What do you think?
Rate this book
Fashioning Identity: Status Ambivalence in Contemporary Fashion
We dress to communicate who we are, or who we would like others to think we are, telling seductive fashion narratives through our adornment. Yet, today, fashion has been democratized through high-low collaborations, social media and real-time fashion mediation, complicating the basic dynamic of identity displays, and creating tension between personal statements and social performances.
Fashioning Identity explores how this tension is performed through fashion production and consumption,by examining a diverse series of case studies - from ninety-year old fashion icons to the paradoxical rebellion in 'normcore', and from soccer jerseys in Kenya to heavy metal band T-shirts in Europe. Through these cases, the role of time, gender, age memory, novelty, copying, the body and resistance are considered within the context of the contemporary fashion scene. Offering a fresh approach to the subject by readdressing Fred Davis' seminal concept of 'identity ambivalence' in Fashion, Culture and Identity (1992), Mackinney-Valentin argues that we are in an epoch of 'status ambivalence', in which fashioning one's own identity has become increasingly complicated.
Fashioning Identity explores how this tension is performed through fashion production and consumption,by examining a diverse series of case studies - from ninety-year old fashion icons to the paradoxical rebellion in 'normcore', and from soccer jerseys in Kenya to heavy metal band T-shirts in Europe. Through these cases, the role of time, gender, age memory, novelty, copying, the body and resistance are considered within the context of the contemporary fashion scene. Offering a fresh approach to the subject by readdressing Fred Davis' seminal concept of 'identity ambivalence' in Fashion, Culture and Identity (1992), Mackinney-Valentin argues that we are in an epoch of 'status ambivalence', in which fashioning one's own identity has become increasingly complicated.
200 pages, Hardcover
Published February 9, 2017
54 people are currently reading
1229 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 12, 2023
essential reading for anyone interested in fashion 🤓
December 1, 2022
life changing..
January 13, 2025
About a year ago, I decided that I wanted to read a good book about fashion (and by fashion, I mean fashion theory, with ample historical context) but this was surprisingly hard to find. I settled on this text because it was recommended by Parsons students on Reddit. It was also highly rated on this site.
I am giving Fashioning Identity three stars because, while it was thought-provoking, I'm not sure that it scratched my itch, so to speak. The theory was scattered at best, and the historical context was nonexistent. (I did supplement with several chapters of Bonnie English's A Cultural History of Western Fashion, which itself was only so-so.)
The structure of this book is as follows: each chapter focuses on an item, or trend, and describes how that item or trend subverts traditional fashion paradigms in some novel way. (By traditional fashion paradigms, I mean the class-based ones, where the tastes of an urban aristocracy are emulated by the provincial illiterati, and then lose cultural cachet in a cyclical process.) The structure is risky, because the credibility of each chapter depends on how well the chosen example resonates with the reader. In my case, I found the latter chapters (on band T-shirts, soccer jerseys, and lumberjack shirts, all male fashions) more interesting than the earlier ones. (Does anyone even remember the vintage dress Julia Roberts wore at the 2001 Oscars? My fashion-forward wife does not.)
I also felt the writing style was too academic (and hence, inaccessible) for its content, although it may just be that the author is not a very talented writer. She uses the term "dialectical" as if it never went out of fashion (pun intended) and has a tendency to cram in several words ending in "-tion" in most of her sentences. She repeats herself a lot and summarizes, at the end of each chapter, all of the main points in the earlier chapters. My wife suspects she was a grad student who published her thesis, but the math doesn't quite work out in this particular case.
Basically, I think the book lacks a certain theoretical coherence (recall that each chapter investigates different kinds of subversion) and a longer historical perspective, and it suffers as a result. Besides, it is not really all that complicated: as societies become wealthier, socioeconomic distinctions become a lot less influential, and so modern fashion reflects the rise of a more fragmented (or, to use her word, ambivalent) culture. A few words about postmodernism and pastiche are probably warranted here but I recognize this may be inconsistent with, you know, coherent historical narratives.
The author does cite three works extensively. While I have not read any of them, I will list them here for all others interested in reading a good book about fashion:
La Moda by Georg Simmel
Fashion, Culture and Identity by Fred Davis
Adorned in Dreams by Elizabeth Wilson
I am giving Fashioning Identity three stars because, while it was thought-provoking, I'm not sure that it scratched my itch, so to speak. The theory was scattered at best, and the historical context was nonexistent. (I did supplement with several chapters of Bonnie English's A Cultural History of Western Fashion, which itself was only so-so.)
