Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress

Description

Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress explores the complex nexus of fashion and the feeling body from a variety of critical perspectives across fashion studies, anthropology, sociology, design practice, and media studies. It asks such questions as: What does fashion look and feel like in an age dominated by amplified anxiety, isolation, depression, and precariousness? How are feelings woven into clothing and mobilized through fashion practices in ways that might sustain living with a sense of ongoing crisis? Does fashion have the potential to help us reimagine new lifeworlds which might be reinvigorating? In other words, how is fashion engaging with the “bad,” the “good,” and the ambivalent feelings associated with our personal and collective histories, with our troubled political present, and with our imagined future? Despite such diverse and scattered contributions, the potentialities of “feeling” for the study of fashion are still largely neglected. This edited volume seeks to tease out possible avenues of investigation of the clothed body and its representations through the lens of feeling. Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction On Terminology: “Affect,” “Feeling,” “Emotion” Affect Theories Feeling Clothes, Enclothing Feelings Structure of the Book References Part I: Feeling Wardrobe Histories Chapter 2: Closet Feelings References Chapter 3: Militarized Comfort: How to Feel Naked While Wearing Clothes Wartime Comfort Post-WWII Comfort Ordinary Comfort References Chapter 4: Costume Design and Emotional Communication in 1940s British Cinema Ealing Studios and the Changing Relationship Between Audiences and Film Fashions in Post-war British Cinema Hue and Cry: Negotiating the Morality of Desire and Consumption at a Time of Austerity Passport to Pimlico: Navigating Conflicted Emotions Through Out-of-Place Clothes Conclusions References Chapter 5: Can Fashion Feel? The Work and Care of Biotic Clothing An Uneasy Dress Conclusion References Part II: Reparative Fashion Chapter 6: Designing Clothes for and from Love: Disability Justice and Fashion Hacking Cripping Love Love Through Fashion Hacking Centring Collective Access Sharing Knowledge and Resources Holding Intersectional Disabled Stories Self-reflection and Accountability Fashion Hacking as Multidirectional Community Love Practice References Chapter 7: Beading Is Medicine: Beading as Therapeutic and Decolonial Practice A Common Denominator: Beadwork Beading Decolonial Space into Existence Beadwork as a Fashion Practice? Beading as Medicine During the Covid-19 Pandemic References Chapter 8: All that Cloth Can Carry (on a Queer Body) Acknowledgement of Country Guidance for the Reader Introduction Mauri and Aliveness in Fashion Stitching Queer Grief and Trauma Stitching Queer Loss Conclusion: Stitches to Come References Chapter 9: Looking Like a Woman, Feeling Like a Woman, Sensing the Self: Affective and Emotional Dimensions of Dress Therapy Introduction The Impossibility and Indignity of Writing About Other People’s (Vestimentary) Feelings: A Methodological Disclaimer ‘Looking, Feeling, Acting Very Much Better’: Therapy of Fashion ‘If It Can Make Girls Like Me Feel Better About Themselves It Must Be a Good Thing’: Vêtothérapie ‘It Is a Feeling of Security.’: Sensory Stimulation Treatment Conclusion References Author Interviews Part III: Stasis and Transformation in Fashion Chapter 10: Dirty Pretty Things: Stains, Ambivalence and the Traces of Feeling Ambivalent Objects: A Stain and a Dress A Stain on a Dress: Matter, Ambivalence and Shame A Stained Dress: Present Pasts and Things Between Two Times Capturing Stains Conclusion References Chapter 11: Making Peace Sensational: Design for the Nobel Prizes Promoting Swedish Design Sustaining Feelings Fashion Modelling, Climate Modelling References Chapter 12: Glamour Magick, Affective Witchcraft, and Occult Fashion-abilities Magick, Glamour, and the World of Appearances The Energies of Life Glamour Witches and the Magick of Fashion Minding and Embodying Occult Fashion-abilities References Chapter 13: Fashion Studies at a Turning Point Digging Deeper into Subjectivity The Mirror and the Visual Construction of Subjectivity Clothing the Body/Self Through Multisensoriality into the Affects Concluding Remarks References Part IV: Affective Embodiment in Media Chapter 14: Melancholy Fashion Moods in Aotearoa New Zealand Inherited Mood-Worlds Underlying Moodiness Fashioning Cultural Moods Conclusion References Chapter 15: On Boredom and Contemporary Fashion Photography References Chapter 16: Hair Dressing: Fetish, School Uniforms and Shōjo in Cocoon, Entwined The Meanings of Dress in Manga Cocoon, Entwined Shōjo and Emotion Shōjo and the School Uniform Weaving Hair, Dress and the Body School Uniform as a Memory and Fetish Object Conclusion References Chapter 17: “What’s Getting Us Through”: Grazia UK as Affective Intimate Public During the Coronavirus Pandemic Grazia as Intimate Public Feelgood Fashion We’re in This Together Keep Shallow and Carry On References Chapter 18: Afterword References Index