Dress

«Så tok hun av frukten og spiste. Hun ga også til mannen sin, som var sammen med henne, og han spiste. Da ble øynene deres åpnet, og de skjønte at de var nakne. De flettet sammen fikenblader og bandt dem om livet.» i Alle mennesker over hele verden, til alle tider, har kledt kroppen. Det å kle seg er en fellesmenneskelig erfaring-selv om nesten alle mennesker kler seg forskjellig. Nettopp derfor kan praksis rundt klaer og kroppsuttrykk fortelle mye om oss mennesker. Ikke bare

126 Karn.rom, Jl/idndi ~um,n auronomy and which role wc seek to assign 10 ii, no doubt colour our legal reasoning and arc msrrumemal in migning appropriate mewing 10 key discrimination terms such ~ ·_ (in)_dirci:t disc.rinumnion', 'genuine and detennining occupational requlrernem', and objectively and re•son,bly [ustîfied'. One can sec 1h,1 the freedom of religion or belief, and rhe reasonable accommodancn elm can be, considered •n implied pan of some understandu,~ of_this 'first human right", increase the 01ni1>M o,-,il,blc for minoriries in a plunlist soc.te:>·· Ihe choice flctor, however, c.in :also operate 10 weaken and muflle protccrion urulcr legal innruruenu such :u EU anri-dlscrirnination bw, :u irs relevance is considered • <1i.11ln-g11i1hing f.actor between the discrimination strands, In the words of :\G Kokou:

Through a focus on the everyday object, this one-day symposium explores both the experience of visual culture in everyday life and the phenomenon of the everyday in visual culture. Drawing on theories of the everyday from such fields as anthropology, phenomenology and sociology, papers will examine the seemingly banal things that formed the culture of daily life, asking: what constitutes an everyday object? How were everyday objects experienced, represented or collected? And how does their study enhance our understanding of the cultural history of early modernity?

Papers by established and emerging scholars will explore the theme of the everyday object in a variety of media, including sculpture, painting, dress, furniture and the graphic arts. Presentations will investigate ephemeral objects, quotidian spaces and habitual activities—from the social rituals of marriage, food consumption and waste disposal, to overlooked ‘things’ like taxidermy, miniature furniture and clothing accessories.

&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;Straps and Trains m the Viking Age: Birka&#39;s Female Costume in a New Light Since 1938, when Agnes Geijer presented her theories on female costume in the Viking town of Birka (1), scholars and illustrators have generally worked on the basis of the same elements. The Finnish-Baltic hurstut dress was the model for the reconstruction attempts, and compared with the female figures from the Gotlandic picture-stones and small bronze and silver figures, two main forms of costume reconstruction have resulted (fig. 1). In 1974, Inga Hägg published her doctoral thesis, Kvinnodräkten i Birka, which is a new study of the Birka material seen from the viewpoint of costume history, With this thesis the Birka textiles have in an exemplary manner been made accessible to others for evaluation and possibly new interpretations (2). Fig. 2 shows an attempt at a visual presentation of Inga Hägg&#39;s theory, in which the strapped dress, in relation to earlier reconstructions, is completely closed, and two new garments, the tunic and the kaftan, have been added. A common feature of all the reconstructions is the idea of the shift as a long train-like garment. Most scholars, including I. Hägg, (3) have found support of this idea in their interpretation of the contemporary illustrations. Fig. 3 reproduces the best known, and, in this connection, most significant figurative representations. Clearly, all the figures, except for f, bear a train, but the train seems to be formed of different garments. The figures d and g show unbroken lines from the front of the woman and to the back in a train. Only a little triangle of the undergarment remains visible in front. On top of these two garments, a sort of shirt is worn. In fig. e, the lines leading to the back are interrupted in the train with a hanging length of cloth in front. In fig. f, h, and i, the train hangs down from the shoulder area and not from the front of the woman, as for the figures mentioned earlier. The silver figure f clearly shows a shoulder train, in front of which hangs a length of cloth, and an undergarment may be discerned. In fig. h and i, there is a train which, especially in i, is clearly worn on top of another garment with ornamental borders (see fig. 4). In both cases, and seemingly also in c, a garment hangs down in front, but is not as long as the train. Finally, on the front of the gold game-piece, fig. j, there is a hanging garment (4). These examples show that the normal interpretation, with the long trailing shift, can at the most find support in fig. d and e, which are dated to the 8th century. Not one of the figures provides proof for the type of reconstruction showing a strapped gown with an opening in one side. Fig. f clearly shows a rear part which extends higher up the back than a strapped gown would do; the front and the train of fig. h and i vary in length, which invalidates the idea that the two pieces belong together as one garment. It is also worth­while remarking that there seem to be two different types of trains: first, d, e, and g, which are fastened at same place on the woman&#39;s breast, and which open in front at the bottom when she walks; second, f,h, and i, which hang freely from the shoulders. These differences from the usual reconstructions provided the impetus to seek other possible reconstructions of the Viking Age strapped gown (5). Inga Hägg&#39;s treatise forms the basis for the analysis in connection with a new theory, and certain published finds, from Vernes, Norway, Barshalder, Sweden, and Kjuloholm, Finland, have also been taken into consideration. THE STRAPS The tortoise-shaped fibulae m the women&#39;s graves of Birka contain well-preserved fragments of the straps which held up the gown or gowns. As apparent in fig. 5 a-b, the lower straps come from the garments at the wearer&#39;s front. In cases where the cloth from the upper edge of the gown has been preserved, it is usually placed within the edge of the fibula. The fragments of straps at the top of the tortoise-shape fibulae usually extend all the way to the edge of the fibula and probably fastened one or more garments at the woman&#39;s back. The straps were primarily intended to hold up the garments, but certain straps, which at the bottom extend all the way to the edge of the fibula, or which are of a different material, may be interpreted as bands from which scissors, knives, and keys were hung. Formerly, only two strap combinations were considered, namely: one strap below and above; and two straps below and above. Inga Hägg, who also considers only these two combinations, attributes the uneven number of straps to poor conditions of preservation. Study of all the data from the graves with tortoiseshaped fibulae resulted in the identification of four strap combinations, as shown by fig. 5 b and the diagrams in fig. 6 (6). With this categorization, we can greatly reduce the number of cases of missing straps in…

