“We make the shoes, you make the story” Teenage girls’ experiences of fashion: Bricolage,...

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“We make the shoes, you make thestory” Teenage girls’ experiences offashion: Bricolage, tactics and narrativeidentityGilles Marion a & Agnes Nairn aa Department of Marketing, EM‐LYON Business School, Lyon,FranceVersion of record first published: 04 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: Gilles Marion & Agnes Nairn (2011): “We make the shoes, you make the story”Teenage girls’ experiences of fashion: Bricolage, tactics and narrative identity, ConsumptionMarkets & Culture, 14:1, 29-56

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Consumption Markets & CultureVol. 14, No. 1, March 2011, 29–56

ISSN 1025-3866 print/ISSN 1477-223X online© 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/10253866.2011.541181http://www.informaworld.com

“We make the shoes, you make the story”Teenage girls’ experiences of fashion: Bricolage, tactics and narrative identity

Gilles Marion and Agnes Nairn*

Department of Marketing, EM-LYON Business School, Lyon, FranceTaylor and FrancisGCMC_A_541181.sgm10.1080/10253866.2011.541181Consumption, Markets and Culture1025-3866 (print)/1477-223X (online)Original Article2010Taylor & [email protected]

This article explores the ways that French teenage girls use fashion discourse toconstruct their evolving identity from their recently left childhood to their futureas fully grown women. Verbatim texts of 14 phenomenological discussionsconcerning clothing, accessories, make-up and fashion are interpreted using theconcepts of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss), tactics (Certeau) and narrative identity(Ricœur). The findings resonate with Thompson and Haytko’s portrayal of adialogical relationship between consumers and a system of countervailing fashionmeanings and with Murray’s exposition of a dialectical and discursive tensionbetween sign-experimentation and sign-domination. But beyond this we elucidatethe process by which teenagers also acquire, from personal social milieu, skillsand tactics through which they toy with preconstrained sartorial symbolism toconstruct the plot line of their own lives which, in turn, reflects their past, definestheir present self and presages their future.

Keywords: teenagers; fashion; narrative identity; bricolage; tactics

Introduction

“We makes the shoes, you make the story.” This slogan for Dr. Martens encapsulatesour endeavour. For we examine how French teenage girls practice the art of “brico-lage” (to make) to create their own narrative identity (the story). A rich tradition isnow emerging in which an increasing quantity of consumer research explores theproductive aspects of consumption. This is highlighted, for example, in Arnould andThompson’s reflections piece on Consumer Culture Theory (2005). Attention is nota-bly turning to the relationships between consumers’ identity projects and the influenceof the marketplace. Some theorists emphasize freedom and creativity in the age ofpost-modernity (Firat and Venkatesh 1995), others adopt a more balanced view andstrive towards “rethinking the postmodern consumer” (Thompson and Hirschman1995, 151) or seek a “post-postmodern condition” (Holt 2002, 87). Fashion objectsconnected to the human body are a symbolic field of particular interest (e.g. Thomp-son and Haytko 1997; Murray 2002). Davis (1992, 25), for example, refers to dress as“a kind of visual metaphor for identity.” Through processes of appearance manage-ment, individuals use clothing and accessories to assert who they are and who they arenot. In particular, the way consumers interpret their experiences of fashion and bodyimage permit them “to address a series of tensions and paradoxes existing betweentheir sense of individual agency (autonomy issues) and their sensitivity to sources of

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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30 G. Marion and A. Nairn

social prescription in their everyday lives (conformity issues)” (Thompson andHaytko 1997, 15). “Tensions and paradoxes” between the producer and the consumerecho Davis’s (1992) “ambivalences” and “ambiguities” which mediate the relation-ship between shifting individual and social identities on the one hand and dynamicfashion cycles on the other.

Whilst Thompson and Haytko (1997) emphasize the relative freedom implied bya “dialogical relationship” between consumers and the “countervailing meanings”presented by a fashion system, Murray (2002) reasserts the importance of the politicalimplications of a “lived hegemony.” We begin from a position of agreement withThompson and Haytko’s (1997, 38) assertions that “the meanings conveyed throughfashion discourses present a contestable terrain that consumers rework in terms oftheir localized knowledge and value systems. This active reworking is further shapedby consumer’s desire to construct self-identities through fashion discourses. Thisconstructed identity is a socially negotiated one involving interpretations about one’ssocial affiliations and contradistinctions to other social types. A consumer’s sense ofpersonal identity is defined as much by the meanings s/he feels impelled to resist asby those that are tacitly embraced”. We also begin from six of the findings/claimswhich Murray (2002, 438) presents as common to both his and Thomson and Haytko’s(1997) study. First, fashion is intertextual consisting of countervailing discourses;second, fashion statements align with cultural values and meaning; third, fashion is anexpression of life history or narrative; fourth, fashion is used to forge identity; fifth,fashion mediates tensions between personal autonomy and fitting in; and sixth, fash-ion mediates tension between personalized and commodified experiences.

The purpose of our paper is twofold. First, to add a new social context to thisstream of research. Thompson and Haytko (1997) conducted their research in a UScollege setting and their findings remain pertinent in the professional US middle-classcontext used in the Re-Inquiries article from Murray (2002). Our paper focuses onanother specific context: the production of an image or a look by French teenage girls.This particular set of subjects provides a very rich perspective on how an individual’sperception of intimate biography gives meaning to fashion experimentation, sinceidentity play is at its height during this stage of a girl’s life (McRobbie 2004). Thesecond purpose of the paper is to focus on and develop three specific processes whichwe hope will elucidate the role of fashion discourses in the shaping of identityprojects. The first is the art of “bricolage” as originally conceived by Lévi-Strauss([1962] 1966). The second is the employment of “tactics” as defined by Certeau([1980] 1984) in his application of bricolage to the field of consumption. This processoffers consumers the opportunity not simply to “appropriate” countervailing culturalmeanings but to toy with them and to display a more ludic stance to consumption.Third, we propose Ricœur’s concept of narrative identity (1992) which posits thatself-understanding is an interpretation of one’s life, and that this interpretation findsin story line a favoured way to make sense of that life. An important element of usingRicœur is his inclusion of a future trajectory in the narrative as well as a sense of pasthistory. This narrative identity also encompasses a set of conceptual distinctions:“sameness,” “selfhood” and “otherness” which explicate how, within a narrativestructure, personal identity is formed through a continual tension between constancyand flux. This latter focus on a narrative identity which unfolds over time is, webelieve, a new contribution to the fashion literature. Thus we aim, by using these threelenses to interpret our teenagers’ talk of fashion, to add to the understanding of therelationship between culturally constituted discourses and dynamic identity.

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Consumption Markets & Culture 31

Our paper proceeds with a conceptual framework, explicating our interpretiveperspective through the concepts of bricolage and consumer tactics; narrative identity;and sameness, selfhood and otherness. The methods used for data collection and inter-pretation are then described. From here we present our data interpretations andconclude by suggesting a parsimonious general model to represent teenage fashionconsumption.

Conceptual framework

In the mid-eighties McCracken (1986, 80) noted that in contemporary Western societycultural categories left a great deal of the individual undefined. Now, in 2009, with therecent move to place more emphasis on “person-object” relations, the field ofConsumer Culture Theories incorporates conceptions of the consumer as identityseekers and makers through the appropriation of the meaningful properties of goods(e.g. Gabriel and Lang 2006). It has been noted that consumers often choose productsand brands that can communicate the desired impression through the images andstyles conveyed through their possessions (Belk 1988; Richins 1994) or through self-presentation (Schau and Gilly 2003). However, beyond this productive use ofconsumption objects, consumers often explore, day-dream, critique and toy with prod-ucts and brands in their minds. And, when they acquire them, they tend to customizethem and to adapt them in ways that are different from those imagined by marketersand sellers (Holt 2002; Bengry-Howell 2006). This leads us to the first of our concep-tual foci: the notion of “bricolage.”

Consumption as bricolage

Bricolage is an everyday French term describing the activity of one who works onmany diverse manual tasks (constructions, repairs, artwork, etc.) relying on whatevermaterial is at hand. Lévi-Strauss (1966) elaborates it as a metaphor for the “science ofthe concrete” of pre-literate society and contrasts it with the analytic methodology ofWestern science and engineering. The bricoleur – there is no adequate English trans-lation – engages in a dialogue with a collection of materials and chooses from amongstthem to form a subset which, in combination, can be useful:

[He] interrogates all the heterogeneous objects of which his treasury is composed todiscover what each of them could “signify” and so contribute to the definition of a setwhich has yet to materialize, but which will ultimately differ from the instrumental setonly in the internal disposition of parts. (Lévi-Strauss 1966, 18)

The bricoleur makes do with whatever is available whether perfect or imperfect,cheap or expensive, simple or elaborate. A coffee pot could be used as a paperweight,a framed photo could serve as a manuscript stand for a typist, an assemblage of drift-wood could be used to create a children’s toy. As a form of work, Lévi-Strauss arguesthat the preferred materials of the bricolage are not concepts (the materials of scien-tific theories and engineers) but signs (Lévi-Strauss 1966, 20).

