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CHAMÄLEONCHAMÄLEONCHAMÄLEON

CHAMÄLEONCHAMÄLEON

STUDENTSTYLE

CHAMÄLEON MAGAZINESUMMER 2012

THE POST MODERN

SELF

EXTERNAL SELFEXPRESSION THROUGH CLOTHING BODY MODIFICATION AND MORE.

JAMES BOND WORE A ROLEX

RUBBER BAND MANBEN SHOWS US HIS PLANKING SKILLS.

P06 ANCHORING THE (POST-MODERN) SELF:

BODY MODIFICATION, FASHION, AND IDENTITY

P08THE SOCIAL MEANING OF HATS AND T-SHIRTS

P020WATCHES ARE REDISCOVERED BY

THE CELLPHONE GENERTION

P28A BRIEF NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF FASHION

THE4-1-1THE

INSIDESHKOOP

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ANCHORING THE (POSTMODERN) SELF:

PAUL SWEETMANUNIVERSITY OF DURHAM

BODY MODIFICATION, FASHION, AND IDENTITY

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“IT MAKES MY LIPS MORE BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE THEY ARE SO THICK.” - JAHNKE

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PERMANENT ACCESSORY LISA’S TATTOO, IN REMEMBRANCE OF HER MOM.

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WHETHER OR NOT THEIR MEANING IS FIXED IN THESE TERMS, TATTOOS AND PIERCINGS ARE EMPLOYED BY SOME AS A FORM OF ANTI-FASHION AND AS A WAY OF FIXING OR ANCHORING THE REFLEXIVELY CONSTRUCTED SELF.

CONTINUED ON P47

R ecent years have seen a consider-able resurgence in the popular-ity of tattooing and piercing, a development that

some have dismissed as a fashionable trend. Others have argued that the relative permanence of such forms of body modification militates against their full absorp-tion into the fashion system. Drawing on interviews with a variety of body modifiers, the article examines this de-bate, and notes that certain tattooees and piercees ap-pear, in some respects, to re-gard their tattoos and pierc-ings as decorative accessories. At the same time, however, such corporeal artifacts are approached and experienced as distinct from other, more free-floating products in the “supermarket of style”. Whether or not their mean-ing is fixed in these terms, tattoos and piercings are em-ployed by some as a form of anti-fashion and as a way of fixing or anchoring the re-flexively constructed self. In this sense they share both af-

LIP SERVICERAINER SHOWS OFF HIS LIP RING.

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THE SOCIAL MEANINGSOF HATS & T-SHIRTS

EXCERPTED FROM FASHION AND ITS SOCIAL AGENDAS:

CLASS, GENDER, ANDIDENTITY IN CLOTHING

THE SOCIAL MEANINGSOF HATS & T-SHIRTS

EXCERPTED FROM FASHION AND ITS SOCIAL AGENDAS:

CLASS, GENDER, ANDIDENTITY IN CLOTHING

DIANA CRANE

DIANA CRANE

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ntil the 1960s, the article of clothing that per-formed the most important role in indicating so-cial distinctions among men was the hat. The fact that it ceased to fulfill this role in the 1960s sug-gests that in the nineteenth century, hats, which continued to be worn during the first half of the twentieth century, were particularly suitable for the social environment of the period. Several new

