Eva Knuts, Etnology, Gothenburg University

2009-2014

Fashion might be said to be defined by its changes. A new season contains new trends, colours, cuts and materials to take into account. It is no exaggeration to say that fashion and clothing as such holds an important position in everyday life, sometimes as an unreflective practice, but more often it represents an activity, or interest, that includes careful planning. The interest in, or experience of fashion in everyday life not only poses questions about personal taste, aesthetics, materiality and functionality, but includes more diffuse ideas about body and identity as well: how one, based on the changes in fashion, would like to be perceived and style oneself. Therefore, our research take on commercial fashion, since we consider it particularly interesting to draw attention to and reflect on everyday situations; we all encounter styled media images and fashion experts' normative advice on which colours and materials that currently is in, and which garments that fit with what. Additionally, during dressing situations we meet standards about body and appearance in its materialized form, inscribed in the design of clothing. Consequently, our aim has been to investigate power relations during styling and dressing; studying how power relations are established and recreated during attempts to materially produce dressed bodies; and to analyse the standards activated and exposed in these situations. Questions concerning clothing, fashion and style are raised in relation to how power is made and renegotiated in contexts that are seldom understood as imbued with power aspects, but rather of creativity, which further has resulted in an amplification of the dialectical relationships between macro and micro levels of the discursive practices of styling and dressing. Hence, the construction of fashion features and appointments of fashion icons - both historical and contemporary such - in different media texts is investigated; situations where dress standards are negotiated, materially and linguistically, in connection to the service of personal shopping, is analysed; and, in everyday life, through the study of styling and dressing of children.

The object has been to provide innovative cultural research that problematizes practices of clothing, with the aim of contributing to dress and fashion research internationally, and, to enhance reflective knowledge about dress and fashion in a broader sense. The main achievements of the project include a further development of a theoretical framework for the study of dress, which have been presented in an issue of the international, open access, journal Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research. From a critical perspective we examined what we considered a limiting division of clothing and fashion, as they were separate entities, and, instead attempted to emphasize how the division might be bridged and methods developed. The issue was presented as follows: "... a new thematic section entitled "Fashion, Market and Materiality", edited by Therése Andersson. This first set of articles for 2011 focuses on the eminently contemporary area of fashion research. The section covers a range of scholarly approaches and methodological frameworks that, taken together, acknowledge the interconnections between production and consumption of fashion and maps the relationships between various agencies, institutions, individuals and practices within the fashion world. Fashion is understood in a wide sense and the subjects range from traditional fashion venues and the retail market to sports clothing and fashion on the film screen - touching on themes and perspectives such as nation branding, sports studies and media analysis."

The three sub-studies have evolved and developed, and thus been supplemented with new questions to further problematize the initial objectives. As such, seeking to ensure and emphasize the project's relevance, then we whish our research to related to both the research front, and that it takes into account the fast changes of fashion over time. Regarding sub-study 1 (Andersson), where representations and mediations of styling is considered, focusing particularly on the final result of styling - the visualizations of aesthetic ideas materialized in fashion editorials and advertising, the increasing practice of utilising film stars and celebrities as models, and appointing them fashion icons, have been proven more intricate, actualizing a historical approach of the phenomenon as well. These issues are explored in the article "Greta Garbo: Filmstjärnan som nationell hjältinna". Due to the retrospective approach, the close relationship between styling and costume design for films was highlighted; a relationship that over time evolved into two different professions, but still holds several points in common. In the article "Costume Cinema and Materiality: Telling the Story of Marie Antoinette through Dress" styling is studied in relation to costume drama and questions of materiality. In turn, the cinematic viewpoint has contributed to develop issues around styling, representation, and mediation, which has offered additional complexity to the study, and resulted in the opportunity to further problematized fashion, power and identity, as has been considered in the article "Fashioning The Fashion Princess: Mediation - Transformation - Stardom". In sub-study 2 (Knuts), the phenomenon of "personal shoppers" is examined and particular attention has been paid to the profession's formation and its development over time. Based on empirical material consisting of interviews with "personal shoppers" and their clients, as well as websites and fashion blogs, the distinct shift from the commercially defined vendor to fashion expert and coach - not very dissimilar to lifestyle coaches - are emphasized. In the article "From Chaos to a Well Composed Wardrobe - Find Your Style with a Personal Shopper", aspects of power surrounding definitions of style and choices of apparels have been analysed in relation to fashion, consumption and identity, which in turn has generated new problems for deliberation concerning clothing and expressions of subjectivity in relation to the increasingly paradoxical relationship between notions of the unique and uniform within fashion. In sub-study 3 (Berggren Torell), power relations during styling and dressing of preschool children are considered. The market for children's wear is fragmented in a variety of styles and price ranges, and the combining of children's clothing is often described, both in advertising and magazines, as an important task and as an opportunity to mirror the family's lifestyle. The study focuses on everyday dressing situations and fieldwork is carried out in a number of kindergartens. Questions concerning how dressing is made in the interactions between adult and child, negotiations about how the garments will be arranged, as well as the material aspects of apparel and their significances for children's opportunities to get dressed independently is investigated. These issues have been further developed in the forthcoming article "Motherhood and Blogs about Children's Fashion" regarding blogging mothers' attitudes to children's clothing. The project's link to museum practises has also been reinforced, as issues around fashion, clothing and museum collections have been examined in the articles "Moderna barnkläder och moderiktiga barn" (Berggren Torell, Nordiska museet) and "Bruddräkter - mellan tradition och trend" (Knuts, Röhsska museet).