Cocktail culture in the postwar United States thrived through the mid-1960s and thanks to an expanded middle class, consumerism also increased.  Affordable goods, accessible recipes, and concentrated suburban communities where material wealth could be put on display emerged to create an atmosphere primed for the home cocktail party.  Looking at popular postwar media, I examine the convergence of these different elements showing that the cocktail dress powerfully signifies shifting cultural norms creating opportunities for social success or failure.

This article was published as a chapter in The Shaken and the Stirred: The Year's Work in Cocktail Culture edited by Stephen Schneider and Craig N. Owens, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020, pp. 121-144. No part of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or distributed, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photographic, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Indiana University Press. For re-use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center (www.copyright.com, 508-744-3350). For all other permissions, please visit http://iupress.indiana.edu.”

This essay stems from a paper presented at the Costume Society's Annual Symposium in Leeds in July 2010 on the theme of The Price of Fashion. In this expanded version, the author identifi es the construction of stylisme, a new ready-to-wear model in 1960s France, in the pages of Elle magazine. Contextualized in a changing industrial and social landscape, the essay questions how these new depictions of stylisme served to improve consumers' ideas on ready-to-wear clothing in an industry previously fuelled by haute couture.

(NB: The once uploaded article has been removed. It is now part of a book: 'GANDHI AND THE POPES' (Peter Lang Publishers, 2015).  The original version is still available in 'Gandhi Marg' 33/3.
SYNOPSIS: Eighty years ago, Gandhi visited Rome with a desire to meet the Pope. Unfortunately, Pius XI was unable to grant him an audience and Gandhi was invited to visit the Vatican Museums instead. Press reports blamed the Vatican’s strict adherence to a formal dress code. This article is an attempt to investigate further. It throws light on the combination of circumstances that were unfavourable to the encounter. In the course of his research, however, the author stumbles upon a plot that may have reduced both Gandhi and the Pope to pawns in an insidious game-plan of political one-upmanship – with dire consequences for India’s march towards independence.

This article explores figures of visibility and otherness in H.G. Wells’s novel 'The Invisible Man', discussing the relevance of such figures to the historical paradigm of the Victorian period in which the text was written.

Through an analysis of the text, the human body and skin are considered as mediums invested with personal and social meaning; modification through acts of dress and undress can be seen to have ramifications that impact both the individual and their social setting. The Invisible Man is discussed as a literary figure that comes to represent how the human body may be read as a metaphorically laden site.