Thus bricolage can be characterized by the following: (1) it is not a process oflogical deduction but more a creative design process, contrary to the rational, instru-mental model of seeking means to reach a given end; (2) the bricoleur does not havea clear end in sight, rather a vaguely defined project whose characteristics will be

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determined by what is available and how it can be assembled; (3) the bricoleur has aheterogeneous but finite store of existing materials (and mostly signs) that have beencollected over time from his immediate environment; (4) he engages in a dialoguewith this collection to choose amongst materials and to form a combination; and (5)the meaning of each material in the end will depend on the role it plays in the finalcombination.

When consumption is viewed as such a process, products and brands offerconsumers something akin to “recipe books” on which they draw to make their owndishes. Cooking can be seen as a creative reworking because most people know fullwell that recipe books are not a set of instructions to be faithfully executed as acomputer executes a program. On the contrary, consumers: (1) select some of the reci-pes; discard, even reject others; and combine still others; (2) follow the recipe but donot conform exactly to rules of cooking techniques; (3) substitute archetypal ingredi-ents for acceptable or desirable alternatives; and (4) adapt recipes to local conditionsand introduce new ingredients.

In the same vein, when producing a look people are: (1) selecting some looks fromthe “style supermarket” whilst simultaneously rejecting and combining others; (2)following some fashion directives and rejecting others; (3) substituting one type ofclothing for another; and (4) working on the look within the constraints of particularlocal conditions or social settings. It is important to note the restrictions on thisprocess: including financial constraints, the skills involved in recognizing looks andselecting the right fashion items, the selection of the intended audience, and tensionsbetween individual identity and affiliative relationships.

This notion of creative combinations within a set of rules or conditions has beendeveloped in semiotic studies of consumption which have added a different dimensionto our understanding of how consumers make personal statements from the elementsavailable. Kehret-Ward (1988), for example, examines both the semantic relationshipbetween product attributes and the cultural values to which they refer and the syntacticrelationship between a product and other products which complement it.

Thus bricolage is opportunistic and creative, re-defining the task at hand in thelight of the meanings attributed to the available resources. Most of the time consumersare sophisticated enough not only to receive the dominant meanings but also to exam-ine them, and create a bricolage of their own (Goulding and Saren 2009). This creativereworking is akin to what Thompson and Haytko (1997) term a “dialogue” betweentheir context-specific interests, life history, and personal goals on the one hand and thecultural meanings associated with fashion encoded in advertisements, retail settings,and material goods pertaining to what McCracken terms the “culturally constitutedworld” (McCracken 1986) on the other.

Consumer tactics for bricolage in a culturally constituted world

In developing Lévi-Strauss’s notions for a contemporary, commercial consumptioncontext, Certeau (1984) underlines the contrast between the practices of everydayconsumer life, which he views as tactical and opportunistic, and the practices ofproduction and marketing management, which he views as strategic, planned andcontrolled. He describes this contrast thus:

a rationalized, expansionist, centralist, spectacular and clamorous production is confrontedby an entirely different kind of production, called “consumption” and characterized by

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its ruses, its fragmentation (the result of the circumstances), its poaching, its clandestinenature, its tireless but quiet activity, in short is quasi-invisibility, since it shows itself notin its own products (where would it place them?) but in an art in using products imposedon it. (Certeau 1984, 31)

Consumption as a tactic “operates in the form of isolated actions, blow by blow. Ittakes advantage of ‘opportunities’ and depends on them […] It poaches in them. Itcreates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected. It is guileful ruse. Inshort a tactic is an art of the weak” (Certeau 1984, 35).

This offers a somewhat different view of the agency-structure dialectic or whatMurray (2002) terms “sign domination” and “sign experimentation.” Here it is recog-nized that the consumer is “weak” or dominated by a larger culturally constituteduniverse but, beyond experimentation, it recognizes the consumer’s ability to “strikeback” at the strategists or rule makers by subterfuge and maybe even sabotage.

We support Thompson and Haytko’s suggestion (1997, 38) that McCracken’smeaning transfer model (1986) is more dynamic and consumer-centred than origi-nally conceptualized. His model acknowledges the active role of the consumer in theprocess of decoding adverts and fashion objects: “the consumer […] supplies thefinal act of association and affects the meaning transfer from world to object” (McCracken 1986, 77). But the associations between the objects and their meaning areconstructed outside the sphere of the consumer and are communicated top downfrom a constellation of designers, advertisers, journalists, opinion leaders, celebritiesand the counter cultural groups which could influence them. Whilst the fashionindustry systematically predisposes consumers towards certain kinds of identityprojects, in line with Certeau, we suspect that even the most impressionableconsumers will not seek, unthinking, to apply the directives coming from advertis-ers, retailers or journalists. Indeed, probably even the youngest will progressivelyseek to try out some of these ideas after suitable experiment, modification, combina-tion, and critique and to ignore others – in short to deploy tactics to make the signstheir own.

Consumption as narrative identity

Everyday experiences, as they are reported by informants participating in a conver-sation about fashion, are narratives that express their interpretation of these experi-ences and can be analyzed as stories (Thompson 1997, 442). When consumersspeak of fashion they employ materials from the broad discursive systems thatpervade consumer culture for making sense of the complexity of their self-identity.:“consumers use fashion discourses to construct personalized narratives (or stories)”(Thompson and Haytko 1997, 39); “consumers […] forge a coherent if diversifiedand often fragmented sense of self […] (and) construct narratives of identity”(Arnould and Thompson 2005, 871). Ahuvia (2005, 181) underlines that “narrativetheory, in which our sense of identity is structured as a story, has emerged as thedominant conceptualization of the self” and he rejects the confusing potential ofthe core-self metaphor suggested by Belk (1988) that “can give rise to the idea thatthe core self is prior to, and ontologically distinct from, the extended self” (Ahuvia2005, 180).

For Ricœur (1992) not only do people’s narratives provide insight into theiridentity but personal identity is a narrative identity, because a human life can be

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more easily understood when it is interpreted as a story line. And because of theelusive nature of people’s real lives, they need the help of a narrative structure toorganize the global plan of their existence. Stories are more intelligible when narra-tive models are applied to them. A narrative structure implies a chronological orderand a logic (a before and after) and a series of transformations oriented towardssome denouement. Thus, people structure their goals and means in an effort tocreate coherence in their lives such that personal identity “can only be articulated inthe temporal dimension of human existence” (Ricœur 1990, 138). A simple story isa transformation between two successive and different states and, at the same time,a link is needed between the original state and the final state. Characters in a novelalways remains themselves – that’s how the reader recognizes them – but at thesame time they undergo changes – that’s how the novel progresses. The same prin-ciple applies to making sense of our existence. An individual changes over time butthe notion of personal identity assumes the unfolding of an enduring entity overtime. Moreover, there must be commonalities between two observed stages to ascer-tain that “something has changed” implying that other portions of reality haveremained identical.

If we juxtapose the notion of the tactical consumer creating guileful bricolagesfrom the dominant sign system and the notion of the consumer as a character in anovel we begin to see a series of dynamic processes at play as personal identity isconstructed. Indeed, in using the notion of a dynamic narrative identity we distinguishour interpretation of fashion behaviour from established work on the uses of fashionin the construction of personal style (e.g. Simon-Miller 1985; Davis 1992). Barthes(2001, 103) asserts that “for women, the greater number of elements (or units) whichconstitute the total outfit, allow a rich number of permutations and thus the possibilityof real individuality in style.” These interpretations show the creative possibilities atone moment in time, whilst we are also interested in how these possibilities are shapedby the past and reflect the future.

Moreover, personal identity or what Thompson and Haytko (1997, 21) term“self-identity” is constituted not only by a relationship with the cultural system or asa narrative structure, for any subject position is taken in relation to others. Thesemay be significant others in a person’s day-to-day life or other more abstract othersor social groups. Ricœur provides useful definitions for understanding the place ofotherness in identity projects. He defines the self as constituted by permanent char-acteristics (self as sameness over time) and of contextual experiences (self as self-hood). Sameness corresponds to the preservation through time of fundamental traitsthat characterize someone, selfhood results from the continued experience of life. Hedefines otherness as what derives from the encounter with other. For Ricœur, other-ness is not seen as the result of a comparison with self but rather as a constituentpart of selfhood. He notes that the title of his book Oneself as another “suggestsfrom the outset that the selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such an intimatedegree that one cannot be thought of without the other, that instead one passes intothe other” (1992, 3), and that “to ‘as’ I should like to attach a strong meaning, notonly that of a comparison (oneself similar to another) but indeed that of an implica-tion (oneself inasmuch as being other).” Therefore: (1) identity is a dynamic processas any individual is constructing her/his identity and negotiating it with othersthroughout his/her life; and (2) otherness introduces a paradox of the self betweensameness and selfhood, the former tending to enact universal principles of actionsand being, while the latter strives to find a way between the historical and contextual

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situations being faced. Depending on situations, sameness and selfhood may or maynot coincide.

