“As our world grows ever more complex and fragmented, the importance of appearance grows ever greater: our visible differences and similarities facilitating interaction and relationships” Ted Polhemus.
Fashion has a massive effect on social and cultural factors. What you wear shows your status as a person in modern society, your beliefs and morals. It is the way we advertise our self to others.
This generation have lost their street style and left it with the last. To have street style we have to have a certain amount of rough and grime, need people on the street corner. Today people all want to be seen as the same. We all shop at Topshop and yes my under wear is from Ann Summers. The student riots in London made me proud that the youths of today are standing up and fighting for something they believe in. Drama can be created from an outfit. Lady Gaga’s dress made from real roar meat was talked about for weeks. What a waste was the most common reaction. Personally I think the opposite, she made her statement.
Teen smoking caught my attention after reading The Tipping Point. Smoking has increased even though everyone knows the dangers. How do you advertise against something that is so influential? Brands are highly influential, like smoking it gives the image of ‘cool’ and grown up. Branding tells the rest of the world that we can afford to buy into Western culture and luxury. Found especially in the economically disadvantaged societies, people want to express money and prove this through their clothes. A simple rule was created stating brands equals money.
Women have always had a massive pressure to be sexually attractive to the opposite sex; females go to a massive length to be considered wanted. Waxing, threading, plucking, bleaching, tanning, the list is endless. In the last decade grooming for males has become more popular.
Everyone is labelled. It is becoming increasingly difficult to dodge stereotypes. Blondes are stupid, is simply one of the many. Woman will be judged just because of their hair colour and people may treat them differently. I find this interesting because I believe it affects everyday life and changes the way people act. It also relates to women in the media and how we rate or slate them even if we don’t know them.
The start of branding also started the birth of hippies, people who wanted to protest against branding completely. Deadlocks and men wearing skirts showed their opinions. Many ‘hippies’ decided to live in vehicles, so as not to consent to the confined space of houses. Home education became much more popular so children did not have the control of school. Life was free of advertisement (TV) and the drum role of everyday normal life. Instead of a desk they wanted to see the wonders of the world.
Where the Girls Are: Growing up female with the mass media by Susan J. Douglas, talks about woman who have been idols for women throughout the decades and have revolutionised life for females.
During her husband’s presidency, Jacqueline Kennedy became a massive style icon and certain clothes such as pillbox hats were quickly tagged as the “Jackie” style. It wasn’t just her sense of style that pushed her to stardom or her marriage. Kennedy wasn’t the typical Disney perfect woman of her time, she had feet twice the since of Cinderella and could speak more languages than her husband.
Douglas then goes onto another huge influence Audrey Hepburn who still is a household name. One of Hepburn largest roles in her career was as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffanys, Golightly is at the height of fashion n the early 1960’s but has a distain for marriage and was flat chested. A party animal who entwines in lots of different circles of people. Often cast against men older than her she always held her won. Renound for her elegant beauty she never relied on her looks. Hepburn was a generous woman who broke the moulds of the media and spoke for herself. In 1988 Hepburn worked for UNICEF.
Another interesting point Douglas made was the feminist demonstration for Women’s liberation at the 1968 Miss American Pageant. The press called them "bra-less bubble heads" but the women were trying to make a valuable point that pagents make the woman nothing more than a piece of meat. Woman around the country responded in masses and increased the woman's organisation by four hundred fold. These are all woman that have changed history for the better and made the life for women better. Women that are at the height of fashion have always been in the limelight of the media and therefore became role models for lots of people, mainly women.
Real Bodies Unite campaigning for body diversity in fashion is a company run in Perth, Australia. They interviewed Vanessa Reece, a plus size model for asos and a single mother aged thirty five. Reece made very valid points: “Fashion is business like any other. They will and do sell the dream, the ideal and they want to make money. They don’t really consider the effect fashion has on society and how it’s portrayed.”
Consuming Cultures, Globalization and Local Lives written by Jeremy Seabrook. Seabrook talks about the threat to cultural diversity and identity around the world including the Western world. The media: mainly films are making all cultures trying to be more like the western world therefore ruining cultural boundaries, languages and customs. Local cultures are being destroyed. Seabrook talks about the fight between local and global. This relates heavily to designers as they are the desirable and are clearly a symbol of western culture, luxury and glamour. McDonalds serves around 50 million people a day in 119 countries. McDonalds is not posh or unattainable but is so popular because everyone can have a piece of it, from famous to homeless.
The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies. Chris Barker, 2004, Sage Publications Ltd London 2004. Looking up the word Style in the Dictionary, Barker brings up some interesting points about how the idea of style was "constituted by the signifying practices of youth subcultures, including the display of codes of meaning achieved via the transformation of commodities as cultural signs". Style identifies your beliefs and identity. Barker describes how punk is a perfect example of this. Punk was a 'revolting style' using black rubbish bags and safety pins. It was responding to the crisis Britain was going through. The Thatcher rein, lack of jobs and poverty was expressed in anger through their clothing. Punk was amazing as it created a youth culture that was completely created by people on the streets and then published by music and designers. Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols became hugely famous. Westwood opened a shop called Sex; it was very shocking at its time.
Barker also goes on to mention the first 'skinheads' who were dressing to like the stressed resources of the working class. Taking the hard lives of the working class and styling it without even realising, wearing boots, jeans and braces. "Their style loyalty of 'the gang' of mates. Barker also argues that the consumerist culture has robbed style of its fun and creativity to be flattened down to become a political question of need and money.
Alexander McQueen who is in my opinion one of the greatest designers, was famous because of his creativity and out of this world designs. “If you ask any lady they want to be taller, they want to be slimmer, you know, and they want a waist. I'm not here to make people look like a sack of potatoes.” –McQueen. His fashion was outlandish and mainly kept to the catwalk and extrovert superstars. Yet people should start to dress differently. Everyone today is generally put into different genres; indie, chav, goth and yahs. What people wear says a lot about them, people judge at first sight. For instance if your are seen in a Abercrombie and Fitch body warmer and a pair of Ugg boots most people would associate them with being in the upper class with parents who drive a Landrover.
“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” - Coco Chanel.
The children’s market is now huge in products and food, advertising to consumer children is a massive business. Children understand branding from a much younger age this year. I have a vivid memory of my little brother at the age of about one, he couldn’t speak properly yet but instead he had his own language which only the close family could understand. For crisps, which was one of his favourite words he would lick his lips and make a “ppsss ppps” noise. In the car on a long drive down to England, my young brother was hungry and bored. Frantically making his noise for crisps I told him that we didn’t have any of his favourite snacks. Slowly realising that driving perfectly beside us was a lorry with a logo for Walkers crisps.
The average American child watches an estimate of 25,000 to 40,000 television advertisements a year. Older woman are trying desperately to look younger while ‘tweens’ (8-12) are trying to look older. ‘Tweens’ are a massive influence and spend more than 30 billion dollars a year. Children will grow up to become the future consumers and therefore marketers try to hook children when they are young so that they grow with a bond to brand and buy it all the way through life. How many people stay with the same bank that they had their first bank account with? Everyone has their favorite brand of butter or juice.
