Since the Industrial Revolution, fashion and technology have been linked through the textile and manufacturing industries, a relationship that has propelled technical innovation and aesthetic and social change. Today a new alliance is emerging through the integration of electronic technology and smart materials on the body. However, it is not fashion designers who are exploiting this emerging area but interaction design, performance art and electronic and computing technologists. 'The Emotional Wardrobe' is a practice-based research project that seeks to address this imbalance by integrating technology with clothing from a fashion perspective. It aims to enhance fashion's expressive and responsive potential by investigating clothing that can both represent and stimulate an emotional response through the interface of technology. Precedents can be found in the work of other practitioners who merge clothing design with responsive material technology to explore social interaction, social commentary and body responsive technology. Influence is also sought from designers who investigate the notion of paradoxical emotions. A survey of emotion science, emotional design, and affective computing is mapped onto a fashion design structure to assess if this fusion can create new 'poetic' paradigms for the interaction of fashion and technology. These models are explored through the production of 'worn' and 'unworn' case studies which are visualised through responsive garment prototypes and multimedia representations. The marriage of fashion and technology is tested through a series of material experiments that aim to create a new aesthetic vocabulary that is responsive and emotional. They integrate traditional fashion fabrics with material technology to enhance the definition of fashion. The study shows that the merger of fashion and technology can offer a more personal and provocative definition of self, one which actively involves the wearer in a mutable aesthetic identity, replacing the fixed physicality of fashion with a constant flux of self-expression and playful psychological experience. The contribution of the research consists of: the integration of technology to alter communication in fashion, a recontextualisation of fashion within a wider arena of emotion and technology, the use of technologies from other disciplines to materialize ideas and broaden the application of those technologies, and the articulation of a fashion design methodology.

This thesis investigates the multi-faceted use of haute couture in Toronto as a symbol of English-Canadian women's postwar cultural identity. European and Canadian couture are related to their socio-economic use in the wardrobes of elite Toronto women whose needs and taste directly reflected etiquette codes, the expanding social season, and the requirements for functioning within it. Couture is contextualized beyond a status symbol, and seen to be a necessity in the performance of women's social roles and volunteer work in establishing arts and charitable organizations. It was vital in creating a national sartorial taste for English-Canadian women, and in defining their social and cultural identity during the postwar years. Further, it examines and analyzes the systems of buying and distributing European couture by Canadian retailers, then explores the relevance of these imports for Toronto's department stores, boutiques and their customers. Integral to this documentation and analysis, is the use of a multidisciplinary methodology that weds material culture with oral history, film and printed archival research. This has made it possible to document the movement and the function of couture from production, distribution and consumption, to its use and meaning in the context of postwar Toronto. By examining couture consuniption in terms of its cultural and economic meaning this study touches upon and informs several academic fields; it contributes to the scant research on twentieth century couture, especially on Canadian dress, as well as to Canadian women's social history.

This thesis analyses the simplification of fashion in the French "beau monde" at the end of the eighteenth century. It reveals that the simplified fashion of the 1770s and 1780s was the result of a new feeling for nature. New perceptions of the body led physicians to plead for a new fashion, more respectful of the natural characters of the body. On the aesthetic level, natural simplicity was meant to be the only way to recover original truth and energy. Moreover, anglomania, by way of sustained exchanges with England, contributed to the development of a simpler and more egalitarian fashion. This new feeling for nature reflects profound changes in the French society at the end of the century. The idea of nature, defined according to the values and ideals of a rising bourgeoisie, conveyed a bourgeois spirit no longer restricted to a narrow social group.

