Notes on The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Social Theory (Entwistle 2015)
The Fashioned Body: Key Concepts and Approaches (Notes from Entwistle 2015)
Theorizing Fashion and Dress
Fashion/dress are interrelated: dress works on the living body and fashion discourses shape how the body is understood and presented.
Sociological tension: structure vs agency. Structures (the fashion system) set parameters; individuals can creatively interpret and practice dress within those constraints.
Terminology varies across disciplines: fashion, dress, clothing, costume, adornment, decoration, style.
Anthropological vs sociological/historical usage: dress/adornment often linked to universal or cross-cultural concerns; fashion linked to a Western modernity system of dress.
In practice, literature uses terms interchangeably, with no consensus on precise definitions.
Aims of the chapter: (1) address the lack of sociological research on fashion and dress; (2) summarize literature from anthropology, art history, cultural studies, and social psychology in relation to fashion and dress.
Defining the Terms: Dress and Fashion
Preliminary distinctions between dress and fashion, and their interrelation:
Dress denotes the act of clothing the body; it can be aesthetic (adornment) and functional.
Fashion denotes a system of dress—historically/geographically specific to Western modernity—emerging in Europe and developing with mercantile capitalism.
Competing definitions and cross-disciplinary tensions:
Anthropologists (Roach and Eicher; Polhemus and Proctor; Barnes and Eicher) favor terms like dress/adornment, seeking universals of bodily modification.
Modernity disciplines (sociology, cultural studies, psychology) argue fashion is a distinctive system for provisioning clothes.
Key terms and distinctions:
Dress: signals an act; emphasizes the process of covering; can include aesthetic/adornment aspects (Roach and Eicher, 1965).
Adornment: emphasizes aesthetic alteration of the body.
Fashion: a historically/geographically specific system for producing and organizing dress; linked to Western modernity (14th century onward) and to social mobility, capitalism, and court/fashion dynamics.
Debates and cross-fertilization: some scholars (e.g., Barnes and Eicher) resist treating fashion as a universal system; others (sociology/history/cultural studies/psychology) treat fashion as a distinct system with its own production/consumption relations. Barnes & Eicher critique/controversy over whether fashion is merely changing dress (vs. a separate system).
The fashion system endows garments with beauty and desirability; aesthetics weave into daily practice of dressing.
Defining Fashion (Detailed)
Polhemus & Proctor vs. Barnes & Eicher on the term ‘fashion’: Polhemus/Proctor: fashion is a special system of dress tied to Western modernity; Barnes & Eicher: fashion is not simply a subset of dress, cautions against equating fashion with all changing dress (criticizing the idea that only complex technology societies have fashion).
Western modernity: fashion emerges as a distinct system during the 14th century European courts, especially in the French court of Louis XIV, and evolves with capitalism.
The fashion system includes production, distribution, marketing, and retail; it interlinks with technology, economy, and culture.
Internal logic: fashion is characterized by regular and systemic change; rapid/continual change distinguishes fashion from traditional dress (Flügel’s fixed vs. modish distinction; used by Wilson and others).
Counterpoints and debates:
Barnes & Eicher critique that fashion is not exclusive to “advanced” societies and that fashion-like change can occur in scarification or other adornment in non-Western cultures (but this is contested by a Western-centered view of the fashion system).
Craik argues against ethnocentrism, urging broader consideration of non-Western fashion systems; critiques narrow Western focus on haute couture.
Key consensus: fashion is a historically/geographically specific system of dress, tied to social mobility, distinct production/consumption relations, and a pattern of rapid change.
The “fashion system” (Leopold; Fine & Leopold) is a hybrid/complex network including production, distribution, marketing, and cultural processes; requires an integrated approach across technology, politics, economics, social context, and individuals.
Acknowledgement of alternate positions: some scholars (Craik; Barnes & Eicher) challenge the idea that fashion is exclusively Western or exclusively a separate system; differences in definitions reflect disciplinary lenses.
Everyday Dress and Fashion
Relationship: the fashion system provides raw material for everyday dress and also shapes discourses and aesthetics around garments.
The fashion system endows clothes with meaning beyond commodity status; a style becomes fashion when it is worn and recognized as fashion.
The fashion system structures most experiences of everyday dress, with exceptions in traditional or religious contexts.
Even “old-fashioned” or oppositional dress has meaning through its relationship to dominant aesthetics.
Anti-fashion and continuity: not all dress tied to anti-fashion; classed anti-fashion (e.g., Burberry’s enduring style) shows continuity and resistance within the broader system.
The historical three-stage view of fashion (Tseëlon): classical (14th–18th c.), modernist, postmodernist.
