La camera blu

Introduzione

2022-02-28T18:40:09+00:00

Fashion is the unifying theme of the issue 24 of the Journal of Women and Gender Studies La Camera Blu, a monographic issue in which, thanks to an interdisciplinary perspective, essays are gathered around the concept “Diversity in Fashion”, and cross it from the point of view of identity and gender fluidity. There is also space for articles that analyse the empowerment of female businesses and subjects perceived as marginal, contributions that study the different perceptions and representations of bodies 'beyond the schemes'. A path that goes from History to Pedagogy, from Sociology to Literature, to theatrical representations, from Philosophy to Communication Sciences and marketing. We try to understand on the basis of what clues are glimpsed today future cultural and social perspectives, through inclusive marketing. To what extent can fashion be a boost for social mobility and innovation, for the elimination of stereotypes and inclusiveness?

Perspectives on Diversity and Inclusion in the Fashion Industry

2022-03-19T15:49:42+00:00

Despite an increase in awareness about topics like diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry, many organizations managing fashion brands still confuse these two terms; they use them interchangeably or only focusing on diversity marketing, forgetting to implement inclusive policies within the organization before waving the flag of inclusion in the media. This article addresses historical, social, communicational and managerial perspectives to discuss the challenges that organizations face in regards to diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry. The aim of this article is to define and clarify key concepts around diversity and inclusion, and to provide examples of how fashion brands are integrating them into different aspects of their activities; including company culture, product development, media representation, and customer relations. Regarding diversity, the focus is mainly on race, gender expression, physical abilities, age and body types. The article starts by addressing how the fashion industry was historically based on exclusion and privilege, having a social influence since its origins, operating from a basic human need for belonging, and establishing normative behaviours. Over the last years, diversity has taken centre stage, but there is much work to be done. Although year 2018 was considered “the year of diversity” by fashion media, looking at the quantitative analyses of plus-size, multiracial, fifty-plus or transgender identity representation between 2018 and 2021, we see that numbers do not support this claim. What is missing is a radical mindset shift from a binary perspective to a spectrum-based understanding. People tend to think in terms of binary opposites that are mutually exclusive, whereas an inclusive perspective sees no borders but a fluid transition that connects apparent opposites. Another key concept included in this paper is intersectionality, which considers how different aspects of social discrimination overlap each other. After the historical and sociological revision of the fashion industry and elaborating on the key concepts relevant to the discussion, these are applied to the analysis of concrete brands, products and campaigns within the industry. The scope covers four examples of best practices in ready-to-wear brands, social entrepreneurship and bottom-up activism initiated by underrepresented consumers asking for visibility. Special attention is placed on brands and how their products are opening a new stage for inclusion of diverse body types and non-conforming gender identities. Finally, the focus shifts to the business case for inclusion, covering the systemic and structural changes needed inside an organization in order to create a culture of inclusion, and how this will lead to an increased feeling of belonging of employees, resulting in better performance and enhanced profitability.

Keywords: inclusion, diversity, binary thinking, intersectionality, gender-inclusive, inclusive fashion

The deep relationship between fashion, identity, and culture: promoting appreciation of cultural inclusion in the Fashion Industry

2022-02-28T18:39:35+00:00

“Symbolizing people” is not enough to transform cultural diversity into a key philosophy of one's way of working and communicating. Diversity and Inclusion are not a trend phenomenon. They represent a value that must be made active, practiced, both inside and outside organizations. Diversity should be experienced as a force (positive approach) that moves and motivates the actions of the Fashion Industry involving different cultures in concrete inclusive practices. This work starts from this premise to address the problem of Cultural Appropriation and the opportunity of Cultural Appreciation. It ends with a reflection on the skills needed to promote inclusive behavior aimed at eliminating such other not respectful of other cultures.

Body positivity in fashion, market strategy or inclusion? approach from the perception of mexican men and women

2022-02-28T18:39:52+00:00

In the present research I start from the conception proposed by Jessica Cwynar —in Documenting feminity: body positivity and female empowerment on instagram— for the body positivity movement, understood as the message (visual or written) that seeks the inclusion of all kinds of bodies to promote acceptance and self-love. This movement emerges as something urgent to counteract the unreal beauty exhibited by the mass media specifically social networks. However, as Cwynar affirms, there are clothing brands that have seen in body positivity another form of commodification and objectification of the body.