The structure of a story line reconciles the permanence of identity with its dynam-ics, it is a “specific mediator between the pole of character […] and the pole of theself-maintenance where selfhood frees itself from sameness” (Ricœur 1992, 119).Permanence and change are the two sides, opposite and complimentary, of the samecoin. Although personal goals may often be vaguely understood and marked by inter-nal contradictions, the uniqueness of each person can be found in the way that theyinterpret their own story: what they have done and what they may do in the future. Thecreation of a plot line constructs both a story and the identity of a character, that is, anarrative identity: “It is the identity of the story which creates the identity of the char-acter” (Ricœur 1992, 175).

Ricœur expands on earlier ideas of Simmel (1957) who noted that, “Youngpeople especially often exhibit a sudden strangeness in behaviour […] we mightcall this a personal fashion which forms an analogy to social fashion. The formeris supported on the one hand by the individual demand for differentiation andthereby attests to the same impulse that is active in the formation of social fash-ion.” He proposes that the urge towards similarity is “satisfied purely within theindividual himself” and that the imitation of the masses takes place through animitation of the self. Whilst Simmel acknowledges a self which is reflective in amimetic sense, Ricœur introduces an element of negotiation in the relationshipbetween selves. It is the idea of negotiation rather than mimesis which offers addi-tional insights.

McCracken (1986, 78) convincingly addressed the individual manipulation ofcultural meanings through the concept of ritual, that is, the forms of systematicsymbolic actions: gift exchange, possession, grooming, and dispossession. However,while he is looking for the continuity of rituals by which meaning is moved fromconsumer goods to individual consumer, we want to address the subjective varia-tions of person-object relations in the light of the inter-subjective variations ofperson-object-other relations, that is, the sameness-otherness relationship throughconsumer goods. This links with Ahuvia’s (2005, 180) highlighting of “the impor-tance of the trilateral person-thing-person framing of consumer behaviour.”Consumer culture still leaves a great deal of the individual undefined. That is whywe want to acknowledge not only the trajectory of cultural meaning in moderndeveloped societies but also the trajectory of weakly defined consumers striving forself definition through selfhood (commitment and promise which engages people ina future definition of the self), sameness (coherence and consistency), and the recog-nition of the other.

Summary

We have introduced the ideas of bricolage and tactics which suggest ironic possibili-ties for consumers’ appropriations of countervailing fashion meanings. Whilst theseideas are not radically new in interpretations of fashion, the use of these in conjunctionwith dynamic narrative identity which informs the manner in which the bricolage isaffected, is a novel departure. Moreover, we have suggested a conceptualization of theself involving a dialectic relationship between sameness and selfhood within whichotherness is perpetually present. This has not, thus far, been treated in the fashion liter-ature. We now proceed to present our interpretations of French teenagers’ talk about

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fashion in an attempt to further understanding of the relationships between discursivesystems and identity.

Method

Data collection

Fourteen semi-structured interviews of around one and half hours were conductedwith girls aged 14–16 from Paris, Lyon and Nevers (France). They were interviewedin their home and assured of anonymity. A profile of the girls is given in Table 1. Itshows the occupation of the parents of the participants who all belong either to whatBourdieu (1984, 140) defines as the French “middle class” (nurse, shopkeepers, officeworkers, primary teachers, army, craftsmen…) or to “the dominated fraction of thedominant class” (business managers, engineers, sales manager, head teacher…).

The interviews were conducted by two research assistants, female 22 and 23 yearsold, in order to achieve a feeling of complicity between interviewer and interviewee.They were undergraduate students who had excelled in a market research coursetaught by one of the senior researchers and both were working with this researcher ontheir final dissertation. They had some experience of interview techniques, however,they were trained through two prior interviews each, under the supervision of one ofthe senior researchers. These four interviews served also to finalize the discussionguide (Table 2). The 14 informants were recruited through the snowball techniquestarting from relations of the interviewers then to friends of the first interviewee ineach city (Paris, Lyon and Nevers). As a result the participants felt at ease in discuss-ing their experiences. Prior to each interview, the participants were informed that thepurpose of the study was to talk about their favourite clothes and were asked to weartheir favourite outfit for the interview.

The discussion began with the description of their outfit and their accessories, andthen shifted to how each piece was chosen and bought. Then the discussion was orientedtowards make-up. After discussing these experiences, the interviewer shifted to thetopics of fashion and appearance and ended with a question regarding their future stylein 10 years time. After each interviewer had completed one interview the research teammet to share experiences and ideas. This meeting helped to develop snowballing andto prepare a next set of two interviews for each interviewer. Those six interviews weretranscribed verbatim from audio-tapes, although any identifying names or referenceswere replaced by pseudonyms to ensure the anonymity of the participants. After thoseinterviews were completed the research team met a second time to decide upon the nextset of interviews. When 12 interviews were completed and transcribed the researchersread through the entire set of transcripts independently and identified a catalogue of fiverepetitive broad themes from the teenagers’ discussions on fashion: (1) relationshipswith the family; (2) relationships with the peer group; (3) self-identities and social-iden-tities (4) relationships with the prescriptions from dominant discursive systems(discourses on fashion, body image, beauty); and (5) the relationship with their past,present and future life. Three more interviews were planned to check the completenessof this catalogue of themes. Although only two could be completed, no additional newthematic categories were elicited. Thus our data consisted of the verbatim scripts of the14 discussions – a text of 53 single-spaced A4 pages which were initially classified intothe five emergent themes. The scripts were translated from French to English and thenback translated by an independent party. Thus the accuracy of the translation is assured.

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Method of analysis

The research team had a strong feeling that the interpretation had to go beyond merelycataloguing repetitive themes, for the informants did not reproduce dominant mean-ings but rather, in the same vein as Thompson and Haytko’s informants (1997, 37),“they continuously take up different interpretative positions from which to ascribemeanings to their fashion behaviours and to input the motivations for other’s fashionbehaviours.” The teenagers engaged in a dialogue with meanings conveyed throughfashion discourses and fashion objects and this “material” was reworked in terms oftheir localized knowledge. This interpretive dialogue with their immediate environ-ment and with broader discursive systems clearly involved the art of bricolage.Moreover, this process was relational and dynamic. Not only the “person-object”relations were acknowledged but also the “person-object-other” relations.

The research team decided to view the transcript of interviews as a single text form-ing coherent patterns which reveals the informants’ understanding of their experiencesas consumers, schoolgirls and teenagers. Each interview transcript was analyzed in thelight of the whole. The whole being the totality of the interpretations given by thecollective subject which is a sample of French teenage girls. The interpretation resultsfrom iterative movements back and forth between parts of each interview transcriptsand the entire body of data (Arnold and Fisher 1994, 63). Therefore, the reader of thisarticle is presented with three layers of data: the experiences of each informant (moreor less consciously articulated); the interpretations of these experiences by the infor-mants; and an interpretation of the transcripts by the authors of this article. This inter-pretation strives for plausibility rather than exhaustiveness for anybody of text may be

Table 2. Discussion guide.

Can you just describe what you’re wearing? (after recruitment the instructions were for the girls to wear their favorite clothes for the interview)

Talk to me about each piece of clothingHow did you choose it?How did you buy it?

Can you describe your accessories?How did you choose them?How did you buy them?

Do you generally go to the same shops?

Do you choose your clothes on your own? How long have you done this?

How long do you spend deciding what to wear in the morning?

Talk to me about your make-upWhat does make-up mean to you?At what age did you start wearing make-up?Do you wear make-up every day?

Now if I talk to you about fashion, what does that word mean to you?Do you follow a fashion?Are you influenced by your family, your friends?Do you often change fashion?

What do you think about people who judge by appearance?

How do you imagine your style in 10 years time?

