Fashion

Tribal and the Cultural Legacy of Streetwear
Tribal Streetwear is lifestyle streetwear brand that seeks to represent a variety of southern California sub-cultures that includes graffiti, street art, skateboarding, surfing, tattoos, hip hop, breakdancing, punk, lowriders, and custom culture. Based in San Diego, California, Tribal has strong Chicano roots in its aesthetic and spans the globe with retail stores on several continents.
The text presents a series of articles, essays, and personal reflections that explore the various dimensions of Tribal Streetwear, and how the impact of their designs continues to balance the precarious act of being relevant and responsible with their resources.
The book is divided into four sections.
Section 1 features essays that set a context for the text. This includes a history of Tribal and where it fits within the history of streetwear, a personal narrative of the founding of Tribal, and lastly an essay on the uniqueness of southern California aesthetics and the fascination with this southern California inspired fashion.
Section 2 is a series of interviews with notable artists, musicians, and cultural tastemakers that have contributed toward street culture and Tribal. These include Mr. Cartoon (tattoo artist), RISK (graffiti artist), PERSUE (street artists), Mike Giant (tattoo artist), Dyse One (graffiti artist), Craig Craig Stecyk III (skateboard culture), Bob Hurley (surf culture), and the Beastie Boys (hip hop).
Section 3 includes a series of invited and peer-reviewed academic articles on distinct subjects within the street culture genre that further dive into the inputs and influences of Tribal Streetwear. They include breakdancing, surfing, skateboarding, graffiti, street art, tattooing, music (hip-hop/punk), lowriders, custom culture, and Chicano Studies.
Section 4 is a series of photo essays that capture the three decades of Tribal Streetwear and serves as a visual history of the brand and the evolution of its graphics.

Bridging measurement and cultural interpretation: Experiencing the form-giving of men’s briefs
This article explores the first-hand experience of the diversity in styles of men’s briefs. It questions the standard categorization of briefs based on coverage and leg length. Due to the advent of internet-based sales channels, the scope for design has widened dramatically. The quality and experience of underwear styles is not captured in waistband dimensions and information on fabric. The article questions some ideas about designers’ ability to communicate product understanding given the tacit, non-verbal and haptic qualities inherent in briefs. It also raises questions about research paradigms common in industrial design research. This article is thus both about the subject (men’s briefs) and the means of research (research paradigm). The article combines aspects of design research used for industrial design and approaches such as wardrobe studies and interpretation used in fashion research.

When the clothes fit: Exploring the embodied transition to motherhood
Clothing practices can assist women in cultivating a particular body image and, thus, are sutured with details regarding how they manage their identity and appearance. Clothing can also help women cope with corporeal transitions, such as pregnancy. The relationship between clothing and one’s perception of their body shape changes during pregnancy as does how women feel about their clothes as they assume a new maternal identity. However, there is a lack of scholarly attention focused on exploring how postpartum mothers manage and relate to their bodies through clothing. Anchored in qualitative data collected from 128 in-depth, longitudinal interviews with 32 women at three, six, nine and twelve months postpartum, this article explores how postpartum body image, satisfaction and change are intricately linked with clothing across the first year after childbirth. Depicted through six women’s postpartum journeys, this article demonstrates that clothing becomes a barometer for bodily recovery following pregnancy and reveals details about maternal struggles, successes and spending patterns in the postpartum period.

DEI representation on Instagram: An analysis of two fast fashion retailers
As fashion retailers have started to emphasize their responsibility in society, the significance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the fashion industry has increased. This study explores the DEI commitments made by two fast fashion retailers (i.e. H&M and Zara) to examine whether they uphold and portray their DEI commitments through their Instagram postings by focusing on the following four DEI subcategories: people of colour, size inclusivity, LGBTQIA+ and physical disabilities. The study first analysed each retailer’s DEI statement to determine what claims each retailer makes regarding DEI. The data collection process comprised an examination of Instagram posts during the first week of every month from February 2021 to January 2022 utilizing the National Retail Federation (NRF) 4-5-4 calendar. Researchers collected qualitative/quantitative data and used content/comparative analysis to analyse the data. The findings indicated that representation might not be as equitable as their claims state. Based on the findings of this research, the study provides practical implications for enhancing DEI representation in retailers’ Instagram posts and marketing to facilitate more effective communication. Further, this study contributes to the existing literature on DEI commitments in the fashion industry by highlighting the practices of fast fashion retailers in their Instagram posts and marketing.