Faced with the possibility of a true inclusión, the central question of this research arises: in the world of fashion, specifically in Mexico, is it really an inclusión ori s it just another sales strategy? To answer this question, I reflect on the premises of the Body Positivity movement from the proposal of anti-racist decolonial feminism. This feminism is fundamental because it allowed, in addition, to generate a survey focused on the daily life of the respondents and inquire into their perception and assessment. The respondents were group of 37 people (Mexican men and women, in an age range of 16 to 42 years). I present the results from a qualitative assessment.

Otherwise white. The wedding dress in the (de) construction of genres

2022-02-28T18:39:56+00:00

The essay briefly recollects the history of the wedding gown, underlining his quick spread and showing the layers of meaning that have turned it into an icon of heteronormative femininity. It then goes on to present three women artist who have worked to deconstruct stereotypes intertwined with the white wedding dress and to its resemantization.

Marcella Campagnano and Tomaso Binga are part of the lively cultural and artistic scene of the Italian feminist movement of the seventies. Campagnano, in a process of collective photographic creation, questions the uniqueness of the representation of the bride, reducing it to one of the multiple roles attributed by patriarchy to women. Instead Binga, with a picture where she is both the groom and the bride, reveals the artificiality of gender roles and the possibility to switch from one to the other; anticipating, in a way, deeper reflections on the performativity of gender that were still to come. Eventually, Pippa Bacca, thirty years later, in a deeply changed context, takes on the white wedding gown as a positive symbol. To her it represents a link between people and communities and the ideas of life itself and peace.

Clothing in trans identity. Notes on the significance of dressing up and trans resignification between terfism and prisons

2022-02-28T18:39:46+00:00

What’s the role of feminine clothing in the construction of male-to-female transsexual identity? Is it really necessary for some transsexual women to exhibit stereotypical feminine attributes? Would it be possible, or preferable, that every trans life be lived genderlessly? The aim of this paper is to explore trans-exclusionary radical feminism's criticism to the trans acquisition of classic gender attributes and to respond by showing the crucial role of this acquisition not only with regard to the construction of the subjectivity of transsexual women, but also in the broader context of fighting heteropatriarchy. For this purpose, I will try to highlight how trans-exclusionary radical feminists misinterpret trans identity and its profoundly subversive meaning, and I will try to explore the complex and often contradictory processes of identity construction of trans and generally oppressed subjects. Lastly, by briefly turning my gaze to the prison system, I will provide a practical example of how noxious the mindless dismissal of the trans acquisition of gender performances can be.

The Chinese Made in Italy of San Giuseppe Vesuviano

2022-04-11T18:41:31+00:00

The essay examines entrepreneurial activity and management of manufacturing and sales activities by Chinese in the clothing sector of San Giuseppe Vesuviano, in which both men and women contribute. San Giuseppe has no organized Chinese sector or Chinatown. Rather, the Chinese there have been able to silently penetrate the local economy, which consists of wholesale and retail commercial clothing, linen, and textile sector activity. The only difference noticeable to the outside observer is in the wholesale stores, which have retained their original structure, but are now managed by the Chinese. Despite the Chinese practice of displaying lanterns on the outside front of each entrance, the shopping area has not otherwise taken on the characteristics that could connote it as an ethnic neighborhood, but has retained the same general appearance prior to the arrival of the Chinese.

The Chinese follow a very specific entrepreneurial path. First, they work as employees with other Chinese. Later, after accumulating some money, they then open tailoring workshops. Thereafter, only after a few years, do they invest their profits in opening wholesale clothing and linen businesses. With their presence in the clothing sector, they have given birth to a market with the production of items that, while in less demand, are competitively priced compared to Italian products. This is possible because they spare the expense of employees, operating outside existing rules and norms, to include employing their wives and even children, who are not of legal age to work.

Today, the Chinese of San Giuseppe are aware of their economic strength and are better able than the Italians to protect themselves against the crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. They have managed to retain their business locations and continue operations without having to excessively reduce prices. As the viral emergency has taught us about COVID’s abnormal, symbiotic relationship with our bodies, moving the discourse from the virus to men, we also need to to rebalance relations within a society that is now even more unstable than the past, with risk of continuing imbalances and ethnic frictions.

Written on the body. Reading curvy fashion

2022-02-28T18:39:41+00:00

Beauty is not a static concept. From the very beginning, the general canons establish the meaning of “beautiful”. The canon of beauty is the aesthetic ideal, external expression of the person, shaped by society and dependent on the time as well as on the historical, economic and social situation of a people, a culture and a community.

The idea of this survey is to analyze the “curvy” body in the fashion world. From body shaming to discrimination. But also “curvy” fashion is central in social imaginaries, in the work of influencers and in the great storytelling of contemporary fashion. The essay talks about the evolution of the female body, of curvy influencers in the field of fashion, from the pre-social female body to the present day. Then we talk about curvy influencers and curvy models who spread positive messages about the body through Social Networks (in particular the Instagram platform).

