Fashion Capital(s) and Diverse Locations of (Pop)Cultural Production

This panel is to be held under the banner of the Placing Fashion seminar series organized by Susan Ingram and Markus Reisenleitner to continue discussions on fashion as it is located, positioned and produced in geographic, urban, institutional, cultural and artistic imaginaries. This panel uses as its foundation a return to Bourdieu’s (1993) notions of symbolic and economic capital within the field of cultural production. Sociologist and fashion scholar Joanne Entwistle (2009) incorporates Bourdieu in her concept of fashion capital: a specific knowledge and awareness of fashion, in both its artistic and economic aspects, that is socially performed through discursive and embodied practices. This panel further explores the notion of fashion capital and its situation, production, circulation and enactment. Fashion plays an integral and well-documented role in raising the cultural capital of museums, retailers, artists and media institutions, while designers and retailers invoke cultural and subcultural communities and histories to enhance brand positioning. Bourdieu (1984) also pointed to fashion’s imbrication with class semiotics, as a means of articulating social distinction. The concept of fashion capital can be connected to cities as fashion capitals: with specific aesthetics, neighbourhoods, creative hubs and artistic movements, and documented histories in garment design and production. Fashion capital can also be located, depicted and negotiated in literature, artworks, exhibitions, performances, celebrity culture, print and online media, film and television. Finally, the acquisition or possession of fashion capital informs the construction and presentation of the self in consumer and popular culture. When demonstrated at an individual level, fashion capital remains – like fashion itself – a double-sided construct (Wilson 1985). It is intangible and manifested; earned and effortless; acquired through education and practice but also innate and intuited; timeless and classic but also on trend; artistic and commodified.

Fashioning Urban Imaginaries: Los Angeles’ Second Skin

Susan Ingram

Abstract

In Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface, Anne Anlin Cheng compellingly re-dresses the question of how race figures in Western modernity and argues that, “We do not master by seeing; we are ourselves altered when we look.” Cheng uses this insight to demonstrate parallels between the logic of Baker’s performance aesthetic and modernist European urbanists such as le Corbusier and Loos and their rethinking of the nature of surface and identity. In this paper, I examine the consequences of Cheng’s work for rethinking the rise of fashion cities over the course of the 20th century. As David Gilbert makes clear in his introduction to Fashion’s World Cities, the prevailing discourse in world or global cities scholarship has been economic, with a focus on the structural changes in the economies of world cities seen as “dependent on the form and extent of their integration into the world economy” (10). The performative and highly visual nature of urbanity opens cities to being reinterpreted along Cheng’s lines of surface and identity. The resulting insights should also be relevant for, and allow conclusions to be drawn about, contemporary branding strategies of both global and second-tier cities. ### Keywords Fashion cities, Modernism, Surfaces, Urbanity, Branding ### Biographical note Susan Ingram is Associate Professor in the Dept of Humanities at York University, Toronto, where she is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies and the Research Group on Translation and Transcultural Contact. singram@yorku.ca

Starring Toronto: Egoyan’s Chloe and the Adornment of a City

Kathryn Franklin ### Abstract Atom Egoyan’s film Chloe (2010) showcases a Toronto seldom portrayed on screen. The cinematic rendition of the city encourages the audience to fall under Toronto’s allure with its depiction of an impossibly chic and cool city all the while detailing the crumbling relationship of a wealthy Rosedale couple. Traditionally Toronto rarely “plays” itself; rather Toronto tends to stand in for more glamorous American cities such as New York City (American Psycho, 2000; Kick-Ass, 2010) and Chicago (Chicago, 2002; Mean Girls, 2005). Egoyan’s film, however, transforms Toronto into a glamorous metropolis interpreted through muted blues and greens leaving the impression that the city resembles photographs found in glossy high fashion magazines. More precisely, Egoyan suggests a counter narrative to the puritanical “Toronto the Good” slogan that has characterized the city for more than half of the twentieth century by offering up a tale of sin and seduction illustrated through a fashionable lens.

This paper explores the complex portrayal of the city by focusing on capitals of fashion, culture and economy and how these factors contribute to the development of Toronto’s urban imaginary. Toronto is now the fourth largest city in North American, most recently surpassing the population of Chicago. While Toronto arguably does not hold the same cachet as such fashion capitals as London, Paris or New York, Toronto has undeniably shed its “good” moniker and has steadily made the transition into its glamorous persona as depicted by Chloe.

