ABSTRACT
The ways young people express themselves through clothing and other forms of bodily decoration has 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 perform identity within a transitory, insecure period of the life course. Yet the details of how and why style is used and how this might be understood are the subject of considerable debate. This chapter outlines some key focal points for 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.