This paper seeks to examine the depiction of the evil step-mother Queen in Snow White. The focus will be on examining the characterization of the Queen as both step-mother and evil witch as depicted in the traditional fairy tale and subsequent revisions in the short stories: "Blancanieves" (Snow White) by Carmen Boullosa and Neil Gaiman's "Snow Glass Apples". These texts will be compared alongside films that also look at recasting the Queen as victim of her socio-cultural environment and patriarchal standards of beauty in films such as: Mirror, Mirror and Snow White, The Fairest of them All and the television series Once Upon a Time. This presentation proposes to explore how the Queen's monstrosity is replaced with a more humanistic understanding of her behaviour thereby resulting in a more sympathetic and less monstrous depiction of the "old evil Queen".

As a culturally produced text, literature is seen as a lens with the potential to draw attention to the values, ideas, and beliefs that underlie a society.

In this paper three key themes in H.G. Wells' novel 'The Invisible Man' (1897), are discussed: firstly, the ways that the body may be fashioned through dress and individual practices; secondly, how wearable artefacts may socialize bodies and symbolically communicate; and thirdly, how the fashioned body may challenge personal and cultural boundaries. Collectively, these issues draw attention to the relational network of body, culture, and dress.

These relationships are highly relevant to design research in fashion, dress, and wearable artefacts, which all use the body as a site. This study is seen as being an example of how literature may be utilized as a speculative device to encourage experimental and creative design research practices.

The author's practice led doctoral research, which emphasizes the body and skin as sites for design, is used as an example of a cross-disciplinary approach that draws on the issues raised through an analysis of the novel.

"The process of cultural globalisation does not always imply cultural homogenisation.
Rather, it can be seen as a process of cultural ‘glocalisation’ and hybridisation where
cultures continuously interact with and interpret each other to engender a hybrid
cultural form. As Arjun Appadurai (1993) contends, neither centrality nor peripherality
of culture exists in the context of cultural globalisation. Rather, transnational cultural
forms are likely to circulate in multiple directions.

This is particularly evident when examining Gothic & Lolita – a Japanese fashion trend
which has emerged since the late 1990s. Applying Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s theory of
‘globalisation as hybridisation’ (2004), and Roland Robertson’s concept of ‘glocalisation’
(1995), this article attempts to explore how this fashion trend manifests the process of
cultural ‘glocalisation’, hybridisation, and interaction through the localisation of Western
Goth subculture and especially, historical European dress styles in Japan. In addition,
it explores how the fashion signifies the idea of ‘reverse’ flow of culture through an
ethnographic observation of an English-speaking online community devoted to the
trend. The analysis of the online community also seeks to establish the idea that this
transnational cultural flow serves as an alternative to the local culture."

This paper deals with the role of garment metaphors in the conceptualization of emotion. Metaphor plays a central role in the formation of emotional concepts, as indeed in the formation of concepts in general. Typically, this is a matter of mapping the concrete onto the abstract and the physical onto the psychological. 1 A culture's emotional categories are experiential, based on the physical interaction of embodied human beings with their environment and extended via metonymies and metaphors that derive from such experience. The properties of these emotions are not objectively given, but felt; they depend not just on objective processes in the body, the brain, and the world, but on the representation of the phenomenology of such processes in the intersubjective system that is language. Emotional concepts are constrained by physical embodiment and a shared external reality, but they are also variable – from one individual to another and especially from one linguistic community to another. Garment metaphors for emotion are a case in point: they illustrate a universal tendency to derive abstract concepts from concrete physical experience, but they themselves are not universal. As elements of ancient Greek ways of conceptualizing emotion, they depend on the pragmatics and symbolism of Greek dress as an aspect of the body's interaction with the environment. In what follows I set garment metaphors for emotion in two contexts: first that of emotional metaphor in general, and second that of garment metaphors in general (including the wider nexus of imagery in which garment metaphors belong). This will help establish precisely what garment metaphors do in the Greek conceptualization of emotion, but also remind us (first) that emotions may also be conceptualized in other (related or unrelated) terms; (next) that garments are good to think with in a variety of different ways; and (thirdly) that " emotion " is not a clearly defined and unified category, either for us or for the Greeks: the metaphors that contribute to the Greek conceptualization of what we regard as emotions also apply in a range of non-emotional concepts, and there is no absolute qualitative difference between emotion and other domains of experience in terms of the import or implications of such metaphors – neither in conceptual nor in phenomenological terms do they isolate features that are unique to the categories of pathos or " emotion ". It was not my initial intention in preparing this paper to concentrate on Homer. But my researches showed that the relevant metaphors are (with a few significant exceptions) largely poetic, and that their main source is Homer and early hexameter.

