AMS 201
Dr. Sean Homer
Research paper
Victoria Lyubykh
Fall 2013
Understanding Fashion: Dress as a means of identity translation
Research Outline
American society is generally described as “styleless” due to the notion of “melting pot;
the place where different cultures if combined turn into a homogenous from heterogeneous one,
forms a unique culture. The peculiar mixture of cultures inherited from the American
colonization period makes its culture a topic of numerous researches and studies being
published by author both popular and scholar. The nature of the fashion structure has been a
phenomenon for a lot of studies conducted in economic area, cultural analysis, and sociologic
studies. This paper primary goal is to look at the notion of fashion; first part of the research
presents theoretical data based 1950s-1970s found online. As for the second part the theory
presented in the first part will be applied in order to “read a fashion; for the sake of better
understanding of the research conducted.
Consumerism culture is now one of the most prevailing movements in America. The
commonly known American Dream concept is being replaced by “shop some more” one.
Historically speaking, fashion is described as “"...a manifestation of collective behavior, and as
such represents the popular, accepted, prevailing style at any given time” (quoted in Sproles
1974). Fashion here doesn’t equal clothes; fashion originally served many functions, but it
basically serves three main ones: utilitarian, esthetic, and symbolic (Barber et al. 1952). In order
to simplify the comprehending of what fashion is would like to state what fashion is not: fashion
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is neither casual clothes worn on a daily basis in a “dress down” manner nor a traditional dress of
a given culture inherited from the historical ancestors. Fashion today is a term closely related to
the predominance of an identity which is “an internal, self-constructed, dynamic organization of
drives, abilities, beliefs, and individual history” (Marcia 1980). Being an extremely easy visible
characteristic of any civilization, fashion is easily traceable in accordance with time change. I do
not mean to say that history is a factor altering the way people opt to dress. However, the
changes to fashion appear quite frequently. Barthes suggests that fashion alters according to a
relatively long historical duration. Thus, it possesses two durations: one strictly historical, as for
the other it can be called memorable, “because it puts into play the memory a woman can have of
the Fashions which have preceded the Fashion of a given year” (1990). The book called “Fashion
System” suggests that Kroeber was the first one to study the described historical duration.
Kroeber studied the female evening wear and analyzed the following features: (1) the length of
the skirt; (2) the height of the waistline; (3) the depth of the neckline; (4) the width of the skirt;
(5) the width of the waist; (6) the width of the neckline. The study resulted in two conclusions
one of which is stating that the history does not intervene in the fashion process; a state of
fashion cannot be explained analytically; simply speaking, “the length of the skirt has nothing to
do with Napoleonic War” (Barthes 1990). In contradiction to that, during the feminist movement
of the 1960s the length of the skirt diminished from being “maxi” to “mini”, resulting in the
invention of the mini-skirt by Mary Quant (Moss 2008). What kind of conclusion shall we draw
here? I will leave this question open in order to stay focused at the main topic of the research.
Kroeber also concluded that “details of fashion change more often than the general fashion
trend” (Kawamura 2005).
The queerness of the fashion image is – that it has no constant image at all. It can’t have
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an image as a result of its core meaning– permanently altering one. I tend to agree with the
statement that “fashion like crime has too many referents; it covers significantly different kinds
of social behavior” (quoted in Barber et al. 1952). Various definitions seem to be challenging the
fashion by defining it as somewhat “irrational”, described by “crazes” and “fads” (Barber et al.
1952). However, Herbert Blumer claims that “viewing fashion as a craze-like social happening is
to grievously misunderstand it” (1957).
According to Blumer’s understanding of fashion, the person who voluntarily opts for
changing his fashion to the one contrary to his own is to be called fashion conscious person.
However, I would certainly question this notion today, when the young teenagers are made to
take part in the Junior Beauty Pageants by their parents making themselves look, if I may say,
“commercially successful Barbie dolls” following the trends dictated by magazines such as
Cosmopolitan or somewhat similar. I would also doubt the idea that fashion is not highly
addictive; I would rather stick to the statement that fashion has a non-rational dimension to it, but
is highly unlikely to cause fashion mania by this irrationality. Blumer also claims that “where
fashion operates it assumes an imperative position” (1957). The nature of the fashion is peculiar
enough as it does not offer the options, quite the contrary, it states what has to be done, which
trends have to followed, it ignores any critique and censure, demands devotion, and leaves back
all those who choose not to fall for it.
As it was stated earlier, consumer culture of North America has put an effect on the
majority of the social life notions of the people, and fashion is not an exception. The popular
19th-20th centuries ideas “rags to riches through hard work” is now being replaced with
transformation one from anonymity to celebrity through management of one’s image as a key
tool (quoted in Thompson et al. 1997).
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Going back to the identity and image concepts prevalence nowadays, it is crucial to note
the alteration of markets targeting process as a part of their marketing mixes. The fashion
industry today targets predominantly youth and the younger generation. Having in mind that “the
identity process neither begins nor ends with adolescence” (Marcia 1980), it is the high time
when the teenagers are differentiating themselves according to four major types of identity
developing process which Marcia defines: (1) Identity foreclosure; (2) Identity Moratorium; (3)
Diffusion; (4) Identity Achievement (1980). Thus, I have found out that “fashion involvement is
likely to be associated with differences in sensitivity to social surroundings in that those who are
highly motivated to fit into a particular group” (Auty et al. 1988). Being a very contradictive
notion fashion is criticized by the academics; which I personally find quite controversial as well:
“The question of fashion is not a fashionable one among intellectuals… Fashion is
celebrated in museums, but among serious intellectual preoccupations it has marginal status. It
turns everywhere on the street, in industry, and the media, but it has virtually no place in the
theoretical inquiries of our thinkers. Seen as an ontologically and socially inferior domain, it is
unproblematic and underserving of investigation; seen as a superficial issue, it discourages
conceptual approaches” (quoted in Kawamura 2005).