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interpreted in an infinite number of ways. The aim was to build a plausible interpreta-tion free of contradictions, that is, which will only be accepted if it is confirmed – orat least not questioned – by another element of the transcripts:

any interpretation given of a certain portion of a text can be accepted if it is confirmedand must be rejected if it is challenged by another portion of the same text. In this sensethe internal textual coherence controls the otherwise uncontrollable drives of the reader.(Eco 1992, 181)

Findings

We have oriented our presentation of the findings around the teenagers’ relationshipswith their past, present and future life, as this is what constitutes our major contribu-tion. The past orientation encompasses their use of fashion discourses to categorizetheir relationship with their parents and their childhood; the present shows the dynam-ics of how clothes are used to relate particularly to peers; and the future orientationreveals how the teenagers use fashion to explore their relationship with the concept ofbeing a woman in an adult world. Within each of these orientations we see how fash-ion is used to construct an evolving and dynamic identity and how tensions withdiscursive systems are resolved at each stage of the girls’ story.

The past

Adolescence is a time of conflict between family influences and personal choice(Erikson 1968). The teenager remains dependent on her family but is acquiring moreautonomy and is beginning to build a more private world apart from her parents, byborrowing from youth culture and peer culture (Brewer 1991). As McRobbie pointsout (1991, 14) “girls’ ‘resistance’ to the past world is marked less by the oppositionaland creative response characteristic of boys and more by the transition to membershipof closely forged friendship groups. Attitude to dress signals the progression.” AsAmandine points out: “The clothes that I buy myself, they are things I really want andthe things that my parents give me, that’s so that I’ve got something to wear.” Wenote a search for a sartorial autonomy from parents (and particularly the mother), butat the same time fears about leaving childhood are also bound up with a wish to main-tain family ties:

“Mum might like it or she might not like it but she’ll buy me it anyway because it looksOK and she wants to please me. When she really doesn’t like something then I don’thave it. I’d really have liked it but well, not having it …, (silence) it doesn’t matter”(Cécile). “Even my father makes me wear a skirt or a dress from time to time. But I stillgive my opinion.” (Séverine)

The reference points used by the informants are in a constant process of transfor-mation through a battle amongst diverse ways of conforming to an image. The first ofthese images is presented by her parents who teach her ways of seeing, doing andspeaking. However, increasingly the peer group competes for social space with thefamily and begins to take on a more significant role: “Well, personally I like wearinga short skirt or dress, but when it’s short my parents don’t like it very much […]Sometimes I want to dress like my friends; well they influence me but I’m influencedby my parents too because they say no, there you go” (Romanie).

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Here we can see the shift from one “other” to another “other” within the teenager’sown selfhood. This transition between childhood and adulthood is reflected sartoriallyin a number of ways: “After Ninth Grade (age 12/13), I began to say ‘I don’t like that’because my mum wanted me to look like a little model girl with collars and all that(laughter)” (Sophie). “I began to rebel in Sixth Grade (age 9/10), I had Sunday clothes,I couldn’t stand them … my mum made me wear trousers, I hated that, I wanted towear skirts, now it’s the opposite” (Séverine). We see that particular items of clothingsymbolize a rejected past. Just as “the other” changes, so does personal style.

Another important episode which is confined to the past is the dressing like a boy.“Before I used to dress a bit tomboyish, trainers, Converse…, now (pause), I like toput on things which are a bit more elegant, more adult” (Amandine). By “adult”Amandine also means feminine. The sexual ambiguity of being a “tomboy” is nolonger considered acceptable. Indeed, for some of the girls it is vehemently rejected,“I believe that a woman is made to use make-up. If it’s been invented it’s to make usmore beautiful, so why not take advantage…I don’t like women who dress like menand have their hair like boys” (Sandrine). “Make-up is a plus, yes, it brightens yourface up, you know; and it can make your eyes stand out or your mouth…eh, in relationto boys” (Karine). In Karine’s statement we see another “other” introduced into theconstruction of the teenager’s identity: a mate. Here the girls are using fashion tobegin to establish a sexual identity (“in relation to boys”).

The past was also seen as a time when they wanted to be the same in contrast tonow when they are seeking individuality. “In junior high we used to look at others todecide what to wear, to look the same, or we’d look at the most visible people in theclass. Now when I look at junior high girls coming out of school I find that all the girlslook the same. It’s not very original, is it?” (Sophie). “I’m beginning to know whatsuits me and what doesn’t” (Kathleen).

Relationships with favourite objects also preserve the traces of personal history.This is how Alix, who has lost her father, talks about his absence and even of her grief:“these are the things I bought with my father and this (the jumper she’s wearing) iteven belonged to him.” This is also the case of Séverine who remembers her grand-mother: “My jewellery, most of it is presents or reminders of my grandmother who isdead and I wear them every day.” It is the emotions, strong sensations felt at particulartimes which contribute to building a particular representation of these objects: “Thisnecklace, it was my godfather who gave it to me, at first I didn’t like it but then Idiscovered that it suited me” (Cecile). “I saw someone wearing it and it was love atfirst sight” (Amandine). “It’s a necklace which my cousin made” (Marie).

Here we find what has been shown by previous research (Csikszentmihalyi andRochberg-Halton 1981; Wallendorf and Arnould 1988; Price, Arnould, and Curasi2000; Ahuvia 2005; Heisley and Cours 2007): the best loved objects are rarelypurchased, they are more likely to be gifts from a loved one. This intimate relationship,completely oriented towards the teenager herself was created on the occasion of a memo-rable experience: grief, a gift, falling in love. All at once the meaning of the objectdoes not reside in any of its intrinsic qualities, it bears witness to the emotional stateof the informant when she received it, and the meaning is the recollection of this emotion.

The teenagers have a clear view of their past trajectory. We know, thanks to cogni-tive psychology (Piaget 1960) that from the age of 12 onwards an individual can ratio-nalize and construct arguments and strategies to get what she wants. That is why theinformants are able to adopt a reflexive position, that is, to present themselves andthus to look at the rules of their own development.

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The dynamic present

Most of the teenagers’ talk centred on the present. This is not surprising given thebriefness of their past and that their future as a college student or employee is still afew years in the distance. Moreover, this present revealed a rich and complex set ofidentity dynamics. When leaving the family, the first phase for teenagers inconstructing their identity is an inter-subjective one. It is a response to the question:how can we recognize each other? For each girl, identity is first of all the relationshipwith other people within the confines of a specific milieu constituted mainly byschool. In their daily interactions with peers they each have to be able to produce andrecognize differences from a base of similarities. We have known since Saussure de([1915] 1966) that it is the recognition of a difference, of whatever sort, which isessential in order that the world appears to us as meaningful. Thus the identity of thesubject (I, we) needs a “(s)he” or “they,” for a personal identity depends, for itsconstruction, on an otherness. And we know that this other is, in fact, a part of theconstruction of the self (Ricœur 1992). The selections of clothing produced or recog-nized by the informants and the discourse which accompanies them, constitute anempirically observable practice and discourse which contributes to the compositionof their identities.

Yet, these differences are not pre-defined. There are no natural boundariesbetween girls, only bricolages of demarcation lines to define positions within thegroup. “Often, friends wanted to buy the same clothes as me when we were out shop-ping, but I’d rather not have the clothes than have the same thing, at least not if it wassomething I knew I’d wear a lot. For me, looking like someone else or having the sameclothes it’s…(hesitation)…I want to have my own personality, I don’t want to looklike everyone else” (Julie). “I don’t follow fashion, I don’t usually want to be dressedlike everyone else, I’d rather dress in my own style…, when something comes out andall the girls buy it, I don’t buy it and if I buy something that is in fashion, I might wearit all year, I might wear it when the fashion is over. Usually girls don’t wear it anymore when the fashion is over, but I wear it and if they say to me ‘that’s not in anymore’, I say ‘I don’t care about what’s in, I really don’t care’” (Pauline). “It dependswhere I’m going out. I change to be like the others” (Amandine). “When we’re withgirl friends we all try to dress quite well, like that everyone’s happy” (Julie). “I preferbeing natural […] but sometimes when I get dressed I ask myself what other peoplewill think, if people are going to criticize me” (Amandine). “Fashion? We can allmake ourselves stand out and that sort of gives us our own style” (Romanie). “We alldress more or less the same. But sometimes I like to make myself different […] I don’tknow, I like to be original” (Amandine).

The self

If we gather the preceding statements together and attribute them to the collectivesubject, namely teenage girls within their own peer group, it can be seen that all thestatements are responses to the same issue: the presentation of self (Goffman 1959).Two opposing options emerge: to act in terms of other people or to act first of all withreference to oneself. Each girl wants to be original – either as part of a group or as anindividual. Each one dresses according to her own taste and as a result produces acategory: be it the category of disavowing those who are “like everyone else” (“thosewho look the same,” “those who haven’t got a personality”) or be it of avowing thosewho are “like us” (“our own style,” “friends who all dress well”). Whatever each of

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our informants is opposed to is at the same time that confirms her own existence fora difference has been constructed.