This thesis discusses how British Quaker women negotiated relinquishing their religiously prescribed Plain dress from 1860 to 1914 in the context of developments in Quaker feminine identity. This thesis approaches its subjects by examining the primary source of surviving Quaker garments in British dress collections. These items provide the basis from which research methodologies and the personal narratives of Quaker women and their case studies are developed. Surviving garments, alongside historical letters, diaries, religious texts, department store catalogues, photographs and period dress illustrations are analysed in order to understand how women Quakers practised their religion and organised their public appearance through dress during this period.
The original quality of this research is the outcome of an interdisciplinary approach. No other research project in the international dress history or religious history fields has discussed and critically considered the identity of British Quaker women through an analysis of their surviving clothing between 1860 and 1914. This aspect of British social history and therefore British identity has until now remained unexplored and unacknowledged.
By 1860 Quakerism had undergone extreme doctrinal upheaval, which had led to the abandonment of those rules which enforced Plainness of speech and apparel that same year. Even prior to 1860, this thesis reveals that some women were incorporating fashion into their religious Plain dress, by using fashionable silhouettes and high-quality fabrics albeit eschewing bright colours and ornamentation. After 1860 however, male and female Quakers had complete individual freedom of choice in their clothing.
During this period of religious turmoil, female Victorian Quakers vocalised a range of opinions on women's emancipation, education and welfare, on their role within the religious society and their opinions concerning dress through published correspondence in Quaker journals. This thesis identifies a variety of views concerning dress between 1860 and 1914, as Quaker women negotiated their individual freedom of choice in attire in a ternary manner. Moreover, this thesis proves that this ternary interpretation was acknowledged by Quakers themselves and discussed within Quaker journals in the 1860-1914 period.
Quakers of the period identified these ternary interpretations as ascetic, moderate and fashionable. This thesis proposes a new set of classifying terms, Non-Adaptive, Semi- Adaptive and Fully-Adaptive, in reflection of the extent to which Quaker women adapted their religious clothing to incorporate fashion alongside their differing interpretations of Quaker belief. Four case studies illustrate further these three adaptive interpretations, and show how individual Quaker women chose to present themselves to their religious community and wider society.

Objectives: To help students: (1) think critically about how they perform gender through clothing choices; (2) recognize how different cultures define masculinity and femininity.
Courses: Communication Theory, Gender and Communication, Popular Communication, Rhetorical Theory, Visual Rhetoric

Temple Period Malta in the IIIrd Millennium BC saw the production of a range of figurative and decorative art and architecture that implies a richly populated spiritual and cognitive world associated with ritual practice in life and death. The paper explores the potential to categorise the figurative art into distinct groups, and how these various images might represent aspects of the cosmology and social concerns of a prehistoric island society.

The women of the village of Gymno used to say "Sweet the sleep in the morning, naked the butt at Easter." 1 This was an injunction to young women who slept late to get up, go to the loom, and weave the fabrics so necessary to clothe a family in the Greek village.

In the recent Bloomsbury publication Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present, author Alison Matthews David chronicles the disturbing history of the failure of clothing to protect its wearers, despite the fact that protection has always been a primary motivation of dress. Even more alarming is the frequency of incidents in which clothing actually caused harm and even death to sufferers who were in many cases unaware of the source of their misfortune. Those with an interest in fashion history may be aware already of the basic types of clothing-related injuries; deformities of the foot and the spine from binding, strangulation from items such as scarves (most infamously in the case of actress Isadora Duncan), skirts prone to rapid ignition around an open flame, clothing as transmitters of infectious diseases, and garments laden with poisonous lead and mercury, among other dangers. The text provides a thorough and comprehensive overview of all of these fashion-related threats and others. David does not limit the scope of the text solely to clothing and accessories; descriptions of beauty and grooming health dangers are included, and the author goes into great detail about the ill effects suffered by wearers of various powders and creams in the pursuit of porcelain skin, of hair and eyelash dyes that caused blindness and other trappings of vanity. Since many of the same production techniques used in clothing production were also used in textiles for home furnishings, decorative items such as wallpaper are also included. David takes a broad view of what constitutes a fashion victim, the distinction is not limited to wearers of dangerous styles, but includes those individuals

