Reviews. John Fagg University of Birmingham DOI: /cult

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1 American icons. The plaster dolls of Holyoke College founder Mary Lyon ( ), discussed by Mary A. Renda, celebrated a nineteenth-century pioneer in women s education but were likely not fabricated and displayed until the 1930s rediscovery of America s national pasts and folk narratives. John Singleton Copley s three versions of Watson and the Shark were made in London between 1778 and 1782 but only later crossed the Atlantic. While local family ties brought one canvas to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1889, accessions to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1946 and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 1963 were important milestones in making the painting American. It is striking that so many of the case studies, including the short examples given in the introduction and conclusion, derive from or are significantly connected to decades of imperial expansion, isolationism and cultural nationalism, and post-war triumphalism. Did the subsequent emergence of what Rodgers elsewhere terms the age of fracture curtail the familiar, coherent narratives from which national icons draw strength and meaning? Are late twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury icons and artefacts so overtly imbricated in globalized cultural networks that the acts of re-worlding performed here are unnecessary? Or is this a form of scholarship that is necessarily retrospective, that requires time and distance to unpick national and transnational strands of meaning? John Fagg University of Birmingham DOI: /cult Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), Fashion Cultures Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2013). Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson s edited collection is the follow-up to the groundbreaking anthology Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explanations and Analysis, published in The original volume constituted a significant contribution to the study and theorization of fashion by bringing together apparently disparate areas of discussion and examining a range of potential methodologies, which were then put into practice in the various chapters offered. The 2013 anthology builds on and brings up to date this work through twenty-six chapters that explore fashion culture from the start of the new millennium to 97

2 Cultural History the present day. The volume itself is divided into six key thematic areas, which speak to the preoccupations of fashion studies post In the Shopping, Spaces and Globalisation section, David Gilbert examines the ubiquitous yet complex idea of fashion capitals or world cities, and the impact of the perceived relationship between central and peripheral locations in our understanding of the geography of fashion. He argues that whilst certain cities regularly feature as the top fashion cities, their ranked importance is not fixed, and so in the twenty-first century there is the potential for the emergence of new fashion capitals in Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and beyond. Some of these sites are the focus of the remaining chapters in this section. Silvano Mendes and Nick Rees-Roberts explore the place of Brazil in the contemporary fashion landscape and analyse the tensions between local and global fashion brands in the Brazilian context. Clare Wilkinson-Weber examines the Indian fashion industry in the twenty-first century, illustrating the links between fashion and identity, and the role played by film and glamour culture in the understanding and reception of fashion. Armida de la Garza and Peng Ding make the case for Shanghai as a future fashion capital in the post period, concentrating specifically on the presence of the future and the notion of innovation and sustainability already identifiable in this city. And, finally, Sally Green examines the intersections of camp, Australian iconography and motifs, humour and parody, and kitsch in the context of what she deems Sydney Style. The second section of this edited volume, Changing Imagery, Changing Media, is introduced by the reprint of Caroline Evans s chapter from the 2000 volume, but with a new foreword for the present collection. Here, Evans highlights the even more rapid transformations in the digital realm that have marked and restructured the fashion industry and fashion journalism in particular since The digital is then the primary focus for the rest of the contributions in this section. Gary Needham explores the digital fashion film, an example of the transformations within the new media fashion landscape that have resulted from the fact that fashion now appears wholly integrated with aspects of information technology, from the point of view of the industry or indeed of the individual consumer, who is also a producer of information about fashion. Drawing on Michel Foucault s techniques and technologies of the self, Agnès Rocamora examines personal fashion blogs as a rich source of information regarding the construction of identity and being through fashion and dress, and analyses the notion of the computer screen as mirror in contemporary society, which reflects and informs constructions of 98

3 gender and identity in particular. Monica Titton analyses street-style blogs and their relationship to the city, arguing that they act as scene and real space for the photographic staging of fashion. These blogs, she argues, are the site for public performances of fashion and function to construct a new category of cyber-celebrity in the twentyfirst century. Then, to acknowledge the continued success of fashionrelated programmes in museums and galleries since 2000, Christopher Breward interviews the curator and exhibition-maker Judith Clark on her approach to fashion curation in the museum sector and on the progress made in this field. Alistair O Neill opens the section Altered Landscapes, New Modes of Production with an exploration of fashion photography from 1975, demonstrating approaches to reading the fashion photograph, its history and the fashion photography archive, concluding ultimately that the recognition of fashion photography in contemporary visual culture remains tentative and provisional, and is thus ripe for future research. Elliott Smedley s essay from the 2000 edited volume is then reprinted; examining fashion photography in the 1990s, it demonstrates the processes of action and reaction, and the notion of realist fashion imagery at work in this context. Rachel Lifter analyses the evolution of indie and the consecration of its figures and styles within popular fashion in the United Kingdom. She makes use of Foucault s concept of discourse to analyse how style is described within a range of print media sources, which then creates a space to allow feminine identities to form. Adam Briggs examines the development of fast fashion and its repercussions for those involved in its production and for the industry at large. His chapter traces the historical routes to this production development and, through a particular focus on academic debate, highlights in particular the consequences for the consumer. In contrast, Louise Crewe maps the spaces of slow fashion that require luxury, craft, quality and knowledge, or that focus on sustainability and/or recycling and reusing. Her case studies are London s Savile Row and Harris Tweed. The fourth section, entitled Icons and Their Legacies, focuses on the following icons : Jean Michel Frank and Elsa Schiaparelli (discussed by Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello), Jackie Kennedy (analysed by Stella Bruzzi), lesbian identities in The L Word and The Kids are All Right (examined in Fiona Cox s chapter) and Alexander McQueen (discussed by Nathalie Khan). The various facets of legacy which are then interrogated include the interrelationship of interior design and fashion, fashion choices and outfits that function as a site of rupture as well as nostalgic recollection, the retelling of lesbianism 99