types of hats appeared during the nineteenth century and were rapidly adopted at different social levels. Exactly what roles did hats perform? Because hats represented a more modest expense than jackets and coats, they provided an ideal opportunity for “blurring and transforming . . . traditional class boundaries” (Robinson 1993). Men’s hats were also used to claim and main-tain, rather than to confuse, social status, as seen in the fact that specific types of hats became closely identified with particular social strata. Elaborate customs of “hat tipping” as a means of expressing deference to a man’s superiors reflected the impor-tance of the hat in marking class boundaries (McCannell 1973). Since men represented their families in public space, men’s hats, rather than women’s, were used to indicate the status of the fam-ily. Women’s head coverings during this period were more varied and more individualized than men’s (Wilcox 1945). Women’s hats exemplified conspicuous consumption instead of relaying coded signals referring to social rank.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hats were worn by members of all social classes, including the lowest strata. In a photograph taken in Paris around 1900 of a group of ragpick-ers, twenty out of twenty-three wear hats or caps. In the same period, photographs of workers leaving factories (Borgé and Vi-asnoff 1993) and of workers’ demonstrations in Boston (Robin-son 1993) show virtually everyone wearing a hat or a cap. Head coverings were worn in situations which now seem inappropri-ate. Not only was it unacceptable to go into the street without a hat (La Mémoire de Paris 1993; Guiral 1976; Brew 1945), regardless of one’s social status, but in the nineteenth century, some form of head covering was often worn indoors. For ex-ample, Englishmen wore hats all day in their offices (Ginsburg 1990). Sonenscher (1987) argues that hats in previous centuries were worn in what we would now call the public sphere but that the public sphere was defined differently to include activities in-doors as well as outdoors: “Possession of a hat was an acknowl-edgment of the codes that governed admission to the particular sphere of public life in question.”

UThe social significance of men’s head coverings is indicated by the fact that, since the early nineteenth century, there has been a great deal of uniformity in what American and European men put on their heads. At any one time, there were less than a dozen types of hats, each of which might be sold with slight variations in color, size, shape of brim, and material that were not suffi-cient to prevent its being recognized as belonging to one of the major categories.

When a new type of hat was first introduced, there was often a period when it was worn by members of different social classes, but, eventually, it found its “niche” and became the prerogative of a particular social class.

The histories of several types of hats introduced in England in the early and mid-nineteenth century and widely adopted in other countries illustrate this principle. The top hat, which ap-peared in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was worn first by the middle and upper classes. During the century, it spread downward, possibly because it was adopted by coachmen in the 1820s and for policemen’s uniforms in the same period (de Marly 1986). In 1839, workers in London were wearing them with their Sunday clothes, and a potter from Staf-fordshire, the subject of a drawing in the same year, was wear-ing one with a smock frock. In the 1840s and 1850s, unskilled laborers and fishermen were photographed wearing these hats (Ginsburg 1988). At mid-century, they were being worn by all social classes (Ewing 1984). Head coverings worn by a group of foremen, who represented the upper stratum of the working class, illustrate the use of hats to express their aspirations for social status (Ginsburg 1988. In an 1861 photograph, most of the men were wearing the newly fashionable lounge jacket, and seven out of ten were wearing top hats. The older men were wearing top hats, in a slightly outdated style, but the younger ones were wearing the latest model. Only one man in the pho-tograph was wearing a peaked cap. By the end of the century, the use of the top hat had reverted to the middle and upper classes. The bowler was invented in England in 1850 as an oc-cupational hat for gamekeepers and hunters but was rapidly ad-opted by the upper class for sports (Robinson 1993). Within a decade it had spread to the city, where it was widely adopted by the middle and lower-middle classes (Lister 1972) and by members of the working class, particularly in cities. According to Robinson (1993), “They were worn by men doing road re-pairs, newshawkers, milkmen, knife grinders, rabbit sellers, and sherbet and water vendors—all manner of working folk who seemed to wear their bowlers as badges of the city street.” The working-class man’s attempt to blur class boundaries by wearing the bowler was satirized in the early films of Charlie Chaplin. Eventually, the bowler became an icon of the bourgeoisie, as im-mortalized in Magritte’s famous painting of a middle-class man wearing a bowler (Robinson 1993) and, after the Second World War, was worn mainly by middle-class businessmen.

CONTINUED ON P14

THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MEN’S HEAD COVERINGS IS INDICATED BY THE FACT THAT, SINCE THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY, THERE HAS BEEN A GREAT DEAL OF UNIFORMITY IN WHAT AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN MEN PUT ON THEIR HEADS.

