man.ac.uk/ipa/papers/9.pdf Leitch, Vincent. B. Costly Compensations: Postmodern Fashion, Politics, Identity, Modern Fiction Studies, 42, Spring, 1996, 111-28 Miller, Nod et al, Learning to be Different: Identity, Embodiment and Popular Culture, Paper presented at the 35th Annual SCUTREA Conference July 5-July 7 2005, University of Sussex, England, UK, retrieved from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/142018.htm Wilson, Elizabeth, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, Rutgers University Press, 2003 Read More