[ecrea] Fashion, Style & Popular Culture 5.3 published

Intellect is delighted to announce that Fashion, Style & Popular
Culture 5.3 is now available! To find out more about the issue, click
here >>https://bit.ly/2PImcgj

This Special Issue is entitled, 'Redefining Fashion: Retail, Luxury,
Sales & Merchandising'.

Content:

Redefining fashion: Retail, luxury, sales and merchandising

Authors: David Loranger
Page Start: 293

A hand-crafted slow revolution: Co-designing a new genre in the luxury world

Authors: Judy Frater And Jana M. Hawley
Page Start: 299

There exists an emerging genre of luxury that speaks to consumers’
desire for products that put a holistic view of sustainability at the
forefront. Today, there are consumers who seek products that are not
only unique and of high quality but also come with a story of the
artisan and the community from which it originates. We argue that a
new genre of luxury is formed as traditional craftsmen are exposed to
the global marketplace and have the opportunity to interact with
consumers who seek high-end or bespoke products. For this to be truly
sustainable, artisans must develop commensurate capabilities. Thus,
the new genre requires ‘co-design’. We use the case of the
International Folk Art Market (IFAM) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United
States, as an example of creating a new luxury craft market, and the
example of an innovative education programme for traditional artisans
in India to show how artisans from remote parts of the world can
increase their capacity to avail such new markets in a way that
sustains them economically and culturally.

The myth of luxury in a fashion world

Authors: Paula Von Wachenfeldt
Page Start: 313

If luxury is more relevant today it is perhaps due to its ubiquitous
presence. This study examines the meaning of luxury and the myth that
surrounds the exclusive goods. How do we classify luxury in relation
to fashion? And how can we recognize a luxury item when most of the
houses apply the same selling strategies as the ones of the fashion
industry? A semiotic analysis of three luxury houses helps us to map
out this blurry landscape and this by looking first at the
sociocultural signs that are characteristic of a luxury brand, and
second, by exploring today’s representations of luxury brands on the
market. Findings indicate that the luxury label today can in reality
only be restricted to a few houses while the myth of luxury is still
trying to blow life in the consumer’s mind.

Chinese young generation’s perceptions and consumption of clothing for
sustainability

Authors: Marilyn DeLong And Juanjuan Wu And Zhenyu Jia And Laureen Gibson
Page Start: 329

This research explored the concept of sustainability related to the
clothing practices of design students attending a university in
Shanghai. Participants included 29 males and 36 female students who
completed a survey about their wearing of specific clothing
categories, their perceptions of the importance of the need for
sustainability in the clothing they wear and sustainable practices
regarding their clothing. Data were analysed, compared between the
genders, and summarized. Within this context, students reported
wearing their clothing a relatively short time while at the same time
considering awareness of clothing sustainability important. Also, the
students’ sustainable practices and strategies were found to be more
geared towards care and use but neglecting purchase decisions and
disposable methods. We postulated that Shanghai economy is influential
as are the student’s expectations for gaining status through their
clothing. These students’ views of sustainability and their clothing
practices are important as they will become designers in the future
and will play a leading role in the fields of applied arts.

The role of the creative director in sustaining the luxury brand

Authors: Alyson Janyne VanderPloeg And Seung-Eun Lee
Page Start: 343

With the influence of mass distribution, short-term product life
cycles and online retailing and marketing communications, the nature
of luxury fashion is becoming more commercialized. This presents a
challenge to luxury brands, whose intrinsic value has been based on
brand heritage, product craftsmanship and exceptional quality. In the
modern luxury fashion industry, the persona of the brand’s creative
director plays an important role in upholding the brand’s value and
image. With their artistic talents, vision and ability to personify
the brand, creative directors have the power to reinterpret the
brand’s iconic symbols and products into new versions appropriate for
the current marketplace. In the increasingly fast-paced industry,
creative directors are facing new roles and responsibilities.
Therefore, this article attempts to address the changing nature of
these roles and responsibilities of creative directors in sustaining
the success of their luxury brand. Based on a model by Kapferer and
Bastien, four aspects of luxury brands that creative directors need to
incorporate into their brand and product strategies were addressed.

Manufacturing fashion: Access and alienation in The September Issue
and Mademoiselle C

Authors: Aimee Williams
Page Start: 359

The following article examines the mechanisms structuring two
thematically similar documentaries: The September Issue and
Mademoiselle C. I consider both documentaries for their common
fixation on the public and private lives of two prominent fashion
editors: American Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and CR Fashion
Book’s Carine Roitfeld. Examining a few key scenes from these
documentaries, I discuss the cinematic techniques that create
illusions of access, discussing the resulting power dynamics
structuring each production.

> From Waverley to Outlander: How Scottish dress became everyone’s dress

Authors: Brenna A. Barks
Page Start: 373

Ethnic dress is usually stringently defined as a particular set of
clothes produced and worn by a specific set of people and their
descendants. It is an instantly recognizable visual representation of
their culture and their heritage. This is no less true of Scottish
tartan and kilts, but Scottish dress today is worn by groups as
diverse as the Scottish people and their descendants and cosplayers
who are fans of the television show, Outlander. Yet wearing of
Scottish dress is no less an expression of these cosplayers’ identity.
The world-wide appeal of a Romantic Scotland can be traced to Sir
Walter Scott’s Waverley. Through a brief history of the invention of
traditional Scottish dress by Scott and others and through interviews
with a diverse range of people who wear Scottish dress this article
will show that Scottish or Scottish-inspired dress is unique in that
it not only represents a culture and history, but that it is malleable
enough to enable a vast array of people to use it to communicate or
even subsume their identities in the broader world.

Event Review

Authors: Ali Khan
Page Start: 389

Has Tokyo Fashion Lost its Moment?: Off the ramp collaborations,
designer parties, AND THE USUAL spectacle of street fashion save an
otherwise inconsistent outing

Exhibition Review

Authors: Harriette Richards
Page Start: 397

Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, 4 May–4 September 2017

Book Reviews

Authors: Christina Lindholm And  Linda Matheson And Arienne McCracken
And Joy Sperling And Jessica Strübel
Page Start: 405

Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence, Elizabeth Currie (2016)
Critical Fashion Practice: From Westwood to Van Beirendonck, Adam
Geczy and Vicki Karaminas (2017)
Street Fashion Moscow, Elena Siemens (with a foreword by Eliot
Borenstein) (2017)
Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern, Wanda M. Corn (2017)
Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease, Carolyn
A. Day (2017)

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