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POSSESSION OF A HAT WAS AN

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE CODES

THAT GOVERNED ADMISSION TO THE

PARTICULAR SPHERE OF PUBLIC LIFE IN QUESTION.

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The cap with visor, which, like the top hat, appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was first worn by military officers (Wilcox 1945). By mid-century, the peaked cap was identified with the working class; it was “the most usual head covering for the working man” (Ginsburg 1988). At the begin-ning of the twentieth century, cloth caps, without visors, were mainly worn by the working class and particularly by younger workers (de Marly 1986), while members of the middle and upper classes wore peaked or cloth caps only for sports or in the countryside (Wilcox 1945). When worn by politicians, cloth caps were thought to indicate “radical tendencies”

The straw boater had a different history. Straw hats had been widely worn by working-class men during the nineteenth cen-tury, but following the invention in 1870 of a machine for sew-ing straw, a new form of straw hat, the boater, became extremely popular with all social classes for about five decades (Wilcox 1945; Berendt 1988; Cunnington and Cunnington 1959). Afterward the boater ceased to be worn except as a form of costume for musical entertainment.The patterns of diffusion of these types of hats were different in France and the United States. In France, each social class used hats differently. In mid-century, the upper and middle classes wore top hats; in the last quarter of the century, they wore the top hat for formal oc-casions and the bowler for business and less formal occasions. By the end of the century, they were still wearing the top hat and the bowler, along with felt hats and, in summer, straw hats, straw boaters, and panamas. In the different American sarto-rial worlds of city and countryside, wearing a hat was equally important (Brew 1945).

According to Severa (1995), “A hatless man was an anomaly” in the 1860s; in the 1890s, the hat was described as being “almost always in place, even when the coat and necktie have been laid aside because of the heat.”

Brew (1945) estimates that, in the 1880s, the average American bought a hat every year or two and, in the first decade of this century, probably owned two hats. As in France, there were both regional and class differences in the types of hats men selected. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, top hats were required in cities and were sometimes worn by workers with their work clothes (Severa 1995). During this period, the “wide-awake” (a black hat with a broad, stiff brim) was very popular in the western states. By the 1870s, top hats made of silk were worn in cities by prosperous businessmen but were not worn in the countryside (Brew 1945), where the soft felt hat was popu-lar with railroad workers and farmers (Severa 1995). Straw hats were worn in the fields by farmers (Brew 1945). Bowlers (der-bies) were worn by businessmen, particularly when they visited the countryside, and by some workmen in the cities, although caps were more “typical of the laborer” (Brew 1945).

By the early 1900s, the middle class was using silk top hats in the cities mainly for formal occasions, such as weddings and church

HATS OFF TO YOULEFT: ANN PLAYS AROUND WITH HER NEW YORKER FEDORA. RIGHT: RAINER DANCES IN HIS H&M CAP.

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services. Straw boaters were being widely worn by both the middle and the working class in the summer months. Broad-brimmed felt hats remained popular among ranchers and farm-ers (Brew 1945). Bowlers were being widely worn by both the middle and the working class (Brew 1945), although peaked caps were generally worn in the workplace by workers. Two photographs of workers at work and leisure illustrate the use of the bowler to blur status boundaries. A photograph of workers at leisure, an “iron-mongers’ picnic” in 1890, shows most of the workers wearing bowlers, but a photograph of workers in 1892 (at the San Francisco Stove Works) shows most of them wearing peaked caps or felt caps. Only two workers, and the owner of the business, wear bowlers.

The use of hats to blur class boundaries appears to have oc-curred most frequently in England, to a lesser extent in the United States (particularly outside the workplace), and least in France. However, this type of use generally occurred during the early stages in the history of a particular style of hat. A more common practice in all three countries was the use of particular styles of hats to indicate social class status as well as affiliation with a specific region, either city or countryside.“Closed” texts, garments with fixed meanings, were typical of class societies. “Open” texts, garments that continually acquire new mean-ings, are more likely to appear in fragmented societies, because different social groups wish to express different meanings using

the same type of garment. Jeans have continually acquired new meanings during the twentieth century as they have been appropriated by different social groups and worn in different social contexts. How changes in social structures have affected the presentation of social identity is seen in the shift from the hat, a closed text, as an obligatory item of male attire to the widespread use of the t-shirt, an open text.