Sylvia Plath’s roman-a-clef, The Bell Jar (1963), remains a commercial and critical success more than a half-a-century after its initial publication. I suggest that one of the reasons for the novel’s enduring popularity is Plath’s exploration of the connections between clothing and identity. Drawing upon the work of sociologists, fashion historians, and literary scholars, I contend that Plath uses protagonist Esther Greenwood’s vexed relationship with her wardrobe to demonstrate how the discourses of fashion that dominated American women’s magazines in the 1950s functioned to limit women’s personal and professional options. For Plath, I argue, Esther’s failure to find herself through fashion is indicative of white, middle-class women’s problematic position in a culture that defines them as both consumers and commodities in a male-dominated heterosexual marketplace.

"Readers unfamiliar with contemporary Japanese media might be puzzled by the appearance of men in fashion magazines. This is particularly the case for images of Japanese young men whose strong concerns over their appearance and slender physicality seem to enhance their (hetero)sexual desirability. These publications suggest to their male readers that crafting fashionable looks through selection of the right clothes, cosmetics, fragrances, and maintaining a balanced diet is necessary to self-assurance and a successful life. Do Japanese men engage with fashion differently from men in Europe, Australia, and North America?

The co-presence of Asian and non-Asian models can make these publications seem even more confusing. Readers might wonder if these models are another reification of the ‘Westernised’ nature of Japanese youth. This article shows that a rich study of subjectivity and aesthetics might be found in these Japanese men’s publications. Male aesthetic sensitivities at a cultural level and notions of “the self” might be understood in different terms than they are in many Euro-American cultures. Likewise, the male aesthetics favored by some contemporary Japanese youth might imply an attempt to reject the more established, dowdy mode of ‘salaryman’ masculinity. In short, I argue that Japanese young men’s almost narcissistic concerns about appearance and fashion might offer a different, more ‘relaxed,’ approach to understanding men’s relationship with fashion."

Fashion Digital Memories
EUROPEANA FASHION SYMPOSIUM 2017
Venice, May 22-23, 2017

Conservation/Explication: The Costume Institute’s use of digital technologies for the preservation and interpretation of its Charles James collection by Sarah Scaturro

The Costume Institute’s 2014 exhibition  Charles James: Beyond Fashion achieved an unprecedented depth in the understanding and explication of Charles James’ mastery of fashion through its critical use of technology, which included moving cameras, robots, animations, and projections. Curated by Harold Koda and Jan Reeder, the success of the exhibition hinged on the synergistic relationship between technology and fashion object, mediated through knowledge gleaned by the conservation team, who dissected and analyzed all of the garments on display. The conservators’ active role in the exhibition’s interpretive content was itself unprecedented for the Institute, as they were tasked with not only analyzing how James made his garments, but with translating information gleaned through 3D scanning, x-radiography, 360 photography, and material analyses to the designers, engineers, and computer programmers responsible for the development of the technological exhibition components.
  4
The conservators were inspired by the exhibition’s successful integration of digital technologies, and thus began explorations into the potential of technology to aid the preservation of Costume Institute’s collection. One significant outcome is the completion of an innovative project utilizing 3D scanning to create custom manufactured storage torso forms for Charles James gowns that cannot be hung or stored flat. The success of this project has encouraged the conservation team to deploy scanning and other digital technologies to preserve other aspects of the Institute’s collection, such as synthetic materials. This paper will explore the conservator’s role in the creation of explicative digital materials that were a critical part of the  Charles James: Beyond Fashion exhibition, and will show how the exhibition’s use of technology has inspired further digital explorations aimed at preserving the Costume Institute’s collection.

