Abstract Fashion has long been a dynamic aspect of Maroon culture in Suriname and French Guiana (Guyane). The textile arts that carry it through from one generation to the next were totally ignored by early writers, who lavished praise on the men's art of woodcarving but said virtually nothing about the artistic gifts of women—most importantly in calabash carving (referred to by one of them as "doodling") and clothing. This article, based on more than fifty years of ethnographic work with Maroons, focuses on textile arts and clothing fashions, running briefly through styles of the past before focusing on current directions. Today, with Maroons participating increasingly in life beyond the traditional villages of the rain forest, the women—like their mothers and grandmothers—have continued to enjoy adopting newly available materials and inventing novel techniques. In the process, they have been producing clothing that reflects both their cultural heritage of innovative artistry and their new place in the multicultural, commoditized society of the coast. The illustrations give an opening hint of the remarkable vibrancy of this aspect of Maroon life in the twenty-first century.
Machine generated contents note: -- Foreword by Dress, Body, Culture Series Editor Joanne B. Eicher -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Lexicon of Fashion -- 3. Europe and the People Without Fashion -- 4. How We Got Here -- 5. Fashion Systems in Indigenous Cultures -- 6. Trade Networks in the Eastern Hemisphere -- 7. Courtly Fashion in Asia -- 8. Global Fashion -- Bibliography -- Index
The last decade has seen the growing popularity and visibility of fashion as a cultural product, including its growing presence in museum exhibitions. This book explores the history of fashion curating and exhibitions, highlighting the continuity of past and present curatorial practices. Comparing and contrasting exhibitions from different museums and decades – from the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 to the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011 – it makes connections between museum fashion and the wider fashion industry.
By critically analyzing trends in fashion exhibition practice over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Julia Petrov defines and describes the varied representations of historical fashion within British and North American museum exhibitions.
The M. H. Ross Papers contain information pertaining to labor, politics, social issues of the twentieth century, coal mining and its resulting lifestyle, as well as photographs and audio materials. The collection is made up of five different accessions; L2001-05, which is contained in boxes one through 104, L2002-09 in boxes 106 through 120, L2006-16 in boxes 105 and 120, L2001-01 in boxes 120-121, and L2012-20 in boxes 122-125. The campaign materials consist of items from the 1940 and 1948 political campaigns in which Ross participated. These items include campaign cards, posters, speech transcripts, news clippings, rally materials, letters to voters, and fliers. Organizing and arbitration materials covers labor organizing events from "Operation Dixie" in Georgia, the furniture workers in North Carolina, and the Mine-Mill workers in the Western United States. Organizing materials include fliers, correspondence, news articles, radio transcripts, and some related photos. Arbitration files consist of agreements, decisions, and agreement booklets. The social and political research files cover a wide time period (1930's to the late 1970's/early 1980's). The topics include mainly the Ku Klux Klan, racism, Communism, Red Scare, red baiting, United States history, and literature. These files consist mostly of news and journal articles. Ross interacted with coal miners while doing work for the United Mine Workers Association (UMWA) and while working at the Fairmont Clinic in West Virginia. Included in these related files are books, news articles, journals, UMWA reports, and coal miner oral histories conducted by Ross. Tying in to all of the activities Ross participated in during his life were his research and manuscript files. He wrote numerous newspaper and journal articles on history and labor. Later, as he worked for the UMWA and at the Fairmont Clinic, he wrote more in-depth articles about coal miners, their lifestyle, and medical problems they faced (while the Southern Labor Archives has many of Ross's coal mining and lifestyle articles, it does not have any of his medical articles). Along with these articles are the research files Ross collected to write them, which consist of notes, books, and newspaper and journal articles. In additional to his professional career, Ross was adamant about documenting his and his wife's family history in the oral history format. Of particular interest are the recordings of his interviews with his wife's family - they were workers, musicians, and singers of labor and folk songs. Finally, in this collection are a number of photographs and slides, which include images of organizing, coal mining (from the late 19th through 20th centuries), and Appalachia. Of note is a small photo album from the 1930s which contains images from the Summer School for Workers, and