Keywords

Glamour, Fashion, Toronto, Canadian cinema, Women

Biographical Note

Kathryn Franklin is a PhD candidate in the Humanities department at York University. She is currently finishing her dissertation titled “From Good to Glam: Mapping the Intersections of Glamour in Toronto’s Urban Imaginary,” which explores glamour as an expression of Toronto’s cultural identity. kfrank@yorku.ca ## Between Fashion Capital and Subcultural Capital: The Uses of Knowledge and Performance of Expertise in Online Menswear Communities Nathaniel Weiner ### Abstract Members of online menswear communities users spend their leisure time engaged in in-depth textual discussions of menswear, contributing to the community by reviewing garments, describing experiences with tailors, recounting visits to specialist boutiques, comparing clothing manufacturers, providing information on vintage garments and reminiscing about the styles of decades past. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fifty men who use these forums, this papers describe how within these online fashion communities, forum users’ demonstration of their knowledge of menswear is used to garner praise and respect. I argue that while users may be motivated by the communitarian ethos that characterise online communities more generally, the sharing of knowledge and demonstration of expertise in these communities is a way of acquiring and demonstrating that particularly type of cultural capital which Entwistle (2009) terms ‘fashion capital.’ I also explore the degree to which these communities, with their consumption-based lifestyles and highly-particular modes of dress, can be considered subcultures in the canonical sense (cf. Hall & Jefferson, 1976; Hebdige, 1979). Employing Thornton’s (1996) notion of ‘subcultural capital,’ I discuss the ways in which these forums are host to a form of situated knowledge reliant on shared meanings exclusive to the respective online fashion communities ### Keywords Consumption, Cultural Capital, Fashion, Masculinity, Subculture ### Biographical Note Nathaniel Weiner is a PhD candidate in York University and Ryerson University’s joint graduate program in Communication and Culture. His research interests include consumer culture, fashion, masculinity, online communities and subculture. He is currently working on a doctoral dissertation about online menswear subcultures. nweiner@yorku.ca

The Glamourai’s Life: The Performance of Habitus in the Fashion Blogosphere

Rebecca Halliday ### Abstract In the past decade, the blogosphere has become a notable platform for the dissemination of cultural content. Within this medium, fashion-related blogs have come to constitute “a key space for the production and circulation of fashion discourse” (Rocamora 2011: 407). Personal fashion blogs, in which (mainly female) authors “post pictures of themselves to document their outfit,” utilize “technologies of the self” including text and photographs to facilitate opportunities for “identity construction” (410). Further, fashion blogs offer a tool for aspiring writers to acquire cultural and economic capital – through a demonstration of fashion capital, a comprehension of fashion’s artistic and economic aspects (Entwistle 2009). Indeed, bloggers’ documented success has challenged the value of press accreditation within the field of fashion: positioning fashion as a democratic realm open to consumers that exhibit sartorial flare (Lipovetsky 1994).

This paper returns to Bourdieu’s notions of capital and distinction to challenge characterizations of the fashion blogosphere as democratic, through an examination of the webzine The Glamourai, founded by New York-based independent stylist Kelly Framel. I read posts in relation to Bourdieu’s (1984) discussion of class-based consumption to illustrate that The Glamourai performs the habitus – the embodied tastes and dispositions – associated with the bourgeois classes and positions high fashion as exclusive. In features that function both as fashion editorials and brand advertisements, Framel advocates for “considered consumption”: purchases based on the quality of materials and craftsmanship that demonstrate a life of ease and leisure. Further, she decorates her summer home using antique and flea market treasures, much like Bourdieu’s “cult of nature” (277). Of particular note, Framel creates features on dinner preparation that adhere strikingly to Bourdieu’s descriptions of the dominant classes’ emphasis on “food, culture and presentation” (181) in their attention to the aesthetic aspects of table decoration, care in cooking and elements of ritual. ### Keywords Fashion, Blogs, Performance, Aesthetics, Cultural capital ### Biographical Note Rebecca Halliday is a PhD candidate in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at York and Ryerson Universities in Toronto. She holds an MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from York (2011) and a BA Honours in Drama and Creative Writing from the University of Alberta (2004). beckyh@yorku.ca