Caterina Sforza, Lucrezia Borgia, Isabella d’Este, Vittoria Colonna and Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj are  the five, iconic ladies, called to interpret the style of
three centuries between the Renaissance and the Baroque. For each of them
  it  runs parallel to the historical one,a a different, fascinating
'Vestimentary biography' in which clothes and apparatuses, revive through documents and iconographic testimonies that tell us an 'other' story in which they are inventions and shapes to speak for them:  the protagonists of a season as magnificent as ruthless of our history .
__________________________________________

Caterina Sforza, Lucrezia Borgia, Isabella d’Este, Vittoria  Colonna e Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj sono le cinque, iconiche dame, chiamate a interpretare lo stile di
tre secoli tra Rinascimento e Barocco. Per ognuna di loro scorre, parallelamente a quella storica, una diversa, affascinante ‘biografia vestimentaria’ in cui vesti e apparati,
fatti rivivere attraverso documenti e testimonianze iconografiche, ci raccontano una storia ‘altra’ in cui sono invenciónes e fogge a parlare per loro: le protagoniste di
una stagione tanto magnifica quanto spietata della nostra storia.

La mia ricerca sulle tessitrici di Nule si è sviluppata all'Interno di una ricerca sul campo di piú ampia portata, a proposito del fenomeno del dono in Sardegna. Mi sono sentito benevolmente "costretto" a raccogliere materiale riguardante la tessitura poiche' Ie donne, principali artefici del dono-imbiatu, desiderarono rendere nota la loro attivita di tessitrici . Una salutare "rivolta dell'oggetto", questa, che mi ha aiutato a.capire ancor meglio il ruolo femminile all'interno del sistema del dono: i saperi acquisiti e la pazienza necessaria per tessere per lunghe ore al telaio verticale, osservando il tappeto prender forma molto lentamente e progressivamente; l'attivita diligente e intensa.che forma un carattere forte e sviluppa il senso estetico; la percezione dell'armonia dei colori, ed infine una volonta aperta a trasferire queste conoscenze come contributo alla formazione del tessuto sociale, fanno capire come il tessere, per queste donne di Sardegna, sia parte della vita e diventi vita; la citazione quasi-romantica di Cambosu ci aiuta a tener conto delIa tenacia di queste donne che, nella sofferenza, scelgono ancora la vita e la speranza, quindi il dono - come opposti rispetto ai codici di rnorte, di "vendetta" e di distruzione.

Within the existing discourse the fields of philosophy, anthropology and sociology provide critical context to fashion studies, while hermeneutics and theology remain in the margins. Religion as a topic is dealt with in the main, via ethnographic studies that focus on material objects and situated religious dress practice with an emphasis on materiality. In fashion and cultural studies the recurring theme of clothing as identity and the representation of who we are is central to the discourse. However, ontological perspectives of being must be addressed along with body/soul or interior/exterior dichotomies when speaking of the capacity of clothing in this context. 

This paper will approach the topic from a contemporary, Christian faith-based position via an integrated body-soul-dress identity model that considers what it means to be ‘clothed’ in a present, physical, future and metaphorical sense. The philosophical, speculative methodology will be undertaken within the framework of three types of bodies: Naked, Clothed and More Clothed, these bodies represent three states: Physical, Social and Spiritual, situated within three environments: the Human, the World and Heaven.  Discursive textual analysis of key biblical texts pertaining to the future body and the metaphorical language of clothing will provide us with a deeper understanding of the continuity between our present and future identity, embodiment and materiality.  Lastly, commonly held assumptions around Christianity’s anti-body (and therefore anti-material) beliefs will be addressed,  articulating a contemporary response to Cartesian-Dualism.

Keywords:  Body, Clothing, Dress, Embodiment, Future, God, Human, Identity, Materiality, Present, Representation, Soul, Spiritual

The War Production Board issued limitation order 85 in April 1942 in order to conserve fabric and manpower needed for the war effort. The United States government hoped to curb, at least temporarily, the purchase of apparel and other goods to help support the war effort by restricting materials needed for the war. However, the apparel industry was one of the leading consumer industries in the United States, and putting it on hold was not only impractical but could harm the domestic economy. The United States apparel industry even marketed goods as patriotic to stimulate, not curb, consumer spending. The purpose of this research was to examine how female consumers of women's apparel were influenced by the federal regulations of women's apparel during World War II. We also examined extant wartime apparel in order to provide a more complete picture of women's wartime apparel styles.

