Fashion Forward

Edited by
Alissa de Witt-Paul & Mira Crouch
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
Alissa de Wit-Paul
Part I: Forward Discourse
This Is Not a Hat: Towards a Haptic Methodology 3
in Fashion Theory
Kim Cunningham
Fashion and Philosophical Deconstruction: A Fashion 13 In-Deconstruction
Flavia Loscialpo
Fashion Criticism Today? 29
Johannes Reponen
Fashion and the New in Vogue and Vanity Fair 41
Aurélie Van de Peer
What’s in a Narrative? Interpreting Yohji Yamamoto 57
in the Museum
Alexis Romano
Part 2: Historical Fashion
Reconfiguration Theory: An Archaeological Perspective 71
on Changes in Dress
C. T. Rooijakkers
Show Ponies and Centaurs: The Male Dandy Revisited 85
Jess Berry
Little Lord Fauntleroy: The Defence of a Fashion Victim 99
Kristen Stewart
Girlies and Grannies: Kate Greenaway and Children’s 111
Dress in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain
Rebecca Perry
Not Entirely Subversive: Rock Military Style from 123
Hendrix to Destiny’s Child
Michael A. Langkjær
Second Skins: Spandex Pants and the New 137
American Woman
Ericka Basile
Part 3: Fashion Forward
Culture and Fashion: A Case Study on Greek Designer 153
Yannis Tseklenis
Evangelia N. Georgitsoyanni & Sofia Pantouvaki
From Cameron to Convergence: Photo-Narrative 165
with Fantasy and Role-Play
Sarah Hand
The Fashion of Virtual Space & Place 177
Chana Etengoff
Rundle and Return: The Hybrid Tiger of SA Fashion 189
Erica de Greef
Part 4: Consumption and Luxury
Co-Creating Emotions: Value Creation in 205
Fashion Marketing
Constantin-Felix von Maltzahn
Defining the Fashion City: Fashion Capital or 219
Style Centre?
Nathaniel Dafydd Beard
Developing the Perfect Fashion Archive 233
Claire Evans
The Future of Fashion: Something out of Nothing? 243
Karen Marie Heard
The Future of Eco-Fashion: A Design-Driven Approach 255
Desiree Smal
Sustainable Fashion in the Building Design Professions 263
Alissa de Wit-Paul
Part 5: Creation of Identities
Use of Skin Whitening Products among African People: 279
Research in Italy and the Congo
Giovanni Vassallo
Gastronomic Fashions, Luxury Concepts, Consumption 287
Practices and the Construction of Identity
Cecilia Winterhalter
Fashion as Confession: Revelation and Concealment 297
in Personal Identity
Lucy Collins
Italian Haute Couture: First Attempts of Emancipation 303
from France (1906-1959)
Luca Lo Sicco
Part 6: Identity of Creation
Retro Fashion: A Way to Deal with History and 315
Construct Identities? Case Study of Denis Simachev,
the Soviet Retro Fashion Brand
Ekaterina Kalinina
Conceptual Resistance of Hussein Chalayan within 329
the Ephemeral World of Fashion
Şölen Kipöz and Deniz Güner
Style Surfing & Changing Parameters of Fashion 343
Communication: Where Have They Gone?
Claire Allen
Chinese Clothes for Chinese Women: Fashioning the 353
qipao in 1930s China
Wessie Ling
Part 7: Depiction Media
First Lady Fashion: How the U.S. Embraced 369
Michelle Obama
Alisa K. Braithwaite
This chapter explores the concept of ‘deconstruction’ and its implications in contemporary
fashion. Since its early popularization, in the 1960s, philosophical deconstruction has traversed
different soils, from literature to cinema, from architecture to all areas of design. The possibility
of a fertile dialogue between deconstruction and diverse domains of human creation is ensured
by the asystematic and transversal character of deconstruction itself, which does not belong to a
sole specific discipline, and neither constitutes per se a body of specialistic knowledge. When, in
the early 1980s, a new generation of independent thinking designers made its appearance on the
fashion scenario, it seemed to incarnate a sort of ‘distress’ in comparison to the fashion of the
times. Influenced by the minimalism of their own art and culture, designers Rei Kawakubo,
Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and, later in the decade, the Belgian Martin Margiela pioneered
what can legitimately be considered a fashion revolution. By the practicing of deconstructions,
such designers have disinterred the mechanics of the dress structure and, with them, the
mechanisms of fascinations that haunt fashion. The disruptive force of their works resided not
only in their undoing the structure of a specific garment, in renouncing to finish, in working
through subtractions or displacements, but also, and above all, in rethinking the function and the
meaning of the garment itself. With this, they inaugurated a fertile reflection questioning the
relationship between the body and the garment, as well as the concept of ‘body’ itself. Just like
Derrida’s deconstruction, the creation of a piece via deconstruction implicitly raises questions
about our assumptions regarding fashion, showing that there is no objective standpoint, outside
history, from which ideas, old concepts, as well as their manifestations, can be dismantled,
repeated or reinterpreted. This constant dialogue with the past is precisely what allows designers
practicing deconstruction to point to new landscapes. Key Words: Deconstruction, Derrida, la
mode Destroy, body, mechanisms of fascination, consumer culture, history. ***** 1. The Germs
of Deconstruction Deconstruction, as a philosophical practice, has spread its influence far
beyond the borders of philosophy and academic speculation. Since its early popularization, in the
1960s, it h as traversed different soils, from literature to cinema, from architecture to all areas of