These positions can be analyzed in terms of projects and tactics because either theyare goal-driven (“to identify with the others,” “to be like the others”) or they resultfrom a deliberate calculation (“I don’t want to look like everyone else,” “when all thegirls buy something, I don’t buy it”). This dynamic is particularly meaningful in amiddle-class group of teenagers having learn how to “culture-switch” from milieu tomilieu, deploying the variety of their tastes selectively in different interactions anddifferent contexts.

Drawing on Landowski (1997, 54) we suggest that in the local environment ofteenagers a “standard” (the look of “the” senior school girl, “the” sixth former, “the”night club outing…) is enacted through which each choice can be situated both interms of position and tendency. This “standard,” “central,” “ideal” position is itselfvariable since the local environment of each teenage girl does not appear as a homo-geneous whole. Other membership groups constitute other collective subjects in rela-tion to which they must also situate themselves: “My school’s a private one so peoplewho come from a state school think we’re very bourgeois” (Angelique). “In my sixthform people wear what they can afford but in private sixth forms it’s very “fleurs delys”1 (Severine). The use of fashion to make social class distinctions has, of course,been explicated by both Simmel (1957) and Bourdieu (1984). However, fashiondistinctions within the sphere of social class have moved beyond their emulationhypotheses. As Rocamora (2002, 355) notes “to reduce fashion consumption – or forthat matter in Bourdieu’s work, cultural consumption more generally – to statusdistinction and social differentiation is to miss the variety of complexity of people’sengagement with the objects of material culture such as dress.” The different looksthat these girls are in a position to construct can be analyzed in a more nuancedmanner as a series of movements in relation to an agreed image which serves as areference point. These movements are not random, they are trajectories polarized bythe common central point secreted by their local environment (Figure 1).Figure 1. Identity trajectories.

Figure 1. Identity trajectories.

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This diagram displays four main tactics, taking account of the properties of thefield within which each girl follows and finally calculates her own trajectory. Affilia-tion (“We can all make ourselves stand out and that sort of gives us our own style”)proceeds upwards towards the “standard” from which demarcation (“I want to havemy own personality, I don’t want to look like everyone else”) allows itself to riseabove the common lot. This trajectory can be read as a process of imitation-distinction(Simmel [1895] 1957; Bourdieu 1984). Alignment (“I change to be like the others”)allows girls to be accepted because they would rather be unnoticed, whilst singularityor uniqueness (“when something comes out and all the girls buy it, I don’t buy it”)proceeds by a sort of critical irony in relation to the local norms. Beyond imitation-distinction this trajectory can be read as a process of assimilation-differentiation(Brewer 1991). Some teenage girls – through the affiliation tactic – show their impa-tience to integrate into a group (striving to create a sort of “standard”) or, – throughthe demarcation tactic – are calculating how much originality is needed to appeardifferent from peers. Others try to play on their authenticity either by ignoring whatother people think – singularity tactic – or by attenuating their otherness in relation totheir environment – alignment tactic. Thus the diversity of impression managementallows us to see the trajectories which can be taken from various static positions.

This dynamic can also be found through the management of social situations. Weknow that situational factors play an important role in the understating of the diversityof consumer behaviour (Belk 1975). Sartorial behaviour is particularly sensitive tosuch factors. School, nights out, big events, seduction, these are all situations wheregirls can show their skill in using different types of make-up and different items ofclothing in accordance with what is expected of the occasion: “I only wear make-upon important occasions” (Alix). “I sometimes put on a bit of make-up to go to schoolbut I put on less than when I’m going out” (Ingrid). “I often put on a short dress forgoing out but for going to school I put on jeans” (Angélique). “For going out I wear adress or clothes that I wouldn’t wear for school, like little tops, bodies, things likethat…, but I have to put a jumper on over the top so that my parents don’t see. Atschool I often wear jeans with a shirt or a jumper” (Romanie).

They display skills of bricolage in choosing the meanings inherent in make-up or“little tops” but also subterfuges in hiding symbols (“a jumper over the top”) whichare not appropriate for the eyes of a parent. Here Kehret-Ward’s (1988) advocacy ofa semiotic approach to understanding the consumption of functionally related productsand their “syntactic relations” is useful. The teenagers are managing social situationsby the management of a consumption system (i.e. “the set of products which are func-tionally related to achieving a given goal on a particular occasion” (1988, 191).

The other

Teenage girls are aware of the norms which dictate physical appearance, at leastwithin their own local environment. These allow them to recognize the necessity ofconstructing a look and they take responsibility for their own appearance. However,they also know that appearance is a kind of “open book” for others and one fromwhich a great number of inferences can be drawn. That’s why, to differing degrees,each informant is wary of the laws of appearance and thus she also talks about an inte-rior truth: “Appearance is important because that’s where you get an initial idea aboutsomeone but…, well I’d say that judging by appearance is OK but …well …it’s notpossible all the time” (Sophie). “Judging by appearance, I don’t think that’s very nice,

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I find it a bit disgusting” (Angélique). “People who judge by appearance are stupidbecause they’re only thinking about themselves and they’re not thinking about whatpeople think in their head, maybe they’re unhappy” (Alix).

First of all we see that appearance management is not systematically viewed as apositive activity. It is experienced in an ambivalent way and it is an activity that canbackfire. Moreover, in each of these indignant statements we never know if the infor-mant is talking about herself viewed by others or others under her own surveillance.It appears that in these reactions, which are critical and sometimes vehement, each girlis trying to put herself into someone else’s shoes (to use a sartorial metaphor). Otherpeople are examined not only by their external surface appearance but also from theinside because each girl is aware that everybody is more than what they havepresented of themselves. Teenage girls know that marking out differences can also bea form of exclusion, even racism, and they make an effort to fight against this process.“I’ve got friends who dress completely differently from me. I couldn’t have judgedthem on appearance because they’re girls I really like. You obviously form firstimpressions but you get underneath that when you get to know them” (Cécile). “I’vegot a friend I get on really well with and who – well – she doesn’t dress very well. Idon’t even notice. Actually I don’t care at all” (Séverine).

Instead of looking at the other person in a direct face-to-face encounter theydiscover themselves by recognizing the other sameness. Thus a series of equivocalattitudes redefines the place of otherness according to two modalities: discovery inoneself of an element of meaningful strangeness (Simmel 1957, 168); rediscovery inthe other elements of complementarity which are meaningful precisely because ofdifference. Each girl’s sameness is open to otherness which corresponds to whatderives from the encounter with others and induces changes. Sameness (the preserva-tion through time of fundamental traits that characterize someone) requires consis-tency and posits itself against otherness, but must adjust. Selfhood (resulting from thecontinuous experience of encounters and actions with others) construes a dynamic ofthe self through commitment and promise. As Ricœur notes (1992, 148) “one thing isthe continuation of the character; another is the constancy of friendship.” Othernessintroduces a way for each informant to divide herself in two: projecting outsideherself, outside the “I” who expresses herself, another “I” is expressed, still herself,but already “Oneself as another” to borrow Ricœur’s title.

Toying with the system

For a teenage girl the creation of an image is a task which takes time (from fiveminutes to an hour each morning according to our sample), as Sandrine explains: “Inthe morning I never know what I’m going to put on. I’ve got quite a lot of clothes andI try them all on and I never know what to wear. It’s the same palaver every morning!”This task assumes greater intensity when it has to be accomplished in a context whichis highly ambivalent and controversial. In the responses to the question, “What doesthe word fashion mean to you?” we immediately find differences and disagreementamongst the informants. On the one hand, Pauline and Sandrine enthusiastically talkof the glamour and excitement associated with fashion and celebrities. “Fashionmakes me think of supermodels and magazines and designers” (Pauline). “I like all thepictures of designer clothes in magazines. It’s what’s new. It makes me daydream”(Sandrine). On the other hand, Séverine and Cécile take a critical stance: “Fashion, Ithink it’s a vicious circle because for example my suede jacket, it was in for a while

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then it was out and now it’s back again; everyone was wearing flares, then theyweren’t then they were again” (Séverine). “It’s the clothes you find in all the shops,the style of the shops when you walk past you always see the same clothes or at leastnot that different” (Cécile).

The view of a fashion item as pleasure, fantasy, success and a means of transform-ing oneself from anonymity is placed in opposition to the rejection of fashion as super-ficiality and waste. This example illustrates the depth of the historical debate over themeaning of fashion. On the one hand the idealized world of supermodels, designersand big labels; on the other the restraining force of an artificial, imposed world. Thisdichotomous view of fashion also mirrors, almost exactly, the contrasting views offashion held by Hannah and Brandon in Thompson and Haytko’s (1997, 17) study,illustrating the broad reach of these two positions.