Fashion is often described as asserting or reinforcing social or professional bonds, but rarely is such a fixed bond established as when garments physically link one body to another. We may be familiar with shared garments in dramatic costume, as in Chinese dragons or pantomime horses, but there are also examples of everyday garments designed to contain multiple bodies. Examples include Lucy Orta’s collective wear, Dana Karwas and Karla Karwas’ Party Dress worn by five women simultaneously, and Aamu Song and Johan Olin’s Dance Shoes for Father and Daughter. These garments not only assert relationships between wearers, but make that relationship inescapable by physically binding bodies together. By linking or binding bodies, these shared garments restrict movement, and ensure choreographed motion, forcing the wearers to move as one. This establishes a hierarchy, placing one wearer in control of motion, and others in subservient positions. This paper will discuss the wearing of shared garments, focusing in particular on how forced choreography affects issues of identity, interpersonal relationships, and social hierarchy. It will observe how shared garments may challenge or reinforce ideas about the relationship between fashion and identity, and will explore the social motives behind the design of such garments.

Cátedra Abierta, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín
Ponentes: Claudia Fernández Silva, Mauricio Velásquez Posada
Abril 28 del 2011
Presentación de la ponencia:
http://prezi.com/dvowdgyw_xt1/ponencia-mamm-esteticas-urbanas-claudia-fernandez-silva-mauricio-velasquez-posada/

Introducción: Las estéticas urbanas aparecen en el instante mismo en el que el cuerpo entra en relación con el espacio sociocultural que acota y determina su experiencia del mundo: la ciudad, construyendo todo un juego de representaciones de sí mismo a través de su apariencia. El cuerpo ajusta su apariencia a esas experiencias a las cuales se adscribe como poseedor (al menos simuladamente) de unas ideas de vida, de prácticas en relación a un contexto. La charla de hoy se dirige a observar los agentes que detonan la formación de estéticas en el ámbito urbano y no de tipologías estéticas. Vamos a indagar sobre esos procesos que llevan a los cuerpos a investir una identidad particular dentro del escenario urbano. Esos procesos los entenderemos como la estrategia de diferenciarse a través de una escenificación de sus identidades (presuntas), desde su apariencia a través de operaciones vestimentarias y espaciales.

In existing Fashion Studies scholarship, religion is primarily dealt with at two ends of the spectrum in the context of material culture - via ethnographic studies of situated religious dress practice or the spectacularization of religious iconography within fashion design practice. Current fashion and cultural theorists acknowledge the relationship between the body & dress as an embodied practice and discuss the social, dressed or ‘fashioned’ body in the context of the present world in which we live. While these are valuable perspectives, they don't fully represent the complicated relationship between the material, the ‘spiritual’ and the philosophical, or the body, soul and dress within the wider system of fashion. Throughout fashion theory, many scholars reference the Cartesian split as being problematic in their recognition of the disconnect between interior/exteriority. This disconnect between body and soul warrants further discussion, and in this chapter, I hope to offer a more integrated approach that seeks to reconcile these seemingly disparate domains.
It is important to state from the outset that I am neither a religious scholar nor a theologian. My approach in this essay is that of a lay practitioner, fashion studies scholar and      design practitioner seeking to integrate Reformed Protestant theologies of the body and soul with contemporary fashion theories of subjectivity.      I      argue that religious belief fundamentally changes one’s perception and experience of the situated practice of being and having a ‘dressed' body in the present and future tense. As a research practitioner who embraces belief in the supernatural as well as the natural world this impacts one’s concept of the earthly body, soul and ergo dress. From this perspective, I aim to present an integrated approach via a fashion-dress-embodied soul model that offers a more unified view of present embodiment, alongside an inclusive framework that seeks to represent the future states of dress, bodies and environments. I will utilize the term embodied soul versus body/soul throughout the text as I feel this represents the human being and personhood from a unified standpoint as a totality versus body and soul as separate entities, which is central to my position.

This study of the "minor arts" begins with an interrogation of the use of the words "minor" and "craft" as applied to works produced and consumed in the ancient Near East. I critique the dichotomies of major vs. minor arts or art vs. craft that are embedded in and drive art historical thought about modern and Western objects, with its focus on singularity and originality in the age of mass production. This historiographic grounding and critique of the phrase "minor arts" will argue for the use of the phrase "portable objects/works of art" as preferable for students of the ancient Near East. Such a phrase allows a fuller understanding of the value (political, economic, social) and significance of small-scale objects in the ancient Near East, including those that are attested only pictorially if not archaeologically, such as textiles. The study discusses the current state of work on portable art in light of the concepts of agency and identity and the meaning and affect of objects in the ancient Mesopotamian world.