Gender fluid stage clothes: Oskar Schlemmer's influence on David Bowie and Lady Gaga

2022-03-28T14:09:24+00:00

In 1922 Oskar Schlemmer staged the Triadisches Ballett, a great revolution whose implications are still visible today. The artist applied the principles of Bauhaus, the German school of art, to the theatre, transforming the connections between actors and objects placed on the stage into geometric relationships.

Schlemmer stripped the human figure of its intrinsic characteristics, first of all of its uniqueness, and showed it on the stage as a mask made up of geometric elements. For Schlemmer, the protagonists of his work did not have a defined sex, the clothes transformed them into self-moving architectures. The body had no gender, it was just a set of lines, flat and solid figures. The clothes were made by using what Schlemmer called «colored and metallic plastic elements that gravitate in space, created with materials whose use is very exciting in our time of technical inventions and substances».Schlemmer’s experimentation was so innovative as to inspire artists of later periods. The body became a central element, «considered as a performance, that is as an ever-open construction of material identity» (Calefato, 1996).

On several occasions David Bowie, an artist who made his own body a gender fluid work of art, was inspired by Schlemmer’s works. In 1974, in the Ziggy Stardust video, Bowie appeared wearing a costume designed by Kansai Yamamoto that reproduced one of the costumes from the Triadisches Ballett. In December 1979, the artist performed at Saturday Night Live, and for the occasion he wore an extremely modular dress that looked like one of the costumes from the Schlemmer’s Ballet. It was a tight-waisted outfit with broad shoulders. The dress turned the singer’s body into a geometric figure exactly like the protagonists of Schlemmer’s work.

The liveliness of Schlemmer’s experimentation still inspires the imagery of artists. In 2009, Lady Gaga gave the designer Bea Åkerlund the task of designing the clothes for the set of Paparazzi. Åkerlund does not belong to the world of traditional fashion, but she works in the field of industrial design (she even designed a collection for Ikea). The designer decided to combine fashion accessories, which had already appeared in the fashion shows of Thierry Mugler, John Galliano, Chanel, Christian Dior and Dolce & Gabbana, with clothes created specifically for the video clip. Åkerlund’s aim was to give a new shape to the human body by integrating two concepts: the acceptance of one’s own appearance, of which Lady Gaga has always been a symbol, and the story narrated by the videoclip director Jonas Åkerlund. To achieve her goal, Bea Åkerlund was inspired by the geometrization of the human body proposed by Oskar Schlemmer’s experimentation in the Triadisches Ballett.

Similar situation is in the Bad Romance video, in which the clothes and the accessories created by the designer Alexander McQueen pervert the corporeity of Lady Gaga: there are no more female and male figures, there are only forms.

Places and territories in the expression of fashion

2022-03-19T18:40:17+00:00

Designers, visionaries by definition, have always embodied the aesthetic ideal in women. The work of the fashion creator is proposed as the construction of an expressive dialectic between the liberation of the female essence, which unfolds in all its nuances, sublimated in the place of the show as a manifestation of minorities or status, synthesizing identity in the dress code of a movement or that of the ideas of which one is the bearer. Fashion is a shared aesthetic canon that becomes a clothing rule, but those who make fashion intend to create and recreate that style rule by capturing and determining trends that are clearly visible in the social and cultural sphere, and manifest themselves in the places of existence of the subjects who live a certain territory.

The aesthetic expressive space defines a place capable of overcoming routine orthodoxy, as a proposal and interpretation of ideas and values through which to shape identity. The aesthetic profile becomes the representative component of the context as a place, visual and physical, of recognition and belonging. This profile is transformed into the redesign of models, colors and materials, which become a synthesis of “new diversities”, which, like the biological ones, are capable of expressing the changing richness of an evolving world.

The composite reality given by the social component, by the sustainable one, by the female role and by the affirmation of gender equality, can be found in the initiatives of international organizations that express the transversality and unifying force in the space of the essence of fashion in every shaping expression, be yourself-find itself, empower over border, ride through borders, because fashion and fashions express the “shape” of things by shaping the object qualified as fashion, indicated by the expression as the manifestation of a way of being in a space, in a territory, but also a bridge for overcoming borders.

Through the hints of the history of clothing, the denotative elements are outlined in the objects worn: status, mourning (burial), religious belief (whirling dervishes), gender, etc., which pass from a passive expressive role to a social perspective role. The territories in which this takes shape will be the subject of the paper and their systematic presentation, through the analytical criterion of cataloging the semantics of fashion, will outline the factors of the reinforcing expressiveness of the movements from which they assume configurative profiles of new spaces and territories of reality. .

