ABSTRACT

AS T H E A R E A O F F A S H I O N S T U D I E S gradually sheds its under-valued status to become a valid concern of different academic disciplines – indeed, the journal Fashion Theory would have had no forum ten years ago – there is obviously a need for more investigation and informed discussion. ‘Fashion’ as a term has several connotations, some specific, others far wider and this anthology aims to span both types. In the early days of Hollywood, to entice women to the cinema, short films were made about fashion shows and what we would now call ‘lifestyle’. Interestingly, perhaps, these have turned out to be the dominant concerns of this book. At the end of the twentieth century, on both sides of the Atlantic, there has been a proliferation of television shows about home making and makeovers, clothes, cooking and now gardening. The assumption is, many would think, that such programmes as Home Front, Changing Rooms, Delia Smith’s How to Cook, Better Homes, Real Gardens, Looking Good and She’s Gotta Have It are aimed at a largely female audience. Although gardens and chefs’ kitchens are traditionally male domains (whilst ‘cooking’ is a feminine activity, ‘being a chef’ tends to be a masculine one), the lifestyle and clothes strands are presented by women. Until the 1980s (with exceptions) fashion and clothing were likewise perceived as areas of specifically feminine interest. Both of these may turn out to have been misplaced assumptions. Given a wide brief, more of our contributors than we would have predicted chose to write about issues around masculinity: male images and icons, patterns of male consumption and shopping, footballers, fashionable men of history. The whole notion of ‘fashion’ and what constitutes the fashionable has shifted.