However, between these two extremes, one can also see in the teenagers’discourses, some more flexible interpretations: “Well, with labels or brand names,sometimes there are really nice looking things but (hesitation) a lot of the time, actu-ally most of the time, I buy things that aren’t labels or at least aren’t big brand names.But sometimes I find things with labels which have got more style” (Amandine). “Ilike some labels, but I bought this in the flea market” (Julie). There are some clothesthat are in fashion that I like, but others, like shoes with 10 cm heels, that Ifind…(hesitation)… not that nice. I tried on a few pairs, just to see, but they’re notvery comfortable” (Cécile). Even Sandrine who is more “pro fashion” than the othershas some reservations about the dictates of fashion. “I just love designer labels. Butthen this dress isn’t a very well-known label. In fact, I look for a label first and thenif I find something I like and it isn’t a label too bad.”

Here we see the girls practicing their art of bricolage. The acceptance and rejectionof items and labels which are considered fashionable is effectuated through a sort ofpolemic of varying degrees of intensity. These items manifest themselves here as toolswhich teenagers choose from the style supermarket – a set of entities which encom-passes boutiques and the media as well flea markets – in order to marshal them asresources in the construction of a panoply of outfits.

Toying with stereotypical looks

However, the girls show themselves adept in playing not only with brand labels andclothes bought from certain outlets but also with entire stereotypes or what Thompsonand Haytko (1997, 23) refer to as metonyms. They are quite able to situate themselvesin relation to more distant and broader discourses and practices. They are engaged inan interpretive dialogue with statements made more or less anonymously by themedia, shops and the street. In this can be seen the conventional regime of fashiondictates as well as their tactics which aim to subvert them. Any articulation which hasbeen established by the social pre-formation of appearance discourses can be adoptedby each teenager as expression in its own right. Moreover, a whole part of each infor-mant’s biography is undeniably interlaced by these discursive systems: looks, femi-ninity, beauty and sexuality. But this salvaging, this enmeshing of individualexperience and socially constructed meaning, remains, nevertheless, a source of greatsatisfaction particularly when the preconstrained meaning is shared by the generationto which it belongs. This pleasure is created by the possibility of common experience:to situate them and oneself, to recreate a personal experience so that it gains a publiclyrecognized meaning, to utter something that can be attached to a shared assignation.

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A number of social identities or what we have called “stereotypical looks” werediscussed by the girls. Many of these looks are designated by English names, forexample, “cool,” “grunge,” “peace and love” (hippy), “hard” (from hard rock) and“sexy” reflecting the role of British and American cultural influences on their identityprojects. Other stereotypes have specific French resonance. “Bourges” is short forbourgeoisie or middle class and might be translated as “nice girl.” BCBG is an acro-nym for Bon Chic, Bon Genre and the nearest equivalent is “Sloaney” in the UK –after Sloane Square from where the late Princess Diana hails – or “Preppy” in theUnited States. “Crades” literally means filthy and finds an equivalent in the “Crusty”look in the UK. “Fleur de Lys” designates a look with pretentions towards aristocracy.The following exchanges demonstrate how the girls bricolent playfully amongst awide range of stereotypes.

“One week I can dress all ‘nice girl,’ you know a little scarf, a tailored shirt, smartjeans and shoes…, and sometimes I can dress just kind of normally” (Ingrid). “I coulddress in trousers, a white shirt and a jacket – so BCBG – and then, like today, moresimply with a straight dress or a long dress. In fact I’ve got lots of ways of dressingbut I never just follow a fashion. It just depends what mood I’m in” (Kathleen). “Ireally like to have my own identity…I’m the one who dresses more BCBG and she[she is talking about her sister] she’s the one who dresses more cool” (Sandrine).“Sometimes I can arrive in a suit, jacket, shoes with heels and other times ‘peace andlove’ and other times ‘hard’ (Sophie).

Most girls showed pleasure in displaying their skills and competence in construct-ing several looks from their wardrobe, that is, vaunting their art of bricolage. A lookfor these girls is a statement which is an arrangement of various preconstrained (toborrow Lévi-Strauss’s term) or even classic materials which they use to produce aspecifically designed image: “trousers, white shirt and jacket – so – BCBG (Preppy)”or “nice girl, you know, with a little scarf, a shirt, jeans and shoes” or again “suit, jacketand shoes with heels.” We did not check if these arrangements of items of clothing didindeed produce an unambiguously recognizable image but each one of the girls couldcertainly play with her visual identity by making a choice from her treasury of clothesto articulate them in a plurality of panoplies: petite bourgeoise, peace and love, hard…

Here is it not a question of constructing an identity with reference to a group butof drawing from the style supermarket to play with clichés which metonymicallyrepresent a social identity. Thus the individual elements of the arrangement becomevital. For example, BCBG encompasses a number of specific nuances: not too naturaland not too much make-up; not too fashionable and not too out-of-date; not trying toohard but not too sloppy either; and great attention to detail: jeans neutralized by nicelooking shoes; a silk scarf tied just the right way. It is a subtle balance which combinesa variety of classical elements which have a timeless quality: tailored shirt, cashmereor Shetland pullover, pearls, Hermès scarf, and a little leather shoulder bag.

These stereotypes are shorthand categorizations of the girls’ fashion experience.They are very useful as tactical statements since these clichés are substitutes for a longdescription. It is a quick means to assert a difference by borrowing a commonplace orcomparing oneself with a platitude, a fixed, prefabricated identity. This rather ironicbehaviour reflects the findings of Kates (2002, 395) in his analysis of gay subculture:“the stereotype is acknowledged as an explicit role that can be assumed or discardedat will with one’s clothing while having some fun.” Each stereotype is a constellationof meanings culturally established but still sufficiently malleable so that teenagersknow how to play with those categorizations.

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The awakening of femininity, beauty and sexuality

The teenage girl from our sample also constructs her appearance from another collec-tive vantage point which is ripe with meanings: the verbal and visual discourse of thebeauty of the female body. It is not simply the body image or the socialized body(Thompson and Hirschman 1995) of the teenage girl which is in play. It is the beautyof the woman (Remaury 2000) or, more precisely, of the future woman. The infor-mants are thus subsumed under another collective subject: women in the making. Avariety of positions towards becoming a woman are evident.

“Before I used to dress a bit tomboyish, trainers, Converse…, now (pause), I liketo put on things which are a bit more elegant, more adult” (Amandine). “I believe thata woman is made to use make-up. If it’s been invented it’s to make us more beautiful,so why not take advantage…I don’t like women who dress like men and have theirhair like boys” (Sandrine). “It’s not that I’m not feminine but when I put on make-upI feel it looks a bit like a girl who’s putting on airs, to look good. Girls who put onmake-up are maybe a bit more original than me, they wear the things that are in at themoment: big dresses, skirts with slits everywhere, boots that come up quite high”(Cécile). “Make-up is a plus, yes, it brightens your face up, you know; and it can makeyour eyes stand out or your mouth…eh, in relation to boys” (Karine).

Here we see those who are ready to assert their femininity and sexuality (“I believethat a woman is made to use make-up”) and those who are not (“it looks a bit like agirl who is putting on airs”). We also see uniformity in the acceptance of heterosexu-ality (“it’s not that I’m not feminine”). This discourse is more serious, less ironic andis presented as more compulsory than the discourse around, for example, stereotypicallooks. Here the model of a lived hegemony appears more pertinent.

Historiography has shown how the body itself is socially modelled (Perrot 1984).The collective representation of the body conveyed largely by advertising copy forbeauty products, is a permanent exhortation to perfect one’s beauty. The culturealmost says that “a woman who is not beautiful is not really a woman.” Juxtaposed toa sartorial discourse which apparently eulogizes difference, the ideal body image, tire-lessly repeated in fashion photos, is a culturally dominant model of beauty: “to bewhite, to be slim, to be firm, to be shapely” (Remaury 2000, 36). The teenagers’response to this is to avail themselves of practices to care for their skin and their face,since from time immemorial being beautiful is to have a beautiful face. “Because Ihave a dark complexion other people think I’m an Arab and that…that really makesme cringe. Not because of the Arabs, I’ve got nothing against them, but because itisn’t true. End of story!” (Alix). “I wear foundation because I’m white” (Pauline). “Istarted wearing make-up when I was 15 with Rimmel, foundation for spots and alsobecause I thought I was too white” (Sophie). Lipstick and lip liner are great because Ihad an accident and…, well…it’s not very pretty when I don’t put lip liner on” (Séver-ine). From this also emerge techniques to transform the very image of their body:“Usually I wear jeans because I think I’m a bit chubby to wear a skirt” (Ingrid). “Ichoose my clothes so that people don’t see my thighs. I’ve got big thighs because Iplay tennis” (Julie).