more labor organizing. A few audio items are available as well, such as Ross political speeches and an oral history in which Ross was interviewed by his daughter, Jane Ross Davis in 1986. All photographic and audio-visual materials are at the end of their respective series. ; Myron Howard "Mike" Ross was born November 9, 1919 in New York City. He dropped out of school when he was seventeen and moved to Texas, where he worked on a farm. From 1936 until 1939, Ross worked in a bakery in North Carolina. In the summer of 1938, he attended the Southern School for Workers in Asheville, North Carolina. During the fall of 1938, Ross would attend the first Southern Conference on Human Welfare in Birmingham, Alabama. He would attend this conference again in 1940 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. From 1939 to 1940, Ross worked for the United Mine Workers Non-Partisan League in North Carolina, working under John L. Lewis. He was hired as a union organizer by the United Mine Workers of America, and sent to Saltville, Virginia and Rockwood, Tennessee. In 1940, Ross ran for a seat on city council on the People's Platform in Charlotte, North Carolina. During this time, he also married Anne "Buddie" West of Kennesaw, Georgia. From 1941 until 1945, Ross served as an infantryman for the United States Army. He sustained injuries near the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944. From 1945 until 1949, Ross worked for the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, then part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), as a union organizer. He was sent to Macon, Georgia, Savannah, Georgia and to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he worked with the United Furniture Workers Union. He began handling arbitration for the unions. In 1948, Ross ran for United States Congress on the Progressive Party ticket in North Carolina. He also served as the secretary for the North Carolina Progressive Party. Ross attended the University of North Carolina law school from 1949 to 1952. He graduated with honors but was denied the bar on the grounds of "character." From 1952 until 1955, he worked for the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers as a union organizer, first in New Mexico (potash mines) and then in Arizona (copper mines). From 1955 to 1957, Ross attended the Columbia University School of Public Health. He worked for the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund from 1957 to 1958, where he represented the union in expenditure of health care for mining workers. By 1958, Ross began plans for what would become the Fairmont Clinic, a prepaid group practice in Fairmont, West Virginia, which had the mission of providing high quality medical care for miners and their families. From 1958 until 1978, Ross served as administrator of the Fairmont Clinic. As a result of this work, Ross began researching coal mining, especially coal mining lifestyle, heritage and history of coal mining and disasters. He would interview over one hundred miners (coal miners). Eventually, Ross began writing a manuscript about the history of coal mining. Working for the Rural Practice Program of the University of North Carolina from 1980 until 1987, Ross taught in the medical school. M. H. Ross died on January 31, 1987 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. ; Digitization of the M. H. Ross Papers was funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Borrowing some of Aby Warburg's methods from his Mnemosyne Atlas, this paper experiments with an anti-linear, non-teleological method of writing fashion history. It investigates fashion movement, gesture and pose, and their afterlife in images and objects. It thus looks at the intersection of time and the gesture, particularly in relation to the idea of the 'now', a central organising principle of fashion. To this end, it juxtaposes images of the body in motion from sources as varied as scientific photography, etiquette manuals and fashion magazines. Spanning three centuries, though not chronologically, the images show a range of activities: not only fashion posing, but also tennis-playing, duelling, dancing, military marching, social gestures, and going to the races. The paper proposes that each image is charged with some quality or attribute that is also immanent in one or more of the others, even though they have no causal or temporal relationship.
Covid-19 and fashion seem to go hand in hand – or rather, glove-in-glove – in these precarious times. The Covid-19 global situation has many sartorial fashion elements, some more obvious and reported, others more hidden and under-reported. These elements encompass both macro- and micro-levels of social life, haute couture and mass market clothing, production and consumption, raw materials and distribution networks, rich and poor people, short-term and long-term trends and consequences, and winners and losers. The fashion-related aspects of the crisis are simultaneously economic, cultural-aesthetic and political, local and national, as well as global and globalizing. A fashion sociologist's task in the time of Corona is therefore this: to recognise and record such elements, and to analyse their complex interconnections.
