Clothing Cultures - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2016

This article discusses recent finds in the Angelica Garnett Gift of 8000 previously unseen works of art by Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, donated to The Charleston Trust in 2008. The Charleston Trust cares for Charleston House, the Sussex home of Bell and Grant, and the collection of their and their contemporaries’ artworks. The Angelica Garnett Gift has emphasized the overlooked importance of dress to the work and lives of Bell and Grant and calls for more attention on the sartorials of Bloomsbury. This article aims to spark discussion in this understudied field, focusing on two examples found in the Gift, which reinterpret and reclaim the Victorian styles of the top hat and the fan to express possibilities of modern identity. These works interrogate how dress can negotiate experiences of both gender and modernity while also revealing understudied artistic and design processes, for Duncan Grant with the Omega Workshops and Vanessa Bell later in life. The style of the Bloomsbury Group continues to inspire designers today who find their modernist dress equally suitable to express the contemporary moment.

This article traces changing styles of dress in Dunedin’s underground music scene between the years 1985 and 1996, identifying themes, patterns and notable features, as represented in photographs by notable Dunedin identity Gaylene.¹ Situating punk as an important foundation of a continuing Dunedin music scene, this article considers subcultural style as a means of expressing both individuality (against the perceived mainstream) and solidarity (within the subculture). This article presents a trajectory for the ways subsequent sartorial styles have been informed by punk in Dunedin. Recognizing Malcolm Barnard’s suggestion that dress can ‘challenge both bourgeois culture and the capitalist system’ (Barnard 2002: 136), we position the subjects of Gaylene’s photographs, and the manner of their dress, within the wider social, political and geographical context of the time. Analysis is presented from both subcultural and post-subcultural frameworks. This analysis is considered and supported through the testimonies of active participants in the scene, notably interviews with Gaylene herself and with reference to a locally produced documentary. While it is acknowledged that both approaches have strengths and weaknesses, we, the authors, suggest that these strengths and weaknesses must be recognized in relation to the context of time; the specific practices, beliefs and appearance of subcultures are context dependent and therefore lend themselves to specific analytical methodologies.

A tanned, attractive appearance is a driving motivation for individuals engaging in body-tanning behaviours, despite the fact that ultraviolet exposure has been identified as the leading cause of developing skin cancer. To date, however, no studies have examined skin dissatisfaction, combined with sociocultural-cognitive variables, in understanding body-tanning attitudes, intentions and behaviours. The aim of the current study was to develop and evaluate a comprehensive sociocultural-cognitive model of tanning behaviours. College students (N = 333) with an average age of 19.8 years participated in this study. A majority of the participants were female (70.8 per cent) and Caucasian (76.9 per cent). A structural equation modelling analysis revealed that the proposed sociocultural-cognitive model had an excellent fit (χ²/df = 2.1, root-mean square error of approximation = 0.059, comparative fit index = 0.96 and Tucker–Lewis index = 0.95), with all proposed pathways emerging significantly. Appearance internalization and orientation predicted skin dissatisfaction and tanning attitudes, which predicted participants’ intentions and behaviours. These results highlight sociocultural-cognitive influences, as well as the role of skin dissatisfaction in tanning attitudes, intentions and behaviours. Skin cancer prevention campaigns may benefit in the future by adopting approaches that integrate body image and skin satisfaction.

Pubic hair has long been a contentious subject for women, and, in relation to constructions of psychoanalytical Otherness. Indeed, from Freud’s assertion that female pubic hair conceals a ‘lack’, natural genital hair growth has been a site of simultaneous shame and control, an intimate feature requiring habitual clipping, preening and restraint. Feminists have aligned this bodily restraint with social constraint, as men rarely pluck, shave or dye their pubic hair, and control over such ‘hidden’ areas heightens and perpetuates women’s ‘shame’. Consequently, as Germaine Greer acknowledges, stereotypical women pluck, shave and wax their bikini lines, and somewhat ironically, unfettered pubic hair by the 1980s had become a sign of the unfeminine feminist. In a post-feminist era, pubic hair, or the lack of it, remains a site of discourse. From fashions in waxing (the Brazilian and the Hollywood) to shaping and dyeing, pubic hair has become commodified, a beauty essential, removed aggressively from its political roots. This article is concerned with vajazzling, the removal of pubic hair and its replacement with diamante sparkles and other ‘jewellery’. Focusing on the celebration of excess body modification and the quest for ‘beauty’ via luxury consumption exemplified in this series, this article questions and investigates the historical significance of the lack of pubic hair and its beaded replacement in contemporary body projects.

Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, Agnes Rocamora and Anneke Smelik (eds) (2015) London: I.B Tauris, 320 pp., ISBN: 978-1-7807-6733-8, h/bk, 978-1-7807-6734-5, p/bk, £16.99

Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures, Reina Lewis (ed.) (2015) London, Durham: Duke University Press, 237 pp., ISBN: 978-0-8223-5934-0, p/bk. $28.95