Classical vs. modern/postmodern: earlier periods show clearer hierarchies; modern/postmodern periods show more complex contestation of dress and social hierarchy.
Classic analysis (Flügel 1930): fixed dress (traditional) vs. modish dress (change-for-change’s-sake); critiques of simplistic use of ‘fixed’ vs. ‘modish’ for all cultures; modernity sees rapid change.
Polhemus & Proctor: differentiate between fashion and anti-fashion; critique equating change with fashion.
Bell: European dress since the 14th century shows variation; traditional Chinese dress was less change-driven; cautions against sweeping universal claims.
The critique of scarification fashion: some argue that scarification fashions show changing styles; however, this is argued to be different in pace and logic than Western fashion.
Critiques of ethnocentrism in fashion definitions; a narrow Western focus ignores broader non-Western dress systems.
Conclusion: fashion is a historically/geographically specific system with its own production/consumption relations and logic of change; traditional dress can exhibit change but not at Western rates or with Western logic.
Everyday Dress and Social Factors: Class, Taste, and Body
Everyday dress is mediated by multiple social factors beyond fashion: class, income, gender, ethnicity, age, occupation, body shape, historical ties to national costume, social context (weddings, funerals, job interviews, hiking, etc.).
Class and dress: clothing can mark class; upper classes may use anti-fashion or “traditional quality” to signal status (e.g., Burberry trench). Yet anti-fashion can be temporarily co-opted by fashion circuits.
Cultural capital and taste: taste is bodily and linked to comfort with fabrics; higher cultural capital helps discern quality (e.g., Savile Row vs. high-street). Cultural capital reinforces class distinctions even as casual wear blurs lines.
Habitus (Bourdieu): bodily dispositions reproduce class position; class has material aspects (income) and symbolic aspects (taste, quality expectations).
Subcultures and peer groups: youth subcultures deploy “subcultural capital” to interpret and understand style; Hebdige’s work on subcultures shows how commodities are inflected with subcultural meaning (e.g., teddy boys’ use of Savile Row suit; mods, punks, etc.).
Occupation and dress: some jobs require uniforms; professionals may have looser codes but often interpret dress within contexts; professional dress seen as rational and enabling career progression in some studies (Entwistle 2000).
Context matters: individuals adapt dress for different occasions; the social situation constrains choices and can create “rules” of dress.
Gender as a central factor: fashion is obsessed with gender; skirts as a highly gendered piece; gender codes vary by context; dress decisions reflect intersecting factors (class, occupation, subculture).
Overall: fashion is important but not the sole determinant of everyday dress; a wide range of social factors mediates clothes choices.
Approaches to Fashion and Dress
Sociology’s historical neglect of fashion: fashion is often treated as an arts-domain issue rather than social science; yet fashion has significant social impact on body presentation and daily life.
Reasons for neglect: sociology prioritized action and rationality, undervaluing the body as object of sociological inquiry; body decoration often seen as trivial or ephemeral; gendered/feminine associations contributed to neglect.
Three broad approaches to fashion literature (not defined by discipline but by questions):
Why questions: basic explanations for why people wear clothes; often lead to simplistic, reductive accounts.
Modernity: explains fashion in relation to modernity and identity in rapid change; can be overly theoretical and neglect everyday practice and embodiment.
Practice-oriented: focuses on specific dress practices and meanings in cultures; can be ethnographic but may miss Western fashion systems.
Theoretical Approaches I: Why Questions and their Answers
Anthropological explanations: protection, modesty, display/communication; critiques note universal claims are problematic (e.g., modesty varies by culture).
Psychological explanations: Flügel (1930) emphasizes decoration/display, ambivalence of modesty and exhibition; ties to psychoanalytic views of symbolism of dress.
The notion that dress communicates via symbolic systems has become dominant in anthropology and fashion theory.
Fashion histories seek to explain why fashion changes; theories include Veblen’s conspicuous consumption; Simmel’s tension between uniformity and differentiation; Laver’s erogenous-zone theory; Polhemus & Proctor’s anti-fashion; etc.
Problems with ‘Why’ explanations
Methodological naivety and overly simplistic, linear narratives; single-cause explanations (status, erogenous zones, neurotic symbolism).
Gendered literature often portrays women as passive recipients of fashion (e.g., Veblen; Laver) or morally judged (vanity).
The risk of ethnocentrism and universalizing fashion as the sole driver of dress changes.
They often neglect agency, practice, and embodied experiences; they generalize dress across contexts and fail to capture everyday negotiation and resistance.
Situated Practice: a preferred framework
Dress is best understood as a situated practice—the product of complex social forces and personal negotiations in daily life.
The fashion system imposes constraints, but individuals creatively interpret and respond within those constraints.
