THREAD for THOUGHT

How fashion intersects politics, economics, gender, race & pop culture.

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Age and Gender-Appropriate Fashion

Age and Gender-Appropriate Fashion

A few months ago I discovered a video of 8 and 9 year-old girls in a national dance contest, athletically gyrating to the Beyoncé hit “Single Ladies” (a.k.a.”Put a Ring on It”). Prepare yourself: I am anything but a prude, but there was something distinctly unsettling in watching prepubescent girls dance around in fringed burlesque...
Fashion in Literature

Fashion in Literature

I just read a fun list on Flavorwire of their 10 favorite fashionable literary characters. Allow me to summarize: Lily Bart in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray Holly Golightly in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s Orlando in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando Scarlett O’Harain Margaret Mitchell’s Gone...
Janelle Monae, Style Icon and Fashion Industry Commentator

Janelle Monae, Style Icon and Fashion Industry Commentator

A friend of mine sent me a link to Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope” video earlier this summer, and I have been obsessed with the dame ever since (I give you permission to play it when you want to cheer yourself up, and/or have an impromptu dance party, as I do). Not only are her pipes amazing...
Grey Hair as Social Statement?

Grey Hair as Social Statement?

As a young woman who has atypically looked forward to turning shocking silver (I’ve even promised myself to grow my pixie haircut at that time to accentuate it), I’ve read with some curiosity but ultimate skepticism, the rash of articles and blog posts about the supposed trend of women embracing grey hair. The most recent...
Fashion of the Working Man

Fashion of the Working Man

A recent NYTimes article on the latest Levi jeans ad campaign featuring not dead-eyed models in awkward sexualized positions, but real-life residents of Braddock, PA caught my eye. A continuation of last year’s “Go Forth” ad campaign, this one uses actual inhabitants of Braddock to show real workers in their natural habitat: a town that...
Bathing Suits, Technology and Morality

Bathing Suits, Technology and Morality

In weather like this (namely, 90+ degrees, little-to-no wind, and me without air conditioning), beachy escapes are on everyone’s mind. Following is a rough timeline of how women have historically bared their flesh — or not — to enjoy the sand and sun. Classical Times In Classical antiquity swimming and bathing was most often done...
Copyrights and Patents in the Fashion Industry

Copyrights and Patents in the Fashion Industry

I recently watched the video presentation of Johanna Blakley who is involved with TED (a non-profit whose conferences unite the worlds of technology, entertainment, and design), and  UCLA’s Norman Lear Center, which utilizes Entertainment as a lens through which to read world events and ideas, much as I use Fashion to do the same. I...
John Waters on Fashion

John Waters on Fashion

A long standing fan of director / writer John Waters, I am delighted that the Pope of Trash is appearing with greater frequency in periodicals these days due to his new book Role Models. I’m going to brush aside the content of the book (though it looks awesome!) to concentrate on the style of Mr....
Fetishizing Military Gear

Fetishizing Military Gear

After seeing Gisele Bundchen’s latest Vogue shoot entitled “Call of Duty” in various military-inspired ensembles, my conflicted feelings about the sexifying of war gear swung hard and fast in the “that’s not cool” direction. Huffington Post presents these images with significantly less conflict: “let us know which is Gisele’s fiercest moment.” I should mention that...
The Secret Sexy Life of Zippers

The Secret Sexy Life of Zippers

After reading the recent NYTimes article highlighting Eddie Feibusch’s zipper business in New York’s Lower East Side, I was reminded of — what else? — the history of the not-so-humble zipper. This now-ubiquitous device that fastens and unfastens our pants, dresses, and bags, is a relatively recent invention, as far as the history of fashion...
Women, Pants, & Politics

Women, Pants, & Politics

As I alluded in previous posts, adopting aspects of menswear had a direct relationship with the Women’s Movement, socially and politically. For hundreds of years wealthy and impoverished women alike had worn heavy floor length dresses, even as unsanitary street filth dragged in the long skirts, even as the simple negotiation of stairs became arduous...
Women in Men's Hats

Women in Men’s Hats

This is the second installation of the lecture I recently gave in a gender / sociology class at FIT. The first focused on the adoption of feminine fashion trends by men and the seemingly inevitable moral condemnation / censorship of such implied homosexuality (accurate or not); this one follows the appropriation of menswear by women...
Men's "Feminine" Styles

Men’s “Feminine” Styles

I recently gave a lecture on cross-dressing to a terrific sociology class at FIT, and I had such ridiculous fun (and stress!) researching it that I thought I’d share with the blogosphere to spread the wealth. You don’t get the pleasure of my witty repartee, but you do get a decent, if slightly inferior, substitute....
The Politics of Mannequins, Part III - Mannequins in Art

The Politics of Mannequins, Part III – Mannequins in Art

Until the article I recently read, mannequins in their practical form held little interest for me; however mannequins in art have always attracted me, most likely due to my obsession with fashion coupled with my fascination with unsettling representations of people (and who doesn’t love to be unsettled?). Incorporating mannequins — invented to market and...
The Politics of Mannequins, Part II

The Politics of Mannequins, Part II

Picking up from where I left off last week, I’m going to address mannequins’ evolution in the second half of the 20th century. The revolutionary ’60s came as a shock to the world, the American youth rebelling against the traditions of their conservative parents who desired normalcy and stability after the chaos of WWII. The...
The Politics of Mannequins, Part I

The Politics of Mannequins, Part I

I happened to run across an old issue of Hue, FIT’s alumni magazine, and read a surprisingly interesting article on “The Life and Times of Mannequins” by Alex Joseph. Though I have not previously studied dress forms in depth, I have been mistaken for a mannequin (I spaced out in a flu-induced frozen position while...
Cleopatra & Egyptian Fashion in Film

Cleopatra & Egyptian Fashion in Film

Fashion inevitably looks to history to interpret and re-interpret previous fashion trends. At the recent SAG Awards, I noticed 2 Egyptian-influenced dresses, worn by Toni Collette and Nicole Kidman: As I’m never content to stay in the current era for long, let’s go back 100 years to trace a century of Egyptomania…. The Egyptian style...
Paper as Textile

Paper as Textile

I stumbled upon the contest Cheap-ChicWeddings.com sponsored for the most impressive wedding gowns made of — wait for it — toilet paper! Yes, this humble stuff is the focus of an annual challenge to use as the sole fabric of a wedding dress. I’m always interested to learn how technology affects textiles and by extension,...