Determinants of a shift in consumer values towards minimalistic clothing consumption during global crises
The COVID-19 pandemic, as a global crisis, has affected the clothing consumption behaviour of consumers and it might create long-lasting changes in the fashion industry. Such behavioural shifts during global crises should be considered for sustainability-related marketing concepts and the way marketers promote sustainable clothing consumption during and after the crisis. This study explores the determinants of a shift in consumer values towards minimalistic clothing consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic in the under-researched country context of Iran. First, a literature review was conducted on topics including sustainable fashion consumption and the COVID-19 pandemic, the status of sustainable fashion consumption in Iran, as well as the influence of demographic characteristics on sustainable consumption behaviour. Second, a quantitative survey was administered to a sample of Iranian consumers (N = 382). The results reveal a value shift towards more minimalism and sufficiency in clothing consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic in the country context of Iran. Moreover, the findings highlight that age and gender significantly influenced the extent of this shift in values, while surprisingly no significant value shift was found because of employment or income changes. This article makes a unique contribution by exploring the value shifts towards minimalistic clothing consumption during global crises. Furthermore, the results of the study shed some light on consumption behaviour in an under-researched middle eastern area.

Costume design in film: Telling the story and creating Malcolm X’s character in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992)
Costume designers collaborate with film directors to bring the characters in the script to life. Film costumes are a visual tool of a narrative nature with which costume designers meet the diegetic needs of each story. Through clothing, they make internal aspects of the characters visible, such as their transformations, their nature and styles, their passions, aspirations and suffering, as well as aspects of the spatial, temporal and social context in which the stories take place. This study explores costume design by Ruth E. Carter as a dramatic tool in the biopic Malcolm X (1992), directed by Spike Lee. To that end, the function of film costumes is assessed both as a visual and narrative tool that exceeds the aesthetic dimension and is essential to give meaning to any film production.

The ‘look’! Aesthetic labour, aesthetic norms and appearance-based recruitment in the runway modelling industry
Aesthetic labour in the runway modelling industry refers to the practice of recruitment of models-workers on the basis of desired corporeal and facial dispositions. Aesthetic labour theory foregrounds embodiment, which situates the value of physical appearance and aesthetic norms in the workplace context showcasing how the models-workers get recruited and stratified based on their looks. The study employs an explanatory sequential mixed-method design to investigate aesthetic norms including the desired corporeal and facial dispositions that are expected from models-workers in the runway modelling industry. The study included two phases, a quantitative phase and a qualitative phase. The main objective of the first, quantitative research phase, was to investigate the aesthetic norms among 609 international runway models who were recruited to perform in designer exclusive fashion shows during seven consecutive annual fashion week seasons from 2013 to 2020 in New York, Paris, London and/or Milan. The main objective of the second qualitative research phase was to qualify aesthetic norms through a visual content analysis, and in-depth exploration of 40 unretouched professional modelling snapshots (photographs of face and body) for the top new model talents in the 2019–20 fashion season. Model photos were extracted from the popular industry website, Models.com. The rationale for collecting both quantitative and qualitative data was to form a robust and comprehensive assessment of aesthetic norms in the runway modelling industry. The same level of comprehensiveness would not be obtained by using either type of data individually. This article advances academic research on aesthetic labour in the fashion and modelling industry by showcasing why appearance-based recruitment in this sector represents the practice of occupational segregation that creates social inequalities and negatively impacts the labour market.