Critics of “theory” and “conceptual approaches” are most probably blaming fashion for
being a superficial cover, a sort of shallow adornment. As for nowadays, I suggest that the
personal identity is closely related to the appearance, thus, clothes are fundamental to the modern
consumer’s sense of identity as a whole. The result is that nowadays, when criticized on
appearance, people are more likely to take it personally.
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Getting up in the morning, have people ever asked themselves why are they dress
themselves one specific way or another? It might certainly depend on occasion or occupation.
However, if it the day you don’t have to rush anywhere, it is your vacation or a day-off. You
open your wardrobe and stare: ‘What should I wear?” – You ask yourself. Why do you wear
black? What does it supposed to say about you? What impression does it make about you? To
answer these questions I started surfing the web net couple of days before, and I have found one
particular study that grabbed my interest. It is the case study of Northwestern University which
coins the term of “enclothed cognition”. The new term is introduced to describe the systematic
influence that clothes have when worn at times of psychological processes. The experiments
conducted included the participants wearing lab coats. The results turned out to be quite
astonishing; they shown that “wearing a lab coat would increase performance on attentionrelated tasks” (Hajo et al. 2012). Basically, the main principle of enclothed cognition – suggests
that there generally is a symbolic meaning to wearing particular clothes.
One most probably has seen Lady Gaga, but I am not sure I can state everyone have
heard her songs. The fact is that the fashion of the new pop-diva is the key aspect compelling
meticulous attention. Her image is the main factor affecting her singing career. Wen Gaga
appeared at MTV Video Music Awards 2010 wearing a dress made fully out of fresh meat, it
caused different reactions both from PETA organization and critics. It is quite natural that the
singer was blamed for a furious attempt to get noticed by animal rights group. However, many
critics, including Dr. Richard Noble appreciated the look of the Monster Mam by saing "It's a
clever play on women being viewed as chunks of flesh, as pieces of meat, as things to be
consumed," she said (Winterman et al. 2010). Lady Gaga completely transforms fashion from
being “wearable”; real-life female fashion, most of the time transforming it into somewhat
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costume looking rather than a look printed on the cover of the fashion magazines. Her unique
nature allows her not simply perform on the stage, by singing pop she manages to dictate her
own esthetic; her “flesh” speaks the truth. Everything in her carries an inside message – she
provokes hate and disgust, causes adoration combined with critique. One might fail to
understand the contents of that message; however, one will be highly unlikely to cease to notice
her appearances and performances. The “Shocking Art” of Lady Monster proves that the
sexuality and femininity image of a pop-singer can be carved out of industrial demand of
economy. Brands here have a drastic impact on her social identity. Lady Gaga Brand can be
defined as song “Born This Way” name. Her concerts are example of a unique identity
characterized by her appeal, gender and sexuality. By being particularly queer, uncomfortable in
her costumes, aggressive to an extent of transgression, Gaga manages to redefine the image of a
glitter pop-singer nowadays. Her risky art business is a hot topic of scholar’s polemics; however,
critique is not always condemning: “She’s really adamant about serious meaning and high art,”
Durbin maintains. “That may be her one entirely new thing. Warhol brought pop into the
museum; Gaga is bringing high art into pop culture” (quoted in Graham 2011).
To conclude the research conducted I would like to state that the humanity faces the
transformation of clothes, serving basic utilitarian functions, into fashion where the color,
attitude, form, structure - are the signified of a no-words language. Concept of identity is
strongly connected to self-representation, fashion is a statement that has to be carefully analyzed
and read in order to fully perceive the initial goal of it. Meanwhile, comprehending fashion is
not an easy process; therefore, much more research is left to be conducted.
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Works Cited
Auty, Susan and Richard Elliot. "Social Identity and the Meaning of Fashion Brands".
Association for Consumer Research: European Advances in Consumer Research (3): 1-10. Web.
13 Dec. 2013.
Barber, Bernand and Lyle s. Lobel. "Fashion" in Women's Clothes and the American Social
System”. Social forces. Dec. 1952: pp. 124-131. JSTOR. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
Barthes, Roland. “The Fashion System”. California: University of California Press, 1990. Google
Books. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
Blumer, Herbert. “Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection” The Sociological
Quarterly. April 2005: 275-290. Wiley Online Library. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.
Graham, Elyse. “Monster Theory”. The American Scholar, 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Kawamura, Yuniya. Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies. New York: Berg,
2005.Google Books. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Thompson, Craig and Diana L. Haytko. “Speaking of Fashion: Consumers' Uses of Fashion
Discourses and the Appropriation of Countervailing Cultural Meanings”. Journal of Consumer
Research. June 1997: 15-17. JSTOR. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.
Marcia, James. Identity in Adolescence. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1980. Handbook of
adolescent psychology. Google Books. Web, 11 Dec. 2013.
Moss, Caz. “Fashion Icon: Mary Quant Mini Skirt”. Female First. 10 March 2008.
< http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/lifestyle-fashion/styletrends/mini-4641.html>
Sproles, George. “Fashion Theory: a Conceptual Framework”. Association for Consumer
Research: Advances in Consumer Research 1 (1974): 463-472. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
Winterman, Denise and Jon Kelly. “Five interpretations of Lady Gaga's meat dress”. BBC New
Magazine. 14 Sep. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
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