Clothing Cultures - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2014

The self-described ‘motion picture explorer’ American Martin Johnson frequently cast his wife Osa (1894–1953) as the star of his African and Asian Pacific expeditionary films. Her appeal to audiences was evidenced not just by the media hype surrounding the features, but also by the many spin-off enterprises the Johnsons variously produced and inspired, from published memoirs to a clothing-line. Throughout the Johnsons’ productions, Osa performed a persona that fired American imaginations of what it was to be a modern American woman, significantly styling her body to fit the part. Set against the perceived ‘primitivism’ of Indigenous societies, Osa’s look took exaggerated proportions and she self-appointed as the leader amongst local women along a road to civilization, which ostensibly required the wearing of Western dress, styling and self-reflexivity.

This article explores the British Olympic Association’s adoption of the Kangol beret for both male and female athletes at the London Games of 1948. The Games represented a critical juncture in both Olympic and British political history. The article outlines the fashion historical development of the ‘Anglo-Basque’ beret as a context for examining how the beret came to function as the symbolic embodiment of shifting concepts of British sporting nationalism within the Olympic arena. In World War II the beret became synonymous with Lord Montgomery of Alamein (Monty), and by extension the fighting spirit of the British nation. The article questions to what extent the choice of the ‘Monty’ beret in London in 1948 can be seen as both a response to the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and the wider contemporary context of a nation at the crossroads between austerity and affluence, and new demands for wider democratic freedom and welfare reform.

Through a study of Converse All Stars sneakers, this article explores an apparent paradox in the notion of ‘individuality’ in current fashion consumption where the potential freedom of choice among consumers in Denmark appears to have led to a sartorial sameness rather than radical pluralism. The concept of mass-individualism is used as a vehicle for understanding this paradox that is heightened both by the social value attributed to individuality in much of contemporary Western society and the image of All Stars as a symbol of individuality and self-expression. The concept is seen as part of an ambiguous strategy of status representation operating on conditions of fashion democracy. The study is interview-based and focuses on consumers aged seven to 71 in the greater Copenhagen area in which All Stars may be considered a transplanted, American cultural icon. Themes of undercoding and visual assemblage run through the exploration of mass-individualism in contemporary fashion.

Clothing played an important role in a number of performance art events during the 1960s and 1970s. Performances such as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964), Marina Abramovi’s Rhythm 0 (1974) and Hannah Wilke’s Super-T-Art (1974) implicated the viewer in an embodied relationship with the (un)dressed artist. In these works fabric was variously torn, bound, wrapped, folded and cut off the body. The movement of fabric as it is wrapped and gathered, the sound of cutting clothes away from the body and the charged atmosphere of a potentially violent encounter are all imagined in the photographs that exist of these works. This article explores the relationship between performance and photography in Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, a performance in which members of the audience cut fragments of clothing away from Ono’s body. Far more than documents that record live events, as if supplementary to the real encounter, these photographs have their own aesthetic, which informs the way we ‘remember’ the performances and understand their significance. Using the dialogue Ono sets up between performance and photography, this article challenges the dominant feminist reading of scopic violence in Cut Piece and considers the work as an event scattered across time.

CloTHING(s) as conversation is a research initiative that seeks to revising textile product assumptions. Clothing and specific combinations of articles worn on the body are often understood and referred to as a statement. The notion of clothing as statement is prevalent in catwalk culture (the fashion statement). It is equally evident in the clothing choices of individuals who do not participate in the fashion schema, be it through regulated attire (uniforms, professional garb, etc.) or as part of counter culture (punk, hippie, hactivists, etc.). This project posits that new possibilities may be envisaged by reframing the understanding of clothing from a unidirectional entity to one of multidirectional interchanges and dialogue. An interdisciplinary team made up of designers, an engineer and a weaver are exploring possibilities inherent in the act of conversation. Material- and form-based studies, generative and cultural probe techniques, and in situ explorations are being used to explore and propose: alternate means of thinking about the role of clothing (from statement to conversation); alternate means of communication, and alternate means of production and use. Nascent developments are provoking discussions about persistent habits of making, distribution and exchange connected to the garments we wear.

In this article I consider the lived fat body and its relation to clothing by thinking fat experience as analogous to the situation of women as laid out in The Second Sex ([1949, 1951] 2010).

The study of historic costumes tells us much more than just who wore what and when. It provides us with a unique insight into historic fashion trends, production techniques and materials. They may also provide us with a looking glass into the social economic and political situation of the past. In this article, I will examine a printed cotton gown from a private collection, worn in Massachusetts c. 1780, during one of the most significant periods in American history.

Denise Rall, ‘Darker Shades of Royal’, PopCAANZ Conference, Brisbane, July 2013