Each informant finds herself individually coming to terms with her own body inthe midst of a discursive system of the ideal body and of the image of womanportrayed in culture. This image is also reinforced by significant others. “You’ve gota big bust, you’ve got big lips…When she says that [she is talking about her mother],and she says it a lot, I say to myself that it’s better to do the same as everyone else,

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it’s less dangerous” (Alix). Thus each girl feels responsible for her own beauty andexercises control over her face and her shape to occupy an acceptable position in rela-tion to the majority representations which propose, in a more or less implicit manner,models of identification.

Summary of the dynamic present

Thus we have seen four strands in the formation of the teenage girls’ present identity.First her chosen place on the trajectories in relation to the “standard teenage girl” (aplace implicitly defined by the relationship with the other); second her bricolage withcommercial labels; third, her bricolage with stereotypical looks; and fourth herresponse to the less amenable dictates of “the beautiful woman.” These choices andpersonal arrangements of clothes and make-up serve to constitute the present point inher narrative identity.Figure 2. Teenage girls’ relationships with discursive systems.Figure 2 schematizes the way in which teenagers appropriate the more or lesscontradictory meanings mobilized by the discursive systems of fashion. It is by draw-ing on these pools of meanings that each teenager can patch together her own inter-pretation of different looks and styles. None of the informants wants to look like amember of a statistically derived target market. Most of them show that they are capa-ble of juggling with stereotype constructions. They construct the “other” which theycan resemble or oppose themselves to, which they can judge as conformist, or anticonformist, in short they construct someone who is hypersensitive to the opinions ofothers, and they play with these stereotypes. Fashion and its discourses, like a stylesupermarket, offers not only the chance to choose a readymade image – with very littleeffort – but also the chance to smash these panoplies in order to construct a more indi-vidualized image. Thus, the norms and tastes which prevail in any social group –brands, fashion objects, the “in” press and “in” boutiques, the celebrities of thecatwalks – are reworked by teenagers. One way to play the game is to reproduceformulae which have become “naturalized” by the dominant interpretations; anotherway is to contest the rules. The teenage girls in the sample know how to play within

Figure 2. Teenage girls’ relationships with discursive systems.

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the rules and how to disregard them. But all the informants use the tensions at the heartof available cultural discourses to articulate their own interpretations.

The future

The question “How do you imagine your style in 10 years?” furnished episodes fromthe future trajectories of the girls’ narrative identity. This discourse was dominated byinterpretations of appearance in the workplace, but also echoed views of “the woman”encompassing the dictates of beauty, femininity and sexuality.

“In ten years I’ll maybe start dressing like older people, you know suits, becausewell, then, well, when you meet a boss you have to look good, look as if you are confi-dent with your appearance” (Alix). “Later I think I’ll be able to dress the way I want,but if I’m a teacher I won’t be able to wear anything low cut or too short […] I wantto be cool but not too cool either” (Romanie). “If I’m working in the private sector,I’ll dress in a classy way, like little suits, but I’ll be really cool in everyday life” (Séver-ine). “I want to be a journalist so actually I think…eh…for…eh…for meetings withpeople I’ll be a bit more chic with suits, that sort of thing, but in the field…well…justthe way I am, the way I like to dress” (Sophie). “If you turn up for a job all scruffy,well that’s not exactly a plus is it? I think you have to look good” (Karine).

It is no longer the teenagers’ history which serves as the plot (in the way it was fortheir memories). It is a fictitious story which is registered in a global life-plan. Thevague horizon of more or less distant ideals is combined with the evaluation of thepros and cons of particular career choices. In these short fictions, stereotypes and prej-udices are familiar concepts. Each girl stresses that being seductive plays a role insuccess: “when you meet a boss you have to look good,” “being scruffy, well that isn’ta plus.” They know that in their future career plans (“If I’m a teacher,” “If I work inthe private sector,” “I want to be a journalist”), what is beautiful is good and isrewarded. This reinforces the dominance of the feminine myth.

These future projects are probably deeply influenced by social context, because asBourdieu (1984, 206) puts it, “The self-assurance given by the certain knowledge ofone’s value, especially that of one’s body or speech, is in fact very closely linked tothe position occupied in social space (and also, of course to trajectory).”

Being seen and being

We can also see a second way of conceiving what it is to be “oneself.” We have amplydescribed the first way, namely that a teenager can only make sense of herself as “I”or “we” (her membership group) by contrasting herself with an “Other.” However,this construction is not particularly demanding. If being oneself is rather more thandeclaring oneself “different from the other” then the individual needs to ask herselfwhat it means “to be,” that is, to conceive of a coherence which gives sense to exist-ence by affirming rather than negating. Therefore there is another way to be “oneself”:not only asserting being “other than an other” (being not a cliché, a stereotype or afashion victim) but acknowledging the consistency of her unique becoming, that is,sameness. We can see that most of the informants strive to manage their identity inthis affirmative manner: “in the field …eh… the way I am,” “the way I want,” “verycool in everyday life.”

We can thus see the tension between two life projects (Mick and Buhl 1992, 318):succeeding socially in terms of “making a place for oneself in society” or succeeding

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in “becoming oneself.” In terms of image, it’s the tension between “wanting to appear”and “wanting to be” or “being seen” and “being.” When appearance assumes primacythen otherness takes precedence over the relationship with oneself, impression manage-ment takes primacy over the “being” and constitutes it: “when you meet a boss youhave to look good,” “quite chic,” “not too low cut or too short,” “classy.” When beingtakes primacy sameness governs the modalities of how personal identity is managed:“the way I am,” “the way I want.” Two types of life projects are articulated, more orless consciously, by teenagers through their choice of fashion. On the one hand appear-ance management and the alignment with the collective or, on the other hand, the wishto exhibit qualities which are “real” or “natural” and the quest for self discovery.

In the brief actions described by the informants we can see the outline of a lifeeven if so far it is very short. We see this in the way they portray their past and thefuture they imagine for themselves. A story line allows the integration of temporalpermanence of the individual sameness into what seems its opposite: diversity, vari-ability, instability and discontinuity of individual selfhood. The issue of teenage iden-tity thus not only pivots on a logic of discontinuity and difference but also on a logicof continuity and “becoming.” Seen as a character in a plot, the teenager is not anentity distinct from her experiences (real or fictitious). On the contrary, she shares theidentity of the story which is outlined. To return to Ricœur, we can see through thewords of our participants that the life of the teenage girl does, indeed, become moreaccessible when it is interpreted as the story which each one narrates about herself,and that the narrative identity reconciles the permanence of identity with its dynamic.

A general model of teenage fashion consumption

Figure 3 attempts to bring together the concepts used to understand teenagers’ fashiondiscourses and practices together with our theoretical underpinnings from Lévi-Strauss, Certeau and Ricœur. The interpretations of the informants have been consid-ered as a space where four elements interact: personal experience and interactionswith membership groups (family, friends, class mates); broader discourses which areculturally determined; past and present narrative episodes; global future life-plans.These elements are considered along two axes: the horizontal represents the trajectoryof the girls’ narrative identity whilst the vertical represents the spectrum of relation-ships with directly experienced social systems at one end and culturally constitutedsystems at the other.Figure 3. A general model of teenage fashion consumption.

Consumer socialization in the personal milieu

For teenagers, part of the production and recognition of a look are practices which reston skills that result from consumer socialization within the personally experiencedmilieu. A number of these skills were observed: first the skill of “knowing how to seeand be seen” was evidenced in the interactions between the teenagers and their peergroups and in their evocation of their future trajectories. This is logically the first skillas it is a precondition for all that follows: imitation, assimilation, differentiation,distinction, variety seeking, etc. We observed a second skill – “knowing how tochoose” – when we considered the dialogue with discursive systems. In both cases itis a matter of practical knowledge which is constituted around a string of approvalsand disapprovals from family, friends, class mates and associates.

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We noted that clothes and accessories are not only used to show status, groupmembership or demarcation but also have relationships with memorable experiencesand more personal memories. The experience of an image is also influenced by an inti-mate relationship with certain friends and family, which leads teenagers to value otherdifferences: not those which have a value on the social stage but those which live inthe internal world and are thus totally subjective. The same is true for objects whichare attached to various memorable experiences: presents or inherited items receivedfrom someone who means something for the teenagers.

Relationships with discursive systems

The processes of appearance management by teenage girls are also the result of a kindof dialogue with the discursive systems which are put forward by cultural intermedi-aries which circulate on the streets, in shops and in the media. Not only discoursesfrom the fashion system (fashion designers, opinion leaders, advertisers, trend spot-ters, journalists, retail managers), but also discourses about the body, beauty, health,morality, feminism or social integration. These discursive systems furnish a totality ofmore or less controversial interpretations which refer to categories such as conform-ism or originality and beauty or ugliness. Although subjected to a set of vocabularyand prescribed syntax, teenagers know how to make use of conflicting representationsmobilized by the diversity of these discourses. In order to interpret their own experi-ences, they draw on this vast reservoir of points of view to combine them, juxtapose

Figure 3. A general model of teenage fashion consumption.

