Fashion Thinking

Beskrivelse

Uniformation: Signification exhaustion in contemporary fashion A recent fashion phenomenon has proclaimed blandness as fashionable. Normcore, as the style trend has been termed, is an amalgamation of ‘normal’ and hardcore’. But if blending in is the new standing out (Lauren 2014), suggesting that the conception of fashion is being brought back to function and uniformity. The question is whether fashion is going altogether out of style. Fast fashion might in part be blamed for this development. Companies such as H&M and Zara can produce new garments within a few weeks, which has increased the pace of the fashion cycle and reduced the time lag between inception and demise. This condition has complicated the process of status representation essential in fashion (Simmel 1971). If street- and subcultures are turned commercial and mainstream, new definitions of fashion authenticity are developed among contemporary consumers’, which may nourish the basic social appetite for differentiation or be the expression of a general signification fatigue. The paper explores the rise in the early 21st century of sartorial likeness to discuss the role of difference in contemporary fashion. Much fashion research in the field of social identity has tended to focus on ‘the pleasure of difference’ (Lipovetsky 1994). This paper takes an alternative approach by exploring themes of sameness, subtlety and uniformity through the recent fashion phenomenon ‘normcore’. Is this development symptomatic of new social strategies of distinction in fashion or an entirely new dress paradigm? Normcore is studied through media representation of the phenomenon as well as through everyday dress practice. The role of sameness in contemporary fashion is explored through literature on uniforms and the social impact of inconspicuousness is studied through the works of Adolf Loos on adornment. The paper ends with a discussion of the flexibility of the fashion system, which is seemingly able to adopt and commercialize even styles that are in their outset fundamentally anti-fashion.

Periode	30. okt. 2014 → 1. nov. 2014
Begivenhedstitel	Fashion Thinking: Theory, History, Practice
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Placering	Kolding, DanmarkVis på kort