The structure of this book is as follows: each chapter focuses on an item, or trend, and describes how that item or trend subverts traditional fashion paradigms in some novel way. (By traditional fashion paradigms, I mean the class-based ones, where the tastes of an urban aristocracy are emulated by the provincial illiterati, and then lose cultural cachet in a cyclical process.) The structure is risky, because the credibility of each chapter depends on how well the chosen example resonates with the reader. In my case, I found the latter chapters (on band T-shirts, soccer jerseys, and lumberjack shirts, all male fashions) more interesting than the earlier ones. (Does anyone even remember the vintage dress Julia Roberts wore at the 2001 Oscars? My fashion-forward wife does not.)
I also felt the writing style was too academic (and hence, inaccessible) for its content, although it may just be that the author is not a very talented writer. She uses the term "dialectical" as if it never went out of fashion (pun intended) and has a tendency to cram in several words ending in "-tion" in most of her sentences. She repeats herself a lot and summarizes, at the end of each chapter, all of the main points in the earlier chapters. My wife suspects she was a grad student who published her thesis, but the math doesn't quite work out in this particular case.
Basically, I think the book lacks a certain theoretical coherence (recall that each chapter investigates different kinds of subversion) and a longer historical perspective, and it suffers as a result. Besides, it is not really all that complicated: as societies become wealthier, socioeconomic distinctions become a lot less influential, and so modern fashion reflects the rise of a more fragmented (or, to use her word, ambivalent) culture. A few words about postmodernism and pastiche are probably warranted here but I recognize this may be inconsistent with, you know, coherent historical narratives.
The author does cite three works extensively. While I have not read any of them, I will list them here for all others interested in reading a good book about fashion:
La Moda by Georg Simmel
Fashion, Culture and Identity by Fred Davis
Adorned in Dreams by Elizabeth Wilson
May 28, 2024
- Fashion in itself is more than mere clothing. It's a self-expression of self-identification of where one belongs in terms of their social group
- Fashion itself is meant to deceive other people: it's meant to be "read by the fashion literate while deliberately misguiding those less versed in cracking dress codes"
- During different times, different fashion trend emerges that depicts the motif of the era of the individuals
- Often times, people don't dress for the opposite sex. Many of the women's fashion item is arguably intentionally un-sexy. However, women wear those not to show off to men, but rather to other women that the wearer is successful enough to wear such item, and is confident enough to wear them
- Fashion itself is meant to deceive other people: it's meant to be "read by the fashion literate while deliberately misguiding those less versed in cracking dress codes"
- During different times, different fashion trend emerges that depicts the motif of the era of the individuals
- Often times, people don't dress for the opposite sex. Many of the women's fashion item is arguably intentionally un-sexy. However, women wear those not to show off to men, but rather to other women that the wearer is successful enough to wear such item, and is confident enough to wear them
December 31, 2024
"We are what we wear, but only some of the time and not literally. Fashioning identity is taken in symbolic stride as a serious and fun game of communication with social, creative, cultural, and economic implications."
Amazing book. Really put into words ideas that have been in my head for years but didn't know how to ground them and back then (like the biological capital). Very interesting research and interviews, this book is definitely a must for anyone interested in the intersection of fashion and social commentary. Made me think a lot about my own choices when getting dressed.
Amazing book. Really put into words ideas that have been in my head for years but didn't know how to ground them and back then (like the biological capital). Very interesting research and interviews, this book is definitely a must for anyone interested in the intersection of fashion and social commentary. Made me think a lot about my own choices when getting dressed.
September 12, 2023
Incredible read! Provided such unique insight into the subconscious mediation of fashion and status. Will be rereading! The only part i was put off by was the chapter “Transglobal narratives” seemed to come into the research with paternalistic dispositions, I may change my mind/be able to articulate this better upon reread.
January 5, 2023
4.5
insane
insane
January 10, 2023
“We are what we wear, but only some of the time and not literally.” This was great. Leopard print as a rhizome was the highlight.
October 23, 2023
"We are what we wear, but only some of the time...and not literally"
Barz
Barz
Read
April 27, 2024Took me four months but very transformative..binary thinking is over we understand everything in fashion as a tension between movements trends and ideas…the tension is what makes clothing sexy!!
May 12, 2024
I have a lot of love for this book.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews