Fashion History and Culture
In the fashion industry, there are a variety of cultural intermediaries such as fashion journalists, designers, and leaders, as well as sites of consumption such as shopping malls, and stores which have long played a crucial role in determining the taste and fashion trends in consumer cultures. While early theories of fashion, such as Simmel’s (1971) and Veblen’s (1953) theories of dress have examined the social dynamics with which certain fashion trends arise through means of “emulation”, their theories cannot account for the complexity of contemporary global cultural flows, which bring about ever-increasing capacities for mediation (Appadurai, 1996). In his book Modernity at Large (1996), Arjun Appadurai argues that the interaction between global cultural and economic flows are multidimensional, operating in different –scapes (Appadurai, 1996), all of which complicate the relationship between production and consumption in which culture, industry, and economy merge. As a result, the increasing complexity of cultural intermediation practices demands closer attention in the contemporary context.
While an increasing body of literature has considered the role of cultural intermediaries, especially in determining their role in influencing consumers’ needs and desires, the role of emotion in cultural intermediation has received less attention. According to Eva Illouz (2009), however, a “variety and complex mix of emotions lie at the heart of consumption” (Illouz, 2009, p. 394) which makes it important to understand consumption through an emotional lens. Furthermore, Michael Hardt (1999) has proposed that cultural industries in the postmodern society produce and manage effects through means of “affective labour” (Hardt, 1999) which complicates the relationship between consumption and production even further.
Therefore, it will be the objective of this Capstone to better understand the contemporary demands for fashion and dress through means of looking more closely at the role of emotion and affect in cultural intermediation. The consideration of emotion and affect within cultural intermediation can generate more profound insights into the ways in which culture interacts with both, consumer practices and production processes through cultural intermediation. The goal of this capstone, hence, will be to look at how cultural intermediaries specifically within the fashion industry use affect and emotion in order to influence contemporary consumer culture.
Modern Fashion Industry
I particularly chose to look at the contemporary fashion industry because as Rebecca Louise Breuer (2015) highlights, looking at affect and emotion bears the potential to reveal the “false depths” (Breuer, 2015, p. 258) that the fashion industry creates through forms of intermediation, such as branding and advertising. According to her, contemporary thinking about fashion can be characterized by a “relentless focus[sing] on what fashion means or signifies rather than what it does” (Breuer, 2015, p. 259). An overemphasis on the aesthetics of fashion can thus disguise the underlying social relations on which consumption and production practices rest. To her, illuminating the affective mechanisms involved in fashion consumption offers a way of revealing the relationship between contemporary fashion consumer culture and the exploitation and inequalities in the global economic system (Breuer, 2015). As such, my research can contribute to challenging the global social inequalities through which the fashion industry is sustained.
