In his important article, “The Instagrammability of the Runway: Architecture, Scenography, and the Spatial Turn in Fashion Communications,” Silvano Mendes demonstrates that since the 1990s, high-fashion runway shows have increasingly used setting and scenography to “spectacularize” the collection “for different audiences.” Fashion shows can also be used to “symbolize the power of the brand,” as when Fendi showed its S/S 2009 collection on the Great Wall of China. Mendes further argues, convincingly, that “fashion’s spatial turn is an emerging phenomenon that has been more fully realized through the transformation of design by digital image.”
“The Man in the Suit: Jewish Men and Fashion in fin-de-siècle Vienna” by Jonathan C. Kaplan will also be of great interest to many readers. There have been several important studies of the suit as an icon of masculine fashion, all of which Kaplan has read, but he goes on to offer a new and nuanced interpretation of the suit in light of its historic association with Jewish Emancipation and acculturation. In particular, he has written a case history of the dress habits of Sigmund Freud. Since I am currently working on a book about fashion and psychoanalysis, and just finished a chapter on Freud’s self-fashioning, I found this especially fascinating, and I think readers will, too.
Chris Hesselbein’s “Walking the Catwalk: From Dressed Body to Dressed Embodiment” is part of a larger dissertation project on femininity and high-heeled footwear. Elaborating on Entwistle’s model of “situated bodily practice,” Hesselbein argues that Fashion Studies would benefit from more research on embodiment and bodily techniques. This theoretically sophisticated article encompasses an extraordinary ethnographic study of how female fashion models learn to perform “the high-heeled catwalk” through interactions with “catwalk coaches” of various genders, sexualities, and ethnicities. Reading Hesselbein, the reader understands that “the catwalk is both a carefully crafted technique of the body and an embodied performance of identity and dress.” The article also considers “the materiality of heels and runways” (shoes are often too big or too small, while runways may be slippery and even shaky). The disparity of body techniques between genders is especially flagrant: Male models may be told to “just walk like a man.”
“‘Wearing Me Place on Me Face’: Scousebrows, Placemaking and Everyday Creativity” by Catherine Wilkinson, Samantha Wilkinson, and Holly Saron analyzes stories about eyebrow grooming among women and men from Liverpool. The authors challenge negative commentary on the Scousebrow in the press and social media. They also argue that shaping and styling of eyebrows is, “not only an important part of crafting and performing identity, particularly for Scouse women, but also an example of bottom-up placemaking in the city of Liverpool.” I must confess that I had never heard of Scousebrows, but I found the article insightful and very human.
“Gendered Entrepreneurialism and the Labour of Online Consumption in the Independent Fashion Sector” by Alexandra Tuite explores two Instagram accounts: the official account for the independent American fashion label Elizabeth Suzann and a resale account run by consumers of the brand who use it not only to sell and trade clothes but also to discuss the clothes in relation to their bodies. By examining interactions between the two accounts, Tuite investigates how the designer, her employees, and her customers (all women) perform emotional and esthetic labor, one aspect of which is to create a safe and welcoming space for women whose bodies do not conform to social and fashion industry norms.
This issue has one exhibition review: Felix Choong’s review of Tenant of Culture—“Ecologues (an Apology for Actors)” held at Nicoletti Contemporary, London. As Choong observes, “Tenant of Culture is the name of the artistic practice of Hendrickje Schimmel, who uses methods of construction and deconstruction to interrogate the ethics and politics inscribed in garments and fashion.” His latest exhibition is an installation consisting of garments and accessories that mimic the way fashion evokes the pastoral through the figure of the milkmaid.
Namkyu Chun and Julia Valle-Noronha review the book Seamlessness: Making and (Un)Knowing in Fashion Practice by Yeseung Lee. A growing number of fashion practitioners have begun writing academic studies. As Chun and Valle-Noronha observe, “Lee’s work is a clear demonstration of how knowledge produced from a practitioner’s viewpoint can achieve theoretical ‘depth’ by writing about her own practice.” I, too, read Lee’s book with great interest and recommend it.
Valerie Steele