The focus of this thesis is the promotions of a range of male fashions and sportswear by professional football players 1950-1985. The interpretation of these images is not confined to the promotions themselves but instead adopts a broader approach that embraces the narratives surrounding the promotions and their place within football histories and the wider social context. An essential part of the thesis is a detailed analysis of the relationships that developed between football players, as individuals or part of a team, and the fashion retail industries and sportswear companies. Case studies contribute to an understanding of the practices around the production and consumption of these promotions and explain the rationale for each event and preference for a particular player. The research employs a mixed methodology that draws on archival research, both documentary and visual, as well as evidence from contemporary newspapers and popular and trade magazines. The archival evidence is augmented by oral testimonies from football players involved in the promotions, and from friends and other observers. To this is added research into the clothes, sourced in museums and private homes. A final approach is evidence of the geographic locations of the football clubs and the archival material on display in the trophy rooms. This thesis brings together the histories of male fashion and football. It uncovers the key role of the player, in promoting a wide range of clothing and accessories directed predominantly at a male market place, and provides new evidence that contributes to a neglected field of study within both disciplines.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the power and postcolonial meanings of lingerie for urban Indian professional women (UIPW) living in India to better understand the consumer behaviour of lingerie consumption. This critical marketing studies thesis adds to the existing studies of lingerie to argue that little is understood about the social meanings behind the growth in lingerie in India. It analyses the ways in which lingerie is instrumental to how urban Indian women sartorially negotiate colonial and national tensions of sexual identity. An interdisciplinary conceptual framework utilising Foucauldian power and an original application of Saidian orientalism are used to critique lingerie advertising practices in India and its implications for developing the discourse of cross-cultural consumer behaviour for postcolonial contexts. An interdisciplinary, interpretive, qualitative, mixed methods case study approach was undertaken in the urban Indian cities of Delhi and Bombay between the periods 2010 – 2014. The research design consisted of: a content analysis of lingerie advertising in the magazines Vogue India and Femina between the post-media-liberalisation years 2003 to 2014; visual and textual analysis of lingerie in three selective Indian films; 106 semistructured surveys conducted amongst UIPW in the urban cities of Delhi and Bombay; two focus groups in Bombay and Delhi and fifteen in-depth interviews. Data analysis included SPSS analysis and discourse analysis. Findings reveal the contradictory ways in which female sartorial identity in India is caught up in competing postcolonial forces of control and resistance demarcated along the lines of cultural, social and economic capital, therefore differing from existing western studies of lingerie. Findings show current global marketing practices still operate within western marketing frameworks, perpetuating social inequalities and are failing to be congruent with multiple and alternative feminine identities. Findings empirically reinforce the importance of postcolonial theory for original socio-cultural consumer behaviour insight and the development of global marketing strategy.

No description available.

Thesis (M.Arch.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

No description available.

No description available.

Bloodline: An Experiment in Knit and Proximity is research by practice that has its origin in an affective encounter experienced during the performance of two women knitting together, a mother and daughter – who simultaneously knit a conjoined red line, Bloodline – initiated by the daughter, who is, in this context, both artist and writer. The research responds to this question: how might I account for a moment of affect, to explain its manifestation in association with knitting and the knitted thing, and to substantiate my hypothesis that the knitted object, and knitting as process, have a unique capacity to explore the issues of proximity and distance that are encountered and negotiated in Bloodline? This research adopts an auto ethnographic and mixed methodology approach to investigate the context, practice and outcomes of hand knitting as illuminating the experience and meanings of attachment, separation and loss – the problematic of being in relation with and to another. It seeks to contribute, through a process of ‘close looking’ and the production of evocative objects (Turkle, 2011), to a language of textile practice that is as much concerned with the sticky, unpleasant and unknown as it might be with the sensuous and warm.

This practice-led research examines how the emerging role of the ‘material designer’ can enrich the design process in Human Computer Interaction. It advocates embodiment as a design methodology by employing tacit knowledge; focusing on a subjective, affective and visceral engagement with computational materials. This theoretical premise is explored by drawing on the fields of soft robotics, as well as transitive and programmable materials. With the advancement and democratisation of physical computing and digital fabrication, it is now possible for designers to process, or even invent and composite new programmable materials, merging both their physical and digital capabilities. This study questions how the notion of soft can develop a distinct space for the design of novel user interfaces. This premise is applied through a phenomenological understanding of technology development—as opposed to generating data which is solely reliant on observable and measurable evidence. Bio-engineered technologies such as electroactive polymer, pneumatic and hydraulic actuator systems are deployed to explore a new type of responsive, sensual and organic materiality. Here, traditional medical diagnostic applications such as microfluidics are transferred into the experimental contexts of textiles and wearable technology. Therefore, by thinking through physical prototyping, a bodily engagement with materials and the interpretation of the elements of water, air and steam; a designer can create a fertile ground for a polyvalent imagination. Together, this methodology is used as a qualitative system for collecting and evaluating data on the significance of design-led thinking in soft robotic materials. This research concludes that there are insights to be gained from the creative practice and exploratory methods of material-led thinking in HCI that can contribute to the commercial research and development fields of wearable technology. Outputs include a prototype box of ‘Invention Tools’ for textile designers and the identification and creation of the role 04 of embodied making in relation to the imagination. Further, soft composite hybrids, incorporating elastomers, have potential applications in colour, texture and shape changing surfaces. Thus, this thesis argues that it is within the creative soft sciences that the next advancements in soft robotics may emerge.

Exegesis (BA--Art and Design) -- AUT University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (xix, 101 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in City Campus Theses Collection (T 338.47746920993 FIN)

Exegesis (MA--Art and Design) -- AUT University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (111 leaves : col. ill. ; 22 x 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 746.92 WAL)