Until the 1960s, a man’s hat, as the most immediately visible part of his costume, was a major signal of social identity and social class. Styles of hats were associated with different class strata. In the late twentieth century, men’s hats have become a relic of a class society based on face-to-face relationships in public spaces that has largely disappeared.

Unlike the hat in the nineteenth century, which signaled (or concealed) social class status, the t-shirt speaks to issues related to ideology, difference, and myth: politics, race, gender, and leisure. The variety of slogans and logos that appear on t-shirts is enormous. Much of the time, people consent to being coopted for “unpaid advertising” for global corporations selling clothes, music, sports, and entertainment in exchange for the social cachet of being associated with certain prod-ucts (McGraw 1996). Some of the time, people use t-shirts to indicate their support for social and political causes, groups, or organizations to which they have made a commitment. Occa-sionally, the t-shirt becomes a medium for grass-roots resistance. Bootlegged t-shirts representing characters on the television show The Simpsons appeared in response to t-shirts marketed by the network that produced the show (Parisi 1993). The bootlegged t-shirts represented the Simpson family as African Americans. Bart Simpson was shown as Rastabart, with dreadlocks and a red, green, and gold headband, as Rasta-dude Bart Marley. Using clothing behavior as a means of making a statement, the t-shirts appeared to be intended as an affirmation of African Americans as an ethnic group and as a commentary on the narrow range of roles for black characters in the

show. Teens of both sexes use them as a means of expressing their cynicism about the dominant culture, particularly global advertising (Sepulchre 1994). The significance of the t-shirt in Western culture, as a means of social and political expression, is seen by comparing its roles in Western countries with the response to it in a nondemocratic country, the People’s Repub-lic of China (Barmé 1993). In 1991, a young Chinese artist created t-shirts bearing humorous statements, some of which could be interpreted as having mild political implications. The t-shirts were enormously successful with the public but were perceived as “a serious political incident” by the Chinese authorities. The artist was arrested and interrogated, and the t-shirts were officially banned. Thousands of them were con-fiscated and destroyed, although many Chinese continued to wear them. The t-shirt performs a function formerly associated with the hat, that of identifying an individual’s social location instantly.

This reflects the fragmentation of leisure cultures into lifestyles and subcultures and other groupings whose members respond to the enormous cultural complexity of their surroundings by orienting themselves toward those who are like rather than those who are unlike themselves.Unlike hats, whose mean-ings were universally understood, t-shirts speak to like-minded people; a particular t-shirt may not be meaningful to those with

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THE USE OF A SPECIFIC TYPE OF CLOTHING

THE T-SHIRT TO COMMUNICATE OTHER TYPES OF INFORMATION

BEGAN IN THE LATE 1940S, WHEN FACES AND

POLITICAL SLOGANSAPPEARED ON T-SHIRTS AND, IN THE 1960S, WITH

COMMERCIAL LOGOS AND OTHER DESIGNS.

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T - TIMELEFT: BEN’S THREADLESS.COM T-SHIRTS ARE A QUICK AND EASY FORM OF SELF-EXPRESSION. BELOW: ANDREA WEARS HER MICKEY MOUSE TEE BECAUSE IT WAS GIFT FROM HER BOYFRIEND’S TRIP TO DISNEY WORLD .

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LISA’S EARRINGS ARE A GIFT, HANDMADE BY HER BOYFRIEND’S FATHER, A HUNGARIAN DESIGNER.

