ABSTRACT
The ways young people use clothing and other forms of bodily decoration as a means of expressing themselves have been an important focus for researchers of youth culture. There is a degree of agreement among scholars that style offers a means for adolescents to explore and express identity within a transitory period of the life course in which the dependencies of childhood gradually are relinquished without yet having fully been replaced by adult routines and responsibilities. Yet the details of how and why style is used and how this should be theorized and understood are the subject of considerable debate. This chapter outlines key elements of such debates, beginning with the influential work of a well-known group of theorists from Birmingham, UK, and developing a number of points of discussion which continue to dominate contemporary research of the subject.
