How can architecture transcend style in the fashion world? My thesis offers experiences for both the public and private realm of the fashion industry. For the public, the opportunity to see and feel the clothes on the runways. For the private, the designers can work, show and display all in one building. The project divides itself into two worlds, the static vs. the dynamic. Both polarities are evident in the runways and in the gallery space. In a world where fashion is in and out in a matter of a season, can architecture transcend the moment? / Master of Architecture

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The aim of this thesis is to explore the development of Swedish fashion between 1930 and 1960 by examining the textile and clothing industry from the wider perspective of fashion production. It was during this period that Sweden was transformed into a leading industrial nation, which laid the foundation for increased prosperity in the post-war period. This historical and empirical study is predominantly based on systematic analysis of Swedish official statistics and close reading of the fashion press. The thesis applies a combination of approaches in the analytical chapters (chapter 2–4) that include three central aspects of fashion production: manufacturing, symbolic production, and the production of a national fashion.  Chapter 2 gives an account of the industrial production of clothing and examines the scope, size and structure of the textile and clothing industry. The results confirm its importance to the Swedish economy in the period. One important finding shows that a shift in production from tailored outerwear to lighter garments occurred as early as the mid-1950s.  Chapter 3 investigates the symbolic production of fashion by looking at the structure of the field of fashion in Sweden. The results show a French dominance where couturiers were celebrated as creative ‘artists’. A significant finding is how the idea of Swedish fashion was considered a process of creating economic value, as in clothing manufacturing.  Chapter 4 deals with fashion as an expression of national culture. The result reveals a significant fashion culture associated with an everyday wear fashion that followed the Social Democratic reforms aimed at equality in society during the period. One important finding is that the wool coat was the hallmark of Swedish fashion identity in the post-war period.  These results contribute to a broader understanding of fashion production and new insights into the history of its developments in Sweden between 1930 and 1960, which has gone largely unrecognised by previous fashion historians.

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Overweight people claim to be mistreated by the fashion industry. If they were, it would be in line with branding theory supporting the idea of rejecting fat consumers to improve user imagery for fashion brands. However, fashion companies do not confess to such practices. To shed some light on the subject, I have conducted two studies. The first attempts to illustrate what effect, if any, user imagery has on fashion brands. It is an experiment designed to show how the weight of users affects consumers’ perceptions of mass market fashion brands. The findings show that consumers’ impressions of mass market fashion brands are significantly affected by the weight of its users. The effect of male user imagery is ambiguous. For women’s fashion on the other hand, slender users are to be preferred. In the second study I examine what effects these effects have on assortments. I compare the sizes of mass market clothes to the body sizes of the population. No evidence of discrimination of overweight or obese consumers was found -quite the contrary. The reasons for these unexpected findings may be explained by the requirements a brand must fulfil to make management of the customer base for user imagery purposes viable. The brand must be sensitive to user imagery; a requirement that mass market fashion fulfils. However, it must also be feasible for a company to exclude customers, and while garment sizes can be restricted to achieve this, the high volume sales strategy of mass market fashion apparently cannot.

Submitted in partial fulfillment for Masters in Fashion, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2016. / In my practise-based action research self-study I have developed ways in which to improve my practice as a bridal-gown designer in a highly-competitive and import-driven bridal-gown market. My earnest intent was to improve my practice using action research methods whilst simultaneously developing a solution through critical reflection and practice-based approaches as an economically-sustainable designer of bespoke, cost-effective, competitively-priced bridal gowns. I realised the potential for professional influence and positive economic growth through entrepreneurial thinking, not only for me but for others; it was this which cemented a sense of values in me as an action researcher. I have displayed a healthy marriage between equally important views of practice as theory and the theory as practice. I explored relevant literature that would validate my practice and aid in answering my critical questions, which became evident as validation chapters in my study. Carrying out internships with three bridal gown designers opened my eyes to the real world of business, a sense of theory as practice, where I could see, first-hand, the effects the import industry had on local designers and what they were doing to survive. The conceptualisation of foundational bridal blocks was a solution to save time in my own creative process so that I could produce cost-effective bridal gowns at a competitive price, in a sustainable manner. Once I had explored and created my own interpretation of the foundation block concept that transformed into a small collection of bridal gowns, I used the foundation blocks as a starting point to design bridal gowns for ‘real’ bridal clients. My study is personal in nature; by way of using self-study methods and also the personal ‘one-on-one’ connection I have with my ‘real’ bridal clients. I extended this ‘personal factor’ by holding a public exhibition to which I invited my friends, family, the public and my peers to view and give critical feedback on my work as a bridal gown designer. / M

This thesis examines the meanings of forms of fashioned femininity in Britain in the post-war period. Drawing on a range of popular, academic and media texts, the widespread social, political and cultural disdain for the feminised decorative is defined and discussed. Modernist rhetoric and taste, the championing of design austerity, masculinity, bohemianism and appropriations of functional working-class fashioning are shown to be linked to the emergent tastes of Second-Wave feminism. In contrast, fashionings associated with working class and other disdained communities of women, defined here as 'feminine excess', whether in hair, make-up, jewellery or dress is shown to be demonised across historical and contemporary contexts by the arbiters of taste, expressed in key Modernist and feminist texts. Whereas both Modernism and facets of feminism are viewed as occluding and repudiating cultures and forms of working-class femininity, the emergence of queer theories and the rise of camp in popular culture is also critiqued here as ultimately confining discussions of and approbation for fashioned feminine excess to within the ironic discourse of drag. In the absence of research on, in particular working-class women's experiences and dis/pleasures in fashioning femininity, empirical data from female participants discussing their own histories of and tastes in fashioning is analysed alongside memory-work findings. Participants' contributions are discussed in two key chapters that focus on the significance of forms of identification in the self-fashioning of excess, specifically the iconic, excessive model of Dusty Springfield for women and girls growing up in Britain in the 1960s and, secondly, the complex array of meanings of hair and hair fashioning in constructing feminine and feminist selves. Throughout both the significance of class, notions of cultural difference, glamour and other pleasures in the processes of fashioning femininity. In a further chapter an array of media texts are analysed alongside insights generated by research participants focussing on the trope of jewels and jewellery. Desires for, pleasures in and identifications with female stars and Royals through their fashioning of glittering models of excess are charted across an array of popular texts consumed by communities of girls and women. Self-conscious, middle-class tastes for dissident fashioning and ironic appropriations of working-class excesses exemplified in punk or trailer trash vogues are compared to the non-ironic dissidence of Royal Taste, a form of feminine excess exemplified by stars such as Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley Bassey who, it is argued, have usurped the Royal aura in the post war period symbolised in their excessive will to adorn. This thesis concludes with a reflection on the obduracy of discriminatory trashing of working class forms of fashioning femininity and the consequences of this in terms of cultural justice. The hegemony of Modernist taste in paradoxically subordinating and appropriating otherness is critiqued alongside feminist neglect of the productive processes and loci of fashioning. This thesis calls for a re-evaluation of the existing institutional, modernist and feminist demonising of the other, excessive woman, highlights the constructedness of all fashioning and details the cultural value of disdained women's fashioning regimes and tastes.

Britain produces some of the best designers in the world, and UK fashion education systems provide a continuous flow of exceptional talent into the industry. However, the numbers of British designer brands being created are low in comparison to the high number of graduates being educated. Often fashion start-ups are not able to sustain a presence in the market place after their intial entry, and are not able to realise and recognise their growth potential.