Fashion changes societies, and is also itself shaped by multiple socio-cultural processes, including processes of globalization. At the same time, fashion scholarship is not only speaking about and seeking to understand fashion, but is also actively formulating ideas, assumptions and understandings as to what fashion can be, and where in the history and geographical locations fashion can be found. This paper addresses the increasingly complex question of the nature of fashion in a globalized and increasingly interconnected world. Arguing for a radical, "punk", attitude toward fashion scholarship, and the rethinking of fashion, we suggest an approach that goes beyond academic and political fashions, drawing upon history. For while it is strikingly obvious that fashion is a global and globalized phenomenon, its specific character, and indeed geographical locations and origins, remain contested. Drawing inspiration from the Greek historian Polybius, and his ideas of an ecumenical analytical approach to studying world-wide phenomena, we reflect upon the history and current state of fashion studies in what we consider an ecumenical moment, demanding new insights, but also holding many opportunities for the field.
The past few years have seen a more politicised approach to scholarship in the field of Fashion Studies. This has occurred in dialogue with the recent resurgence of feminist activism, calls to decolonize the curriculum, and the increasingly urgent discourse on sustainability. It therefore seems an opportune moment to reflect on the shape of the field as it stands, and explore some of its key ideological concerns and principles as we move into a new decade. Fashion Politics is a series of seminars/workshops, hosted by faculty from Parsons Paris and London College of Fashion, to explore fashion politics through the idea of praxis. Coming from the Greek term for 'doing', the term praxis seems a fruitful term for thinking through what it means to do Fashion Studies today. The term has evolved from its origins in Greek philosophy to critical theory via Marx and later Sartre, Arendt and Gramsci. A means of reflecting on our activity and engagement in the world, based on a person's will, intention or aim. It has also been used to critique theory for its own sake and has recently been employed to contextualize and legitimize the role of practice-based research and pedagogy in fashion and design. That said the outcome of praxis is not always predictable; it can take one to a space of not knowing, uncertainty, and to the edges of discourse. Praxis does not necessarily apply only in a studio context; it expands to include political activism and interventions in the world. We therefore seek to reflect on the role we as educators and researchers have in terms of the politics of teaching fashion in the contemporary context.
I first thought of 'Chinese fashion' as a concept a few years ago when I interviewed a portentous gentleman who at the time held a very important position in the French fashion industry. He spoke disparagingly of Chinese designers coming to Paris to showcase their work during fashion week: 'We've had a number of established Chinese designers showing in Paris by now, but after a while we realised that they had no talent and that no press was interested.' Being many decades younger, and perhaps because of it subject to a different notion of the importance of both diversity and political correctness, I was quietly scandalized. But at the same time, the man's sneering off-the-cuff remark made me reflect on my own attitude towards Chinese fashion. Was the fact that I hadn't even considered it not a sign of the same prejudice?
Design and fashion historian Emmanuelle Dirix gave an illustrated talk called Women, fashion and the First World War and discover how the First World War not only changed women's lives but also how they dressed. Ms Dirix discussed how the huge political and social upheaval of the early twentieth century led to dramatic changes in the fashionable female silhouette and saw the birth of the New Woman after the war. For the first time in history women took on traditionally male roles in the workforce on a huge scale while men fought on the Western Front. This was reflected in a more practical approach to dressing and saw the shocking introduction of shorter skirts, shorter hairstyles and even trousers into the female wardrobe. Ms Dirix focused on the female war experience as a force for change from the lavish but constrictive Edwardian style to a more comfortable and ultimately modern fashion aesthetic. The talk was followed by a question and answer session. This talk was in conjunction with the London Transport Museum's 2014 exhibition Goodbye Piccadilly: From Home Front to Western Front.
This paper focuses on Jeremy Corbyn as a case study to reveal attitudes to dress and fashion within politics and how in a branded culture these can contribute to political discourse and ideological shifts more widely.
