Fashion Thinking Practice: On Crafting Confessions and the Creative Consumer

Abstract

Practices of creative self-expression are related to specific considerations and confessions in the context of positioning within a contemporary fashion consumer society. If the craft consumer is someone who exercises personal control over all the processes involved, how then will these practices be transformed into learning objectives? Where are the manuals and how can we understand the practice of the creative and confessing consumer? Taking its starting point in the production of second-hand value, this article focuses on crafting confessions and creativity as a fashion thinking imperative in a Swedish context. The art of confession is a practice that can be understood as a self-regulating mechanism. By thematizing a number of cultural programs of confessional everyday practice, it is the intention of this article to illuminate how these have become an important part of how alternative consumption trends act as self-regulating practices on the Swedish fashion market.

Keywords:

• craft consumer
• creativity
• confession
• practice
• shop-stop

Acknowledgments

The Swedish Retail and Wholesale Development Council through the Centre of Retail Research at Lund University financially supported this research. I am also grateful to the reviewers and to Professor Paul Freathy, University of Stirling, for their comments on the manuscript.

Notes

1. Author’s field notes 2014.

2. Ernst Kirschsteiger is a well-known Swedish interior decorator. He has his own TV shows and has become a kind of metaphor for “Swedish cosiness,” with strong elements of DIY.

3. www.shabbychic.nu/sa-vad-ar-shabby-chic/politisktkorrekt

4. Ibid.

5. Swedish daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet, November 8, 2009.

6. Ibid.

7. Business weekly Veckans Affärer, January 24, 2007.

8. Ibid.

9. http://www.fourfitchallenge.se

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cecilia Fredriksson

Cecilia Fredriksson is Professor of European Ethnology in the Department of Service Management and Service Studies at Lund University, specializing in retail, fashion and consumption culture from a contemporary and a historical perspective. An interest in cultural learning processes and value-creating practices is a consistent theme running through her activities. [email protected]