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WATCHES ARE REDISCOVERED BY THE CELLPHONE GENERATION

ichael Williams, who runs A Continu-ous Lean, a men’s style blog, ditched his Timex when he got his first cellphone in 2001.Tyler Thoreson, the head of men’s editorial for Gilt Man, the flash sale Web site, often kept his forgettable watches stashed in a drawer. And Eddy Chai, an owner of Odin New York, a down-

town men’s boutique, gave up wearing watches regularly in his mid-20s, when he outgrew his Casio. After going watch-free for much of the last decade, the three men — all in their 30s and considered style influencers — are turning back time. Mr. Thoreson, 38, is shopping for a vintage gold IWC with a white dial or a Rolex GMT-Master. Mr. Chai, 38, has been wearing a vintage Rolex, loosely dangling around his wrist, “not as a timepiece, but as a piece of jewelry,” he said. And Mr. Wil-liams, 32, splurged on three watches: an IWC Portuguese, a Rolex GMT-Master II and an Omega Speedmaster, also known as the “moon watch,” since that is what Apollo astronauts wore. “The men’s-wear set has recently rediscovered the joy of proper mechanical timepieces,” Mr. Williams said. “Right now there is no clearer indication of cool than wearing a watch. If it was your grandfather’s bubbleback Rolex, even better.”

As recently as a half-decade ago, time seemed to be running out for the wristwatch. With cellphones, iPods and other clock-equipped devices becoming ubiquitous, armchair sociologists were writing off the wristwatch as an antique, joining VHS tapes, Walkman players and pocket calculators on the slag heap of outmoded gadgets. The wristwatch “may be going the way of the abacus,” declared a news article in The Sacramento Bee in 2006. The Times of London had it “going the same way as the sundial.” The Boston Globe, in a 2005 lifestyle feature, was more definitive:

“Anyone who needs to know the time these days would be wise to ask someone over the age of 30. To most young people, the wristwatch is an obsolete artifact.” Or, not. The “sundial” of the wrist is experiencing an uptick among members of the supposed lost generation, particularly by heritage-macho types in their 20s and 30s who are drawn to the wristwatch’s retro appeal, just as they have seized on straight razors, selvedge denim and vintage vinyl. “It’s an understated statement about your station in life, your taste level,” Mr. Thoreson said. He got a taste of the pent-up demand last fall, when Gilt organized a high-end vintage watch sale with Benjamin Clymer, 28, who runs an online mag-azine for watch enthusiasts called Hodinkee.com. (Mr. Clymer, a former UBS manager, said his site attracts 250,000 unique visitors a month, more than half of them under 40.) Fourteen of the 17 watches, with an average price of $4,800, sold in the first six hours. Gilt now holds a watch sale every month. “In

MALEXWILLIAMS

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WATCHES ARE REDISCOVERED BY THE CELLPHONE GENERATION

TURN BACK TIMEKRISTIN’S WOODEN WATCH IS

THE ENVY OF MANY. FROM WE WOOD TIME PIECES.

A COOL MACHINE THAT IS ALL MOVING PARTS HAS GOT TO BE INTRINSICALLY INTERESTING TO SOMEONE BORN INTO THIS GENERATION, BECAUSE THERE’S JUST NOTHING LIKE THAT IN THEIR LIFE.

CONTINUED ON P25

certain circles,” Mr. Thoreson said, “if you don’t have a substan-tial timepiece with some pedigree, you feel like you’re missing out on something.” To be fair, the doomsayers were not entirely wrong. Few people actually need a watch to tell time anymore. Melanie Shreffler, editor in chief of Ypulse, a Web site and mar-ket research company that tracks youth trends, observed, “even the high school and college students who wear watches usually pull out their cellphones to check the time.” But that’s the point. A watch these days may strike some people as an impractical, frivolous and often costly way to express individual style. But that is just another way of saying that it’s fashion. “Considering how casual most people dress on a day-to-day basis, a glamorous watch is one of the few accessories that can be at once sporty, luxurious and utilitarian,” the designer Michael Kors wrote in an e-mail. Mr. Kors has a line of oversize chronographs, manu-factured by Fossil, that is popular among women (they are a current must-have accessory among under-30 fashion assistant