design. 14 Fashion and Philosophical Deconstruction
__________________________________________________________________ The term
‘deconstruction’ possesses a particular philosophical pedigree, and its history of effects has been
widely documented and meticulously investigated. This is not merely casual. Well known is in
fact the resistance of Jacques Derrida, father of deconstruction, to provide a definition of it, and
thus to surrender to the original Platonic question trying to fix the essence (ti esti) of the things
that has long permeated Western metaphysics. Rather than being a methodology, an analysis, or
even a critique, deconstruction is eminently an activity, that is, a reading of the text, which shows
that the text is not a discrete whole, but has more than one interpretation, and very often many
conflicting interpretations. In any context in which it is at work, the a-systematic character of the
deconstructive reading emerges in its putting into question and in re-thinking a series of
opposing terms, such as subject-object, nature-culture, presence-absence, inside-outside, which
are all elements of a conceptual metaphysical hierarchy.1 The ‘deconstruction’ pursued by
Derrida is indeed connected to another disrupting philosophical project, that is, the
phenomenological ‘destruction’. In the philosophical tradition, destruction (Destruktion), as
Heidegger explains, is a peculiar disinterring and bringing to light the un-thought and un-said in
a way that recalls an authentic experience of what is ‘originary’.2 The Heideggerian destruction
and the deconstruction outlined by Derrida ultimately converge, fused by the same intention of
mining the petrified layers of metaphysics that have for centuries dominated philosophy.
Nevertheless, the deconstructive practice never finds an end, and is rather an open and complex
way of proceeding.3 In an interview released to Christopher Norris in 1988, on the occasion of
the International Symposium on Deconstruction (London), Derrida says: deconstruction goes
through certain social and political structures, meeting with resistance and displacing institutions
as it does so. I think that in these forms of art, and in any architecture, to deconstruct traditional
sanctions – theoretical, philosophical, cultural – effectively, you have to displace…I would say
‘solid’ structures, not only in the sense of material structures, but ‘solid’ in the sense of cultural,
pedagogical, political, economic structures.4 Spoken, written or visual language could in fact be
the embodiment of forms of power and hierarchical systems of thought that have become so
embedded in the language and in our consciousnesses that are now even hardly recognizable.
The task of deconstruction is therefore to question the authoritarian foundations on which these
structures are based, disclosing new possibilities of signification and representation. Among the
fixed binary oppositions that deconstruction seeks to undermine are ‘language-thought’,
‘practice-theory’, ‘literature-criticism’, ‘signifier-signified’. According to Derrida, the signifier
and signified, in fact, do Flavia Loscialpo
__________________________________________________________________ 15 not give
birth to a co nsistent set of correspondences, for the meaning is never found in the signifier in its
full being: it is within it, and yet is also absent.5 The ideas conveyed by deconstruction have
profoundly influenced literature, related design areas of architecture, graphic design, new media,
film theory and fashion design. Derrida’s relationship with the domain of aesthetics runs indeed
alongside his deconstructive work practiced on contemporary philosophy: at first with The Truth
in Painting (1981), then with Memoires of the Blind (1990), and finally with La connaissance
des textes. Lecture d’un manuscrit illisible (2001), written with Simon Hantai e Jean-Luc Nancy.
However, it is only with Spectres of Marx (1993) that Derrida’s idea of a spectral aesthetics
achieves its full development. Through the decades, the possibility of a fertile dialogue between
deconstruction and many diverse areas of human creation has been encouraged and ensured by
the a-systematic and transversal character of deconstruction itself, which does not belong to a
sole specific discipline, and neither can be conceived as a body of specialistic knowledge. In the
words of Derrida, in fact, deconstruction, is not a unitary concept, although it is often deployed
in that way, a usage that I found very disconcerting … Sometimes I prefer to say deconstructions
in the plural, just to be careful about the heterogeneity and the multiplicity, the necessary
multiplicity of gestures, of fields, of styles. Since it is not a system, not a method, it cannot be
homogenized. Since it takes the singularity of every context into account, Deconstruction is
different from one context to another
Corpse Chic: Dead Models and Living Corpses 379
in Fashion Photography
Jacque Lynn Foltyn
Towards an Exploration of Earl ‘Biggy’ Turner 393
and the New Reggae/Dancehall Fashion Aesthetic
Shelley-Ann McFarlane
Part 8: Fashion Performance
Fashion as Performance: Influencing Future Trends 407
and Building New Audiences
Nicole D. Shivers
Street Corner Angels and Internet Demons: Spectacular 419
Visibility and the Transnational Gothic
Michelle Liu Carriger Fashion and Philosophical Deconstruction: A Fashion In-Deconstruction
Flavia Loscialpo Abstract