We have considered it important to contribute to in-depth discussions in society about practices of fashion and dress, and have initiated collaboration with the Textile Museum in Borås concerning a fashion exhibition. Happily, the on-going development of the exhibition has grown into a fruitful collaborative project. Based on the results of the project's three sub-studies, the exhibition deals with both symbolic and material aspects of fashion and style. The exhibition will address the interplay between macro and micro levels of discursive practices of styling and dressing: deliberating on the elements of styling processes involving mediation of standards for creations of styles, and communications of style advices within the sphere of consumption, as important to, and connected to, fashion choices and dressing practices in everyday situations. Particular attention is paid to, and sought to concretize, the theoretical approach of fashion research that stresses the material configurations of the milieus as having bearing on how the interactions of power relations can be established, maintained, negotiated and challenged. By exploring the actual styling and dressing situations, and reflecting on the standards that are embedded in the designs, that things - clothes, shoes and accessories - provides user scripts for practices, power relations are directly and tangibly negotiated.

As the Textile Museum will reopen in late May 2014, after the move to new premises at the Textile Fashion Center, the exhibition is scheduled to premiere in late fall 2015. With the intention to make current research available, and generate further thoughts on fashion, our book will be published in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition. As interest has proven to be strong for the project, we are planning for a touring exhibition. This provides a greater opportunity to make the research available, while the exhibition itself and all the work around it generates new questions and new material for further research, which we of course look forward to taking on and hope we will get the opportunity to do.

Publications:

Andersson, Therése: ”Fashion, Market and Materiality: Along the Seams of Clothing” I: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, vol 3, no 1, 2011 (open acsess)

Andersson, Therése: ”Costume Cinema and Materiality: Telling the Story of Marie Antoinette through Dress” I: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, vol 3, no 1, 2011 (open acsess)

Andersson, Therése: ”'Who's that girl?' MTV: populärmusik och visuell identitet” I: Johan
Bergman m.fl (red) Sign o' the times: Introduktion till populärmusik som historia. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2011

Andersson, Therése: ”Fashioning The Fashion Princess: Mediation - Transformation – Stardom” I: Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, vol 4, 2012 (open acsess)

Andersson, Therése: ”Greta Garbo: Filmstjärnan som nationell hjältinna” I: Therése Andersson (red) Hjältar och Hjältinnor: Föreställningar och gestaltningar från Eufemiavisorna till Gösta Berlings saga. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2012
Andersson, Therése: ”La Sorcière - En resa i fiktiva rum” I: Bebyggelsehistorisk Tidskrift, 64/2012 
Andersson, Therése: ”Synas i sömmarna” I: Historisk Tidskrift, 133:4, 2013 (open acsess)

Berggren Torell, Viveka: ”Moderna barnkläder och moderiktiga barn” I: Christina Westergren & Berit Eldvik (red) Fataburen 2010. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag.
Berggren Torell, Viveka: ”Clothes for the Active, Playing Child in Sweden in the 1920s to 50s” I: Barn 2010 nr 4, Trondheim: Norsk center for barneforskning vid NTNU, 2010
Knuts, Eva: ”Bruddräkter - mellan tradition och trend” I: Bia Mankell (red) Modets bildvärldar. Studier med utgångspunkt i Röhsska museets modesamling, Göteborg: Röhsska museet, 2012

Artiklar under peer review:

Knuts, Eva: ”From Chaos to a Well Composed Wardrobe – Find Your Style with a Personal Shopper” I: Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research

Berggren Torell, Viveka, et al.: "Motherhood and blogs about children's fashion" I: Journal of Consumer Culture


Kommande:    

Andersson, Therése & Berggren Torell, Viveka & Knuts, Eva: Blixtlås, knapp och kardborrband – Makt och materialitet under styling och påklädning. Utkommer i samband med modeutställningen med samma namn på Textilmuseet i Borås hösten 2015.