ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on clothing and personal adornment and appearance, what role they play in the daily lives of fashion-conscious consumers, and the breadth of their exposure to fellow consumers. It discusses fashion as a process in which the fashion system and object as well as fashion-related behaviors are aesthetic representations embedded in consumer culture. Fashion-related behavior can represent a conscious effort to be socially provocative. McCracken's work on meaning transfer suggests that meaning moves from the culturally constituted world via modes of advertising and communication. Scholars consider clothes as integral to the fashion process, and fashion, in turn, as a key element of clothing culture. Consumer scholars have used the sensorial idea of aesthetics to discuss fashion as adornment and the relation between the body and body image. Contemporary fashion theorists examine how fashion, particularly clothing and dress, contribute to the intensification of the normative aesthetics of the body.