types in Manhattan). For a generation raised on Game Boys, however, the appeal seems to go a little deeper than just a de-sire for another fashion accessory. In a world surrounded by ever-glowing LCD screens, there’s an analog chic to wearing a mechanical instrument.“A cool machine that is all moving parts has got to be intrinsically interesting to someone born into this generation, because there’s just nothing like that in their life,” said Mitch Greenblatt, a founder, with his brother, Andy, of Watchismo, a California online retailer of design-forward watches.

Increasingly popular these days, Mr. Greenblatt added, are so-called skeleton watches that have clear cases to show the whirring gears. “You want to see the parts moving,” he said. Steven Alan, a designer who carries a curated selection of vintage watches in three of his boutiques, compared it to the techno-lust for McIntosh stereos with vacuum tubes. “Having some analog component in your life is refreshing,” he said.

“I’ve noticed there are a lot of people shooting with film re-cently. People like that return to things that are very tactile.”

Indeed, a certain intimacy develops between the wearer and the mechanical watch that requires winding. “A mechanical watch relies on you as much as you rely on it,” Mr. Cly-mer said, with a hint of paternal affection. “Without you, it dies.” The retro appeal also plays into the resurgence of heritage brands like Red Wing boots or Filson bags. Put-ting on a vintage Rolex “shows you’re interested in craft and well-made things,” said Matthew Hranek, a New York photographer who runs a men’s lifestyle blog, the William Brown Project, which celebrates vintage watches. “It’s the same thing if you’re wearing a pair of Alden shoes or go down to Beretta to buy a field coat and shotgun.”

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THE “SUNDIAL” OF THE WRIST IS EXPERIENCING AN UPTICK AMONG MEMBERS OF THE SUPPOSED LOST GENERATION, PARTICULARLY BY HERITAGE-MACHO TYPES IN THEIR 20S AND 30S WHO ARE DRAWN TO THE WRISTWATCH’S RETRO APPEAL, JUST AS THEY HAVE SEIZED ON STRAIGHT RAZORS, SELVEDGE

DENIM AND VINTAGE VINYL.

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CLOSING WALLS AND TICKING CLOCKS

DÉLA’S “HARRY POTTER” WATCH. FROM URBAN OUTFITTERS.

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TIME KEEPS ON SLIPPINGNANCY’S WATCH HAS AN EXTRA LONG BAND THAT WRAPS TWICE. FROM URBAN OUTFITTERS.

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Big retailers are trading on the nostalgia. J. Crew markets a line of simple, traditional Ti-mexes (a brand not long ago associated with drugstores) as a heritage staple, the accessory that ties the whole Bobby Kennedy-does-Williamsburg J. Crew look together.

“Timex brings a smile to your face,” said Frank Muytjens, the head of men’s design at J. Crew. “We all grew up wearing Timex.”

American Apparel is making a similar push with retro watches of a more recent vintage, betting that Generation Y consumers who were too young to remember when V.J.s ruled MTV will covet the Casios and Seikos from that era. The clothing chain started selling watches last December, when Dov Charney, its founder, had a hunch, perhaps after seeing old digital Casios embraced by the Brooklyn Flea set. “Something inside me said, ‘Kids are going to love this object,’ ” said Mr. Charney, speaking by telephone from Seoul, South Korea, where he said he was shopping for dead-stock Japanese timepieces. The watches are now showcased in store windows nationwide.