4 Cultural History through the on-screen costuming of lesbian protagonists, and the place of fame, controversy and public interest in the construction of an iconic persona. Contestation, Compliance, Feminisms is the penultimate section; here the focus is on the interactions between fashion and gender from a female perspective. Hilary Radner and Natalie Smith open the analysis with a chapter that discusses the role fashion has played in the development of feminist thought and neofeminism (with the case study of Jennifer Lopez). The chapter thus traces the complex and often contradictory relationship between fashion and feminism that characterizes women s culture in the twenty-first century. Meredith Jones outlines the developments of cosmetic surgery in the contemporary period and explores its links with fashion from a feminist point of view, arguing that a better understanding of the phenomenon will lead to more variety in terms of aesthetic choices which have the potential to function as modes of expression rather than repression. Lorraine Gamman continues this examination of the ideal female body by analysing the complex and often paradoxical relationship between women and slenderness, and women and the industry s presentation of food and food-related health. Reina Lewis discusses the hijab, and its use by contemporary Muslims, in the context of consumer culture, religious belonging, mainstream and ethnic fashion industries and transnational Muslim youth subcultures. Church Gibson then builds on her chapter in the first anthology, on the relationship between an ageing population and the fashion industry, by noting how, some fifteen years later, popular culture and the academy continue to speak of what she deems stylish ageing, how there are now new fears around ageing and appearance, and how many feminist scholars remain silent regarding these issues. The final section, Making Masculinities provides the counterpoint to the analysis of gender in the preceding section, by focusing on fashion and masculinity. Janice Miller draws on the concepts of the hero, masking and masquerade to analyse male make-up in relation to selfhood and gender identity in music performance. She argues that such use of make-up is transgressive in that it makes visible the potential of masculinity. Bruzzi s essay on football and fashion from the 2000 edited collection is then reprinted here. Vicki Karaminas s chapter demonstrates that modern masculinities are on the move through an examination of the figure of the vampire dandy : the blurring of gender and sexuality found in representations of the vampire is in fact inherent in the depiction of the twenty-first-century dandy. Claire Jenkins continues this analysis of contemporary 100

5 masculinity by exploring the notion of metrosexuality and the reconfiguration of heterosexual masculinity in the context of Doctor Who and Matt Smith. Finally, Lauren Thompson examines the importance of the suit to ensuring continuity and resecuring gender norms in the re-constructions of masculinity offered by male makeover television shows. The volume s wide-ranging theoretical approaches and subject matter make this an important resource for those interested in all facets of contemporary fashion culture, as well as photography, the media and shopping. Indeed, the editors highlight the usefulness of this volume to those interested in fashion studies, cultural studies, art, film, fashion history, sociology and gender studies. That said, it must be noted that certain contributions have been published elsewhere (those of Evans, Rocamora, Smedley). It is also unfortunate that the volume s primary aim is to update the arguments put forward in the 2000 collection, which at times works to limit the range of material covered. Nevertheless, this is another important contribution to the field of fashion cultures and will be of interest to scholars and students alike. Rachel Haworth University of Hull DOI: /cult Partha Chatterjee, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Bodhisattva Kar (eds), New Cultural Histories of India: Materiality and Practices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). The third instalment in the New Cultural Histories of India series, the current volume carries forward the project inaugurated by the first two volumes (History and the Present; History in the Vernacular) and considers the implications of the recent cultural turn in Indian historiography and its preoccupation with the popular and the visual. This in turn has led to a certain elasticity in the field, laying it open to charges of being disparate and disconnected (p. 12). The editors attempt to address this by invoking materiality and practice as markers of a new historiography of the irreducible and the unthought (p. 14). There is a certain eloquence in their plea that these new histories should refuse to stay calm within the confines of received categories but, equally, an acknowledgement that no consensual formula of the new may ever emerge, which is just as well (p. 14). 101