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Clothing and Identity

Clothing and Identity. Sartorial Systems. Notes on assignment after the break What is your sartorial system? How is your sartorial system connected to your identity? always & unavoidably culturally coded. Self-representation or group ID. dress as self-representation or as group identity

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Clothing and Identity

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  1. Clothing and Identity NEW271Y

  2. Sartorial Systems • Notes on assignment after the break • What is your sartorial system? • How is your sartorial system connected to your identity? • always & unavoidably culturally coded NEW271Y

  3. Self-representation or group ID • dress as self-representation or as group identity • clothing expresses or conceals identity in myriad ways • boundaries encoded by differences in society, culture, and ideology NEW271Y

  4. Political & symbolic meanings • modern Western dress as step away from traditional values and spirituality • abolishing distinctions – race, language, religion, culture, tradition • antithesis of cultural clothing, marked by formal stability • women in traditional & Eastern societies NEW271Y

  5. Identity Ambivalence • Fred Davis, "Identity Ambivalence, Fashion's Fuel" • uncertainty re. approach, attitude, treatment • ambivalence of self - main drive for fashion • fashion prevalent in the West - identity ambivalences - fluid and 'unstable‘ Western society • India: clothing related to caste, level of education, urbanization, larger cultural debate re Indian identity NEW271Y

  6. references • Davis, Fred. "Do Clothes Speak? What Makes Them Fashion?" Fashion, Culture and Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 3-18. • ______. "Identity Ambivalence, Fashion's Fuel." Fashion, Culture and Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 19-29. • Khan, Naseem. "Asian Women's Dress: From Burqah to Bloggs -- Changing Clothes for Changing Times." Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader. Ed. Juliet Ash & Elizabeth Wilson. London: Pandora, 1992. • Tarlo, Emma Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India. C. Hurst & Co. 1996 NEW271Y

  7. Clothing & Identity & Movies • Stella Bruzzi defines and reads characters through their clothes • codes & systems functioning in relation to clothes & identity in black movies • social, institutional and political contexts • reception • textual analysis: significance of appearance to the heroes’ identities – clothes function as important signifiers NEW271Y

  8. context • The Dandy Tradition • zoot suit street style 1940s • emblem of ethnicity • way of negotiating identity • subcultural gesture NEW271Y

  9. Textual analysis • commodifying blackness? • locking black protagonist into old stereotypes? • Naïve or aware of issues of representation? • duality, contradiction, nuance, juxtaposition and complexity - & the possibilities for variations in reading NEW271Y

  10. Identity & Identification • signs not always clear • how the wearer conceives of his/her clothes • how the rest of the world reads or understands them • conflicting or competing codes NEW271Y

  11. Meaning & the body • no innate meaning • invested with meaning & value by cultural practices • everything BOTH individual expressions of self AND embodiments of society’s norms, conventions and expectations • identity constituted “not outside but within representation” • clothing as a discourse NEW271Y

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