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them and transform them. The expression of their own point of view is thus the fruitsof a provisional bricolage in which stereotypical points of view and common groundare adapted to their individual context.

Past and present episodes

The clothing practices of teenage girls are a succession of “identity experimenta-tions.” These experimentations are made up of a number of short actions or episodesin their lives whose interpretation they deliver to us. A teenager’s series of looks arerelated to her past as a daughter and a little girl and to the practice of everyday life:notably her school life, her family life and her leisure life. The choice of a look resultsfrom weighing up the pros and cons which themselves result from the preferencesaccorded to a particular way of living and situational characteristics. The interpreta-tion of episodes is strung together in a story line which allows the teenager to affirmher life style.

Future identity projects

Far from being random these episodes are firmly linked to the heart of a plot withinwhich she is the central character. Moreover, each teenager creates a story whichborrows not only from her past history and also, significantly, from the fiction of herfuture. From this, her self-understanding is an interpretation of her own plot. Toconstruct this plot not only are certain memories mobilized to build the past(“tomboy,” “model little girl”) and thus to give meaning to changes over time, butother specifications arise from “higher up,” from her future life project, that is, a vaguehorizon which may be more or less distant and determined (“working in the privatesector,” “If I’m a teacher”). These more or less clear life projects give meaning to herexistence and possible future identities already have effect on the present.

Discussion and conclusion

Following Lévi-Strauss and Certeau we have considered each teenager as a tacticianwho produces meaning by assembling and arranging panoplies of clothes. We haveshown her using her bricolages to construct a narrative identity with a past, presentand future in which the notion of sameness, selfhood and otherness contain thetension between constancy and flux. Thus we confirm what is suggested by a largebody of research streams (Arnould and Thompson 2005): the identity of our infor-mants is a dynamic process of construction. We have shown, as did Thompson andHaytko (1997), that consumers of fashion objects use discursive systems to producepersonal narratives which in turn give organized coherence to their life experiences.We have encountered a comparison process which negotiates between the idealizedimage of the female body and the informants own bodies echoing Richins (1991).Nevertheless, we have noticed that in response to feelings of dissatisfaction infor-mants displayed sartorial and cosmetic tactics to face up to this idealized image. LikeElliot and Wattanasuwan (1998) we have noted that certain brands constitute aresource which some teenagers use to allow themselves to construct an identity. Butwe have also seen that other more intimate objects, free from any commercial logic,were mobilized. This confirms the results of numerous previous studies dedicated tothe meaning of objects which have a link with a loved one. Most importantly, we have

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brought to light, thanks to Ricœur (1992), a dimension of the construction of identityand appearance which has thus far received little attention by consumer researchers:the place within narrative identity not only of inter-subjective relationships withothers but also the intertwining of the past, present and future dimensions of anindividual’s story.

We have highlighted numerous examples of bricolages which take materials fromthe style supermarket constituted by fashion discourses and fashion system. From thispoint of view we support the general observation of Firat and Venkatesh (1995)concerning the proliferation of consumption styles. However, we do not believe thatthis implies the advent of a “liberating post-modernism.” This would be to forget thesingular dynamic of the fashion industry which is capable of continuously recuperat-ing anti-conformism in order to recycle it into new offers and new discourses whichoffer a new “authenticity” (Frank 1997; Holt 2002). This would also be to ignore themore dominant role played by the beauty industry. Image is an individual creation butthis practice is shaped by the representations, the models and the values which takeprominence in a given social system. In this sense it is a co-construction for theactions of brands contribute to the building of new norms, particularly in the recuper-ation of the denunciations of criticism. The establishment of a personal identity incontemporary conditions remains a challenge to be overcome and not liberation(Ahuvia 2005; Cherrier and Murray 2007).

We have considered the construction of image and of a panoply of clothes by teen-agers as an inter-subjective and creative process of producing an identity rather thanthe fruits of a system of reproduction and classification (Bourdieu 1984). We did notfind teenagers who were systematically seeking to conform and behave “like everyoneelse” or “in the right way.” Instead, we found persons pursuing trajectories, espousingthe rhythm of the changing world around them, forming and transforming themselvescontinuously, existing whilst watching themselves living and changing, turning theirlives into a plot and trying to project themselves into the future. They are players inthe “game” of fashion in which knowledge about fashion is constantly changing aswell as “‘moving targets’ whose knowledge about persuasion keeps changing”(Friestad and Wright 1994, 22).

We tried to interpret the modalities of the social production of identities notingthat the social production of an identity is not the production of a social identity,something which would allow us to think that another identity – a “natural” one or thecore self coming from the Belk’s metaphor (1988) – is given by nature to individuals.We viewed the act of being seen as a performance contributing to the process of iden-tity construction in a social context. When recognizing differences, we do notconsider them as pre-defined in advance but only in as much as they are constructedby the subjects and in the guise that they give them. Thus the personal identity of ateenage girl, through her appearance management, appears as a threefold process: (1)a bricolage must create demarcation lines between her identity and that of others (I amwhat you are not); (2) a bricolage is a meta semiotic operation – that is, a transforma-tion of material which already has meaning – establishing links which are syntagmatic(to produce and recognize a look) and paradigmatic (to produce and recognize anumber of looks); and (3) it is also an operation determined by a life project (I amwhat the other is not but I am not only that, I am also something else which is minealone). In summary, the bricolages of image which we have highlighted are opportu-nistic but not random. They result from negotiations between active subjects anddiscursive systems and they manifest themselves in the framework of trajectories for

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which teenagers are co-responsible. This activity is doubly creative (Floch 2000, 5).First the result is a meaningful object (a personal clothing panoply and the personaldiscourse which enrobes it) thanks to the coupling between some of its tangible char-acteristics (form, colour, material…, as well as way of wearing) and some of itscontent categories (the attachment to certain designers versus the repudiation ofexcess, the attachment to a particular brand versus the rejection of the ostentation ofany brand, the affirmation of a skill in knowing how to choose between cheap andnasty clothes versus the loyalty to a brand spirit, the fascination of luxury versus itsrejection, etc.). Second, this object gives existence to a subject endowed with apersonal identity. This personal identity is not only the assertion of oneself as differ-ent from otherness (selfhood), but also a coherent form which allows the assertion ofsameness that refers to a life project.

Future research

Our model, like many proposed by post-structuralism, concerns the articulation of thestructure (a network of relationships) and the agency of people, that is, what Certeau(1984) designates as the tactical and opportunistic characteristics of consumption.However, such a model rests on the principle that the object of knowledge under scru-tiny is the relationships and not the terms. It is the establishment (production or recog-nition) of relationships and relationship networks which is the basis for our analysisand each individual is viewed as a dynamic place where pluralities of often contradic-tory relational determinants are played out.

We have tried to elucidate the experience of certain consumers whilst alsoknowing that this experience is ultimately inaccessible to the observer. What wehave been able to suggest is an interpretation of the interpretations of the infor-mants through parsimonious and general concepts: bricolage, consumer tactics andnarrative identity. However, whilst this conceptualization yields and illuminates theinterweaving of lived experience with conversations within the local spheres on theone hand and with broader discursive systems on the other hand, it is not likelythat it has exhausted the experience of all consumer tactics. And whilst thisresearch has added the teenage experience to that of college students (Thompsonand Haytko 1997) and 30-somethings (Murray 2002), the fashion discourses of pre-teens and 40-, 50-, 60-somethings remains to be investigated. An application of thenarrative identity perspective to the fashion discourses of the very young and thevery old would undoubtedly expand the possibilities of this form of analysis. Simi-larly, whilst our participants add another cultural dimension to this stream ofresearch, no specific cross-cultural comparisons were drawn. Future research couldpurposefully compare teenagers’ talk of fashion in USA and France or betweenother nationalities. An analysis of fashion discourses of people in the Eastern Blocof Europe, Asia or South America would also add substantially to our understand-ing of the symbolic potential of fashion objects in the construction of identityprojects.

In terms of methodology, as our analysis is founded on narratives, it leaves asidethe whole area of physical expression, posture, gesture – in fact all non verbal commu-nication. Future research could use other methods of observing interactions (partici-pant observation, photography, film) to capture these aspects.

Finally, more research is needed, to explore narrative identity and notably todetermine to what extent possible imagined futures may influence present consumption.

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Note1. “Fleurs de lys” is the emblem of French royalty. Severine uses it as a metaphor to express

that the dominant tendency of outfit in her class was a bit pretentiously aristocratic.

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“We make the shoes, you make the story” Teenage girls’ experiences of fashion: Bricolage,...

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