Clothing Cultures - Volume 5, Issue 3, 2018

Sky Cubacub, designer, artist and twenty-first century activist, based in Chicago, Illinois, creates garments and accessories for their fashion brand Rebirth Garments while critically considering gender, body size and ability, using the body and its expressions as a site of resistance and rebellion. This research is a case study of the life of Sky Cubacub and their work. We used the oral history method and triangulated information from the oral history with a material culture approach by analysing garments or apparel-related items produced by the designer; their self-produced zine/manifesto; and analysis of content on their social media accounts. Cubacub challenges ideas of visibility and ambivalence around the identities of queerness, fatness and disability. Through Cubacub’s life story, design philosophy and business practices, these shifting and, most importantly, stigmatized and invisible identities can be expressed on an individualized basis in a celebratory fashion, leading into the twenty-first century as a hyperaware designer who is arguably a model for others looking to do the same.

This article outlines the ways in which suits are synonymous with masculinity examining the, sometimes paradoxical, nature of suits worn by men of all social classes, and for different reasons. For example, hegemonic men wear suits in a bid to convey power, arguably, by rendering the wearers uniform in appearance so that the focus is on what hegemonic men might say and do, rather than how they might look. Moreover, the uniformity of suits is a means by which men of a lower social class demonstrate aspiration to a higher social class and might affect hegemonic power through wearing them. While much has been written about masculinity and suits, with many authors agreeing that the bespoke suit is at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of men’s clothing, yet there is a little attention paid to the way in which the bespoke suit is represented in media or popular culture. This article examines the role of clothing of the main characters in the film Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) with a particular focus on the contribution that the bespoke suit makes to the masculinity of the bodies of the individuals within the film. Principally, the bespoke suit elevates the body of the wearer from quotidian to tailored, the fitting of which allows for better representation of a man’s body. It will explore representation of middle-class masculinity, hegemony and embodiment in the film, addressing the idea of whether wearing a bespoke suit can help a man transcend the boundaries of ‘chav’ masculinity, which is depicted as male subordination, and rise into middle-class hegemonic masculinity through the character of Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin (Taron Egerton).

This article gives focus to the residue of smell in the everyday, dressed experience. Through collected narratives and memories, the research uncovers some of the personal and shared practices in negotiating smell and clothing: The smell of a father’s jacket acts as a reconciliation, and in its transferral of ownership, constructs an identity. A jumper, sprayed with the promise and artifice of fragrance, forms an aroma of deception to negate a visual appearance. And a traveller’s wardrobe reminds that smelly clothing is not a socially neutral experience but a negotiation of our sense of self. Embedding smell in the material context of clothing brings smell beyond the fleshy surface to the dressed body, provoking decisions to forget or remember the body that once inhabited its materiality.