But perhaps the most robust sector is the youth-friendly “fashion watch” category: watches licensed by labels like Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss and Lacoste. Fossil reports that sales of its Michael Kors watches were up 142 percent in the first quarter this year; for its Armani Exchange line, 129 percent. “The increases are phenomenal, significant strong double-digit retail growth,” said Jon Step, president of licensed brands at Movado Group Inc., which has several such designer licenses. Manufacturers have courted younger buyers in part, he said, with exuberantly styled watches using extravagant or offbeat materials: brightly colored plastic, rubber, ceramic. But for some newly minted watch geeks, the appeal of a timepiece that has endured for decades is more emotional. “James Bond wore a Rolex,” Michael Wil-liams said. “Who really needs more convincing than that?”

JAMES BOND WORE A ROLEX

“WHO REALLY NEEDS MORE CONVINCING

THAN THAT?”

“

MICHAEL WILLIAMS SAID.

”

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A BRIEF NOTE ON THE HISTORYOF FASHION

he introduction of the Midi in the Fall of 1970 created a general state of confusion in the fash-ion industry regarding the marketability of the new style. Retailers and manufacturers viewed the new length as an aid in helping boost sag-ging sales. The dress designers felt that the Midi would revitalize the world of fashion and that it would eventually lead to the develop-

ment of a whole new style trend for the 1970’s. But the Midi met strong resistance from the consumer. Women did not rush out to buy the Midi as the designers and manufacturers had expected but instead vehemently rejected the new style. Nev-ertheless, through an extensive promotional campaign coupled with widespread distribution of the Midi, the industry hoped to force the new look upon the buying public and overcome the initial resistance to the style. The outcome, of course, was that the Midi was not adopted by consumers, and the market-ing strategy of the fashion industry failed miserably. The indus-try is still perplexed over why the Midi failed.

One explanation put forth by the fashion world is that the new style was not treated fairly in the press. Another suggests that 1970 was not the right time, economically, for the introduc-tion of the completely new clothing style. And another attri-butes the failure of the Midi to the general reluctance on the part of the large dress retailers to stock the style and the misgiv-ings of the dress manufacturers about devoting a significant portion of their production to it.

Each of these explanations is narrow, however, and presents only a fragmentary analysis of the Midi debacle. The main reason why the Midi failed was simply that the fashion indus-try tried to coerce the public into buying a product it did not want. In effect, the Midi episode represented a classical con-frontation of the consumer with the industry, one in which the industry tried to market a good that did not conform to the needs and desires of the market place. Could the entire Midi episode have been avoided? Perhaps it was an inevitable situation and destined to happen. But if various segments of

RICHARD A. LANCIONITEMPLE UNIVERSITY

CONTINUED ON P22

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the fashion industry had been aware of certain very relevant historical concepts previously described by fashion scholars, it is quite possible that the introduction of the Midi would never have taken place in the manner in which it did. In effect, know-ing the historical fundamentals of fashion retailing could have made the Midi a success rather than a failure. For example, Paul Nystrom, as early as 1928, asserted that a fashion cannot be forced upon the consumer through the use of commercial promotion. Nystrom held that the consumer is a social animal composed of a group of complex and interrelated needs that either singly or collectively interact to change the direction of a fashion. Because of these various needs and their interaction, Nystrom theorized, it was incorrect to assert that commercial promotion alone could affect a change in fashion. “Commer-cial promotion works successfully when it goes with a fashion trend”, Nystrom contended, but “ . . . while styles may be creat-ed by the thousands, the final acceptance which determines the

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DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE.THE FASHIONABLE GUY’S

UNIFORM: HAT, THICK RIMMED GLASSES, PLAID SHIRT, JEANS

AND SNEAKERS.

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WHO RUNS THE WORLD? GIRLSABOVE: BRAY STIKES A POSE IN A SWEATER FROM HUNKEMÖLLER. LEFT: LAURA IN LEOPARD PANTS SHE BOUGHT WHILE TRAVELING IN ISTANBUL.

THE CONSUMER, HURLOCK INSISTED, IS FREE TO MAKE HIS OWN DECISION, AND NO AMOUNT OF COMMERCIAL PROMOTION OR ADVERTISING CAN MAKE AN INDIVIDUAL ACCEPT A FASHION HE DOES NOT WANT.