This thesis explores the role of First World War British army clothing to the representation and experience of men through popular culture, official regulations and personal accounts. The aims of the research are threefold. Firstly, it examines how mass mobilisation altered sources and systems of army clothing supply to consider how large-scale production and consumption shaped masculine identities. Secondly, the thesis argues that khaki service dress was part of the iconography of war, a visible signifier of active military participation and object of evocation and memory. Finally, it explores tensions between individual experience and collective myth to consider the role of clothing practices to the formation of ideas about gender, class and the relationship between the body and technology during the First World War. The discussion explores themes of gender and visuality through a focused analysis of the ways in which British army uniform was worn, promoted and made between 1914-1918. It shows how the specific design of khaki service dress drew attention to the body, created illusions of corporeal durability and suggested equality through an aesthetic of standardisation. The work of Michel Foucault is used to consider how cultural practices shape objects, specifically in relation to disciplinary techniques and gendered practices in military culture. The thesis shows how the service dress enabled techniques for body discipline and standardisation, but also how its role in military discourses perpetuated the fiction of a singular and uniform masculinity. Thus, the research explores the formation of meaning of army clothing in wartime through popular representations, but tests their reliability against a range of other kinds of sources such as personal accounts, production processes, trade organisation and official regulations. As clothing links a number of related concerns, the thesis uses uniform to establish a dialogue between formerly discrete disciplines, in particular, military history, social history and cultural studies. This exploration of the significance of military uniform, an object experienced by a wide range of social groups, contributes to current debates about British popular culture during the First World War.

No description available.

This thesis has several strands relating to the future prospects of the Thai fashion industry, which has undergone recent instability in the context of the global fashion system. They presuppose a reorientation and/or development of the domestic economy and culture of consumption of Thailand to favour innovation, originality and personal identity. The thesis will present an argument based upon the creation of conceptual models derived in part from existing models and theories, from literature surveys and empirical studies. A new framework to conceptualise the fashion process in Thailand called, the Thai Fashion Process Model is presented. Through the process of the comparative studies, the fashion process in the West is set against that which exists in Thailand. The Western fashion process model integrates much previous research about the fashion process, fills important gaps that the symbolic interactionist theory of fashion omits, and makes a number of new predictions about the translation of social trends into specific lifestyles and individual differences within the commodification process. The model purposes two important fashion forces: the differentiating force and the socialising force. These operate at different levels (macro and micro) and through different fashion practitioners. The empirical studies gathered data tor analysis through interview and questionnaire surveys at the micro-level in both the UK and Thailand within the context of the conceptual framework. Additional data tor analysis was also gathered relative to the macro-level. The studies provide excellent support for the reconceptualisation and, in particular, suggest that individual psychological factors might be given a new prominence in the overall fashion process and the way in which new fashions emerge. The new Thai Fashion Process Model presents a different direction in the fashion change sequence, which implies a reorientation of the industry towards a high priority in domestic fashion origination and innovation. The socio-cultural economic changes require a refocusing towards individual or segmented consumers' motivation, needs, and desires as opposed to the conformity that exists in contemporary Thai society in its domestic consumption.

No description available.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the evolution and global dissemination of fashion values, both aesthetic and commercial, in the interfaces between fashion, media, celebrity, sport, and the cultivation of the modern body. In particular, it traces the career of the modern swimsuit, showing how an inventive individual, Annette Kellerman, and a peripheral nation, Australia, influenced the design direction of the swimsuit in the 20th century and beyond to create a distinctly Australian niche in global fashion. Annette Kellerman, an Australian long-distance swimmer, diver, vaudeville performer and silent movie star, was a modern woman shaped for speed. She achieved success across a number of related fields – in fashion, film, sport, and as a role-model for women, encouraging self-motivation and self-development. Kellerman achieved global fame and recognition for popularising the one-piece swimsuit, and for her innovations as an aquatic performer, entertainer, and fitness writer. As a prototypical Hollywood star she prefigured the celebrity culture focused on the body that has predominated since then. Australia has continued to be associated with the values championed by Kellerman. It is also a launching pad for a number of international swimwear and surfwear companies, from iconic brands like Speedo, Quiksilver, and Billabong through to a new breed of contemporary swimsuit designers who tap into fashion trends while maintaining an Australian handwriting. This is exemplified by the Zimmermann and Tigerlily fashion labels. This study demonstrates the fluidity of fashion as a result of geographic and cultural influences, and the convergence and cross-pollination between individuals and global currents. Using a combination of historical and archival research, interviews, textual analysis, and the author’s own experience as a fashion designer, this thesis explores the shaping of the modern swimsuit and its eventual incorporation into global high fashion. It shows how a garment and a nation have migrated from the periphery to the centre of international attention by combining popular culture and high fashion to embody the values of modernity for women.

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2006. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.127-129).

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (p.37-44).