Dress and Fashion as Communication
Dress as universal human practice: universal propensity to communicate through symbols; dress functions as part of expressive culture.
The language analogy: some theorists (Davis, Polhemus & Proctor, Rouse) describe fashion as akin to a language with a grammar and vocabulary; others critique this analogy as overly literal and potentially misleading.
Problems with language models for fashion: clothes do not map neatly onto sentences; meanings are ambiguous and context-bound; misreading is common (Tseëlon; Campbell).
Structuralist/semiotic approaches (Barthes, Saussure): signs gain meaning through differences; the signifier and signified; fashion texts (magazines, advertisements, photographs) analyzed as texts rather than lived practices.
Limitations of text-focused approaches: they bracket embodied experience, practice, and the body; risk of distance from actual practices and agency; inability to explain how meanings are lived and transformed in daily life.
Barthes’ choice of fashion texts (written descriptions) for “structural purity” but acknowledges it neglects industry and everyday practice.
The critique of textual/structural approaches: reality of embodied dress, fieldwork insights, and the need to integrate practice with textual analysis.
Approaches II: Fashion and the Condition of Modern Life
Modernity and identity: fashion as integral to modernity/postmodernity; self-presentation and identity in rapidly changing social contexts.
Wilson (Adorned in Dreams, 2007): critiques simplistic theories (emulation, Zeitgeist, language) and emphasizes modernity as a better lens to understand fashion’s purposive and creative aspects; fashion as a name for the restless desire for change in industrial capitalism.
Sennett (Fall of Public Man, 1977): display and self-presentation in the city; the public-private split; authenticity in public life; dress as a performance and a site for displaying self.
Finkelstein (1991): authenticating narratives linking appearance with identity; debates around physiognomy and body-reading; modern practice of cosmetic alteration and self-presentation.
Elias (civilizing process): bodily control and refined appearance as markers of status and civility; prehistory to Sennett/Finkelstein analyses; body as site of status and distinction.
Featherstone (1991): performing self; photography, film, cosmetics contribute to attention on body, youth, and beauty; emergence of a “performing self” in modernity.
Shilling (body projects): dieting, bodybuilding, and other practices to shape appearance and personal satisfaction; ongoing importance of body management in modern life.
Giddens and Beck (identity as a reflexive project): modern identity framed as ongoing reflexive work; appearance becomes central to self-construction.
Empirical versus theoretical work: much of this literature is theoretical; Tseëlon (1997) provides rare empirical work focusing on self-presentation and women’s dress in daily life; emphasizes situated practice.
Empirical Approaches
Two main empirical traditions:
Anthropology: ethnographic studies of dress meanings, gender construction, maternity wear, veiling, etc., in diverse cultures (Callaway; Hoodfar; Weiner & Schnieder; Lewis; Tarlo & Moors).
Social psychology: studies on wardrobe choices, appearance and interpersonal communication; e.g., Cash (1985) and Ericksen & Joseph (1985) use hypothesis-testing methods to examine grooming and professional dress; critiques note methodological naivety and lack of subjective meaning for wearers.
Limitations of some empirical studies: hypothesis-testing frameworks risk shallow interpretations; neglect of subjective meaning and everyday lived experience.
Call for integrated empirical work: to understand fashion/dress as embodied, situational practice rather than abstract theory alone.
Summary and Synthesis
The literature on fashion and dress is diverse and interdisciplinary; fashion is a hybrid subject combining industry/production, culture, aesthetics, consumption, and body practices.
Early theories of fashion tended toward reductive, universalizing accounts; approaches grounded in modernity provide more nuanced understandings but can be too theoretical and detached from embodied practice.
A robust account should foreground the embodied, everyday, situated practice of dress while acknowledging the structural influence of the fashion system and social forces (class, gender, race, occupation).
The goal is a sociology of dress as situated bodily practice: to explain how dress is produced and interpreted in daily life, how individuals creatively manage and resist fashion, and how fashion structures experience while being simultaneously shaped by individual agency.
Notable Concepts and Definitions (Key Terms)
Dress: the act of clothing the body; process of covering; can include aesthetic/adornment aspects.
Adornment: aesthetic alteration of the body; emphasis on beautification and ornamentation.
Fashion: a historically/geographically specific system for the production and organization of dress; linked to Western modernity, social mobility, and rapid/regular change; includes production, distribution, marketing, and consumption networks.
The fashion system: industrial/marketing/distribution network that produces and circulates clothing and related discourses; seen as a hybrid, requiring integrated study of technology, economics, culture, and social relations.
Habitus (Bourdieu): bodily dispositions reflecting class; helps reproduce social position through everyday practices and tastes.
Cultural capital (Bourdieu): knowledge and dispositions that enable recognition of quality; mediates dress choices and class distinction.