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32fashion rests with the consumer, who has in recent years shown remarkably strong tendencies to follow certain fashion trends rather than others, and to resist all prestige sales promotions, no matter how forcefully applied to trends in other directions.” Nystrom further stated that “If there were any kings or dictators of fashion in the past, there are certainly not any that are mak-ing a success of it today, except those who are able to forecast what consumers are going to want and then give it to them”.The fashion industry’s tactic of using mass promotion as its pri-mary tool for marketing the Midi was basically incorrect. In effect, Nystrom in 1932 was quite right in asserting that there is “ . . . no proof of the value of advertising or any other form of sales promotion in stopping one fashion, starting another, or in changing any current fashion in any marked degree.” Nystrom described the historical developments that led to the mistaken belief that advertising or commercial promotion could control a fashion. He stated that national advertising had come into exis-tence only after mass production methods had been well estab-lished and national distribution was made possible through the development of a national transportation system. Both of these developments were the influential factors that determined the eventual acceptance of a new product. Although advertising, as Nystom insisted, played only a secondary role, manufacturers gradually began to equate the relative success of a new prod-uct with the amount expended for advertising. This false faith in the power of advertising, Nystrom explains was accepted by many firms in the textile industry and resulted in their becom-ing extensive users of the local and national advertising media.

Another author, Elizabeth Hurlock, writing in 1929, reiterated Nystrom’s point that a fashion cannot be forced. She stated that “Today there are no voluntary laws which make us accept a fashion. No fashion is imposed upon an individual by force.” The consumer, Hurlock insisted, is free to make his own deci-sion, and no amount of commercial promotion or advertising can make an individual accept a fashion he does not want.

Other authors, besides Nystrom and Hurlock, while they did not perceive a causal relationship between the needs of the consumer and the successful introduction of a new style, did recognize that fashion was a form of self-expression and gratifi-cation and that it therefore fulfilled specific individual psycho-logical needs. Their concepts were only one step removed from the beliefs shared by Nystrom and Hurlock that a new style must be compatible with the needs of the consumer in order to be successful. For example, L. W. Flaccus, writing in 1906, saw that clothing styles were a reflection of a society’s goals and aspirations. Flaccus viewed fashion as a social force and held that understanding the phenomenon of fashion and the reasons for fashion changes provided a reliable basis for understanding society.

Like Flaccus, W. I. Thomas (1908-9) felt that fashion was a so-cial force and the collective expression of an individual’s feelings about life. According to Thomas, Man is naturally one of the most unadorned of animals, without brillant appearance or nat-ural glitter, with no plumage, no spots or stripes, no naturally sweet voice, no attractive odor, and no graceful antics, all man has is his own character that makes him different and attractive. But thanks to his hands he has the power of collecting brilliant objects and attaching them to his person and when combined with his own individual act of self-expression, he thus becomes a rival in radiance of the animals and flowers.

Gabriel Tarde, in his work the Laws of Imitation, viewed the phenomena of fashion as being cyclical in nature with each new style being only an imitation of what existed in the past. The reappearance of certain styles, he concluded, is grounded in the wants and needs of individuals in a society. In Tarde’s view, the fashion an individual selects “...and welcomes and follows is the one that meets his pre-existant wants and desires which are the outcome of his habits and customs...”

Therefore, the power and influence the consumer has in deter-mining the selection of clothing styles and his influence on the eventual adoption of a style have historically been emphasized throughout the fashion literature. As early as 1906, writers were discussing the importance of the consumer and the degree to which he must be considered in the design and merchandising of new clothing styles. And up through the early 1950’s, mar-keting scholars were heralding the development of the “mar-

CONTINUED ON P96

33

[OTHER AUTHORS] RECOGNIZED THAT

FASHION WAS A FORM OF SELF-EXPRESSION

AND GRATIFICATION AND THAT IT

THEREFORE FULFILLED SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL

PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS.

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