{"id":32,"date":"2012-04-03T12:43:30","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T16:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/?p=32"},"modified":"2019-09-27T11:55:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T15:55:18","slug":"fashionable-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/2012\/04\/03\/fashionable-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Fashionable words"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Here at FIT, we all think about fashion a lot. Which is different from how I grew up. I remember my mom always taking time to point out well-made fabric, thick seam allowances, good linings and natural fibers. She\u2019d learned this stuff from her grandmother, who was a dressmaker in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in the 1890s. But I ended up with a lot of clothes I might not have bought if they weren\u2019t so beautifully made AND ON SALE. It took me until I was a design student here (1 year student, Fashion Design \u201988) till someone said to me, \u201cwhy don\u2019t you choose your glasses for how they look?\u201d\u00a0 See, I\u2019d been thinking about what I wore from the point of view of \u201cis it a good deal and do I like it enough?\u201d But \u201cfashion\u201d is more about \u201cdoes this garment-tattoo-music-phone-accessory say what I want it to say about me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth<\/a>
Elizabeth O’Hara, c. 1897<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
My great-grandmother, Elizabeth O’Hara,was a dressmaker <\/strong><\/address>\n
in Greenpoint in the 1890s<\/strong><\/address>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fashion and design are about a lot of things. In this blog, I\u2019m going to talk about how different writers perceive them. Because, truth is, writers don\u2019t even agree about what the word \u201cfashion\u201d means.<\/p>\n

What is Fashion?<\/em><\/p>\n

The term fashion<\/em> can be understood to mean ‘clothing styles that change in swift succession’ (Johnson 2003, p.11).\u00a0 It sometimes is used synonymously with the word dress<\/em> to refer to ‘an assemblage of modifications and supplements to the body, including such things as coiffed hair, painted skin, tattoos, garments, jewelry and accessories’ (Roach-Higgins 1995, p. 7) arranged in ‘a formal arrangement that \u201cexpresses the aesthetics and customs of a cultural period.\u201d’ (Schreier1989, p.2).\u00a0 According to Stephen Greenblatt, ties between the ideas of fashion<\/em> and identity<\/em> parallel \u201cetymological changes in the word fashion <\/em>itself: \u2018As a term for the action or process of making, for particular features or appearance, for a distinct style or pattern, the word had long been in use, but it is in the sixteenth century that the word fashion<\/em> seems to come into wide currency as a way of redesigning the forming of a self.\u2019” (quoted in Breward 1995, p.69)\u00a0 And if you think about it,\u00a0 fashion<\/em> is the primary framework through which human beings read and understand the concepts of masculine or feminine.<\/p>\n

We’re going to talk about a lot of stuff in this blog, because FIT is a place where fashion<\/em> means not just a set of business practices and an industry that employs a lot of people, but also refers to the way design<\/em> applies to clothing, toys, milk cartons, chairs and walls, ad campaigns, shoes, annual reports, tatoos, children’s books and on and on and on.<\/p>\n

More reading (all to be found in the Gladys Marcus Library, of course!):<\/em><\/p>\n

Barnes, Ruth and Joanne B. Eicher, ed. Dress and Gender, Making and Meaning in Cultural Contexts.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>Providence and Oxford:\u00a0 Berg, 1993.
\nGT 525 .D74 1993<\/p>\n

Breward, Christopher.\u00a0 <\/em>The Culture of Fashion<\/strong>.\u00a0 <\/em>Manchester and New York: University of Manchester Press, 1995.
\nGT 511 .B74 1995<\/p>\n

Cordwell, Justine M. and Ronald A. Schwarz, eds.\u00a0 The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment.<\/strong>\u00a0 <\/em>Paris and New York: Mouton, 1979.
\nGT 525 .F32 1979<\/p>\n

Crane, Diana.\u00a0 Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing<\/strong>.\u00a0 <\/em>Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
\nGT 525 .C75 2000<\/p>\n

Johnson, Kim K. P.; Susan Torntore; and Joanne B. Eicher, eds. \u00a0 Fashion Foundations, Early Writings on Fashion and Dress<\/strong>.<\/em>\u00a0 Oxford and New York:\u00a0 Berg, 2003.
\nPN56 .C684 F37 2003<\/p>\n

Jones, Jennifer M.\u00a0\u00a0 Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France<\/strong>.\u00a0 <\/em>Oxford and New York: Berg, <\/em>2004.
\nGT 860 .J65 2004<\/p>\n

Kidwell, Claudia Brush and Valerie Steele, eds. \u00a0 Men and Women, Dressing the Part.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
\nGT 605 .M45 1989<\/p>\n

Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen; Joanne B. Eicher; and Kim K. P. Johnson, eds.\u00a0 Dress and Identity<\/strong>.\u00a0 <\/em>New York: Fairchild Publications, 1995.
\nGT 524 .D74<\/p>\n

Schreier, Barbara A.\u00a0 \u201cIntroduction.\u201d<\/strong> In Men and Women, Dressing the Part<\/strong>, <\/em>ed. Claudia Brush Kidwell and Valerie Steele, 1-5.\u00a0 Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
\nGT 605 .M45 1989<\/p>\n

Taylor, Lou. \u00a0 The Study of Dress History<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 Manchester and New York:\u00a0 Manchester University Press, 2002.
\nGT511 .T39 2002<\/p>\n

The magazines ‘Fashion Theory<\/em>‘, ‘Dress<\/em>‘, ‘Costume’ & ‘Textile History<\/em>‘ have lots of articles on this subject.\u00a0 You can find them at the Periodicals desk on the 4th floor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here at FIT, we all think about fashion a lot. Which is different from how I grew up. I remember my mom always taking time to point out well-made fabric, thick seam allowances, good linings and natural fibers. She\u2019d learned this stuff from her grandmother, who was a dressmaker in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in the 1890s. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[147,36079,14184],"tags":[14204,36157,8641,14203,14225,47761,14199,9887,7724,12312],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fashion","category-silk-road","category-libraries","tag-brooklyn","tag-design","tag-dress","tag-dressmakers","tag-fashion-history","tag-fashion-theory","tag-gender","tag-history","tag-research","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hRtx-w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/volumesandissues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}