Subcultural capital (Thornton; Hebdige): resources and knowledge within youth subcultures that shape style and its meanings.
Anti-fashion vs. fashion (Polhemus & Proctor): anti-fashion refers to styles that resist or diverge from mainstream fashion; often associated with lasting/class-related symbolism.
Fixed vs. modish dress (Flügel): traditional vs. change-driven fashion; critique of simplistic dichotomies.
Erogenous zone / shifting erogenous zone (Laver): explanations for rapid change in women’s fashion; contested as overly deterministic and insufficient to explain non-erotic styles (e.g., workwear).
Literature on fashion as communication: signs, grammar, vocabulary; semiotics and structuralism for analyzing fashion texts and signs; limits when applied to lived practice.
Key Examples and Historical References (Illustrative Dimensions)
Louis XIV and the emergence of fashion as a system in Western Europe (14th–18th c. development).
The corset and Victorian dress as focal points in debates about women’s agency and erotic display (Kunzle; Steele; Veblen).
The Burberry trench as an example of anti-fashion signals across class groups (Polhemus & Proctor, 1978).
The New Look and Dior in the postwar era; debates about the zeitgeist and fashion’s relationship to social change (Bell; Richardson & Kroeber; Laver).
Subcultural dress: teddy boys, mods, punks, and the ways in which these groups inflect mainstream fashion with their own meanings (Hebdige).
Modern identity and self-presentation: Sennett’s public/private shift; Finkelstein’s authenticating narratives; Featherstone’s performing self; Giddens’ reflexive self.
Ethical, Philosophical, and Practical Implications
Fashion as a site where gender, class, race, and occupation intersect; dress practices can reproduce or resist social hierarchies.
The tension between individuality and social conformity is central to dress practices; fashion simultaneously enables self-expression and participates in normative social orders.
Critical perspectives on fashion often raise concerns about vanity, moral judgments, and the feminine association with fashion; contemporary scholarship seeks to recognize agency and pleasure in dress while acknowledging social constraints.
The globalization of fashion raises questions about cultural imperialism vs. cross-cultural exchange; debates about ethnocentrism in defining what counts as fashion.
Practical implications: dress acts as a tool for social navigation in daily life (work, weddings, funerals, interviews); understanding dress as situated practice helps explain how people negotiate appearance in diverse contexts.
Form and Style of the Notes
These notes summarize key ideas from the transcript, organizing concepts under top-level headings with bullet points for clarity.
Mathematical/numerical references are represented with LaTeX in contexts such as century notations and period ranges.
The aim is to provide a comprehensive, interconnected overview that can substitute for the original source in study preparation.
Quick Reference: Centuries and Periodization (LaTeX-ized)
The fashion system’s Western emergence: 14^{ ext{th}} ext{ to } 18^{ ext{th}} ext{ century} in European courts, notably under Louis XIV, with development through mercantile capitalism.
Classical fashion period: 14^{ ext{th}} ext{ to } 18^{ ext{th}} ext{ century}
Modernist and postmodernist phases: later stages described in Tseëlon (1992a).
Connections to Other Lectures/Foundations
Builds on the idea that fashion is a hybrid, bridging production/consumption, aesthetics, and social structure.
Relates to broader sociological themes of structure vs agency, social stratification, and identity construction in modern life.
Ties to anthropological debates on universals of adornment vs. culture-specific meanings; complements discussions on body, identity, and embodiment across disciplines.
Cross-References and Further Reading (from transcript)
Entwistle, J. (2015). The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Social Theory. Polity Press. Ebook pages 73–108; Printed pages 1–35.
Turner (1985) on anthropology vs sociology; universals vs historicity.
Bell (1976), Flügel (1930), Simmel (1971), Veblen (1953), Wilson (2007) on fashion’s social functions and historical development.
Polhemus & Proctor (1978); Barnes & Eicher (1992) on terms and universal claims; Craik (1993) critiques of ethnocentrism.
Leopold (1992); Fine & Leopold (1993) on materialist, hybrid nature of the fashion system.
Hebdige (1979) on subcultures and style; Thornton (1995) on subcultural capital.
Sennett (1977); Finkelstein (1991); Giddens (1991); Beck (1992); Featherstone (1991) on modernity, identity, and the body.
Tseëlon (1997, 2012) on empirical approaches to self-presentation; Cash (1985); Ericksen & Joseph (1985) on female professional dress.
Davis (1992) on dress as communication and the limits of language models in fashion
Final Thought
A comprehensive study of fashion and dress should attend to both the structural influences of the fashion system and the embodied, everyday practices through which individuals interpret, negotiate, and sometimes resist fashion in daily life.