“Girls aren’t what they used to be”: renegotiating gender roles in Agatha Christie’s Beresford novels

2022-04-11T13:27:15+00:00

The essay aims at analysing the figure of the flapper heroine in Christie’s Beresford novels. Tuppence Beresford, the most popular among Christie’s courageous young adventurers, embodies the social and economic independence that various women were experiencing during and after the years of the Great War. She is outspoken, resolute and meets physical danger. She moves between the public and the private spaces using the limits society imposes on women to her advantage. Although Christie does not make her the leading detective of the adventures, Tuppence’s relationship with Tommy is based on equality and the final solutions are the result of an equal partition of roles. With the Beresford novels, Christie renegotiates her idea of marriage. Marriage is ‘a joint venture’ where traditional gender roles are destabilised and women’s association with the domestic sphere is often questioned. Tuppence defends her right to be considered an equal partner both in marriage and in life and balances her private life with professional responsibilities.

Unveiling rights

2022-03-29T18:40:40+00:00

Since 2015 the term Modest fashion has been used to define a women fashion trend. For some Muslim women Modest Dressing means empowerment. Well-known fashion brands produce collections, a business worth 250 billion dollars a year. However, Modest fashion is an ambiguous, “cynical” concept. Rights and equal opportunities are at a serious risk. It is dangerous to let trendy brands codify what modest or immodest dressing is, how much of less skin-revealing clothes is a safe pass to public life. The time has come for an open-minded debate: it is time to change course.

What is behind a bride’s dress? Brides in Ancient Greece

2022-04-11T18:41:34+00:00

The bride’s preparation and her wedding dress used to have economic and social implications in Ancient Greece. This moment was an opportunity for the family to show their status. It also implied female solidarities between the two families. In this article, Athens and Sparta are compared (presented in confront). Two opposite cities understood the bride-preparing ritual in a very different way. Nevertheless, in both cases, the bride and her preparation were used to project civic values and the ideality of women. Brides are prepared carefully in an intimate environment. Providing them symbolic elements could make the transit from Parthenos to married women and to educators of the future citizens easier.

White garments, petticoats and straw hats: analysing sartorial clues in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White

2022-02-28T18:39:27+00:00

The aim of the research is to present and discuss the symbolic dimension clothes acquire in relation to the mains characters of Wilkie Collins’s novel, The Woman in White. The clothes examined reveal the characters’ emotions, intent and personality. Anne and Laura’s white clothes will be the first to be examined as means used by the villains to both change and control their identities. The research will then shed a light on the clothes Marian and Fosco, two ambiguously gendered characters, wear to discuss their gender liminality and the impossibility to categorise them within traditional markers of gender. Ultimately, clothes as symbols of patriarchal authority will be considered, with reference to two marginalised female figures, Madame Fosco and Mrs Catherick.

Spanish female dress code through moral literature (1677-1691)

2022-04-11T18:41:42+00:00

This article will analyze the discourse derived from two religious manuals focused on pointing out the correct female dress code, whose main task was to “educate” and “control” female manners and corporeality. The first document was authored by Juan Bautista, entitled Juicio theologico moral, que hace de las galas, escotados y aceites de las mujeres(Moral theological judgment made on woman’s gala, cleavage and oils) (1677); the second one written by Antonio de Escaray, Voces del dolor. Nacidas de la multitud de pecados, que se cometen por los trajes profanos, aceites, escotados y culpables ornatos (Voices of pain. Born out of sins committed by the profane garments, oils, cleavage and sinful ornaments) (1691). In the proposed in the aforementioned texts, the way women dressed was seen as normal everyday action, though it was invigilated to prevent lust conduct; given that, according to those manuals, when a woman wears accessories, such as jewelry or lace, elegant fabrics and cleavage, this provoked disorderly conduct and would “set off”¹certain passions. In regards to that issue, Saint Augustine (San Agustín) mentioned that there are people who live carnally, in the pleasures of the flesh (&) inclined to the sensuality of the body (dressing and conducting yourself), whose “malicious” appetite is know as “Libido”; and that the clumsy and dishonest movements of the body provoked plenty of vices. The Magdalene is a clear example of “the sinful woman” by “presenting the ugliness, and abomination due to the filth of her clumsiness and profound abyss of vices”². Her body and her senses, which belong to those of a whore, are portrayed as instruments of “pleasure and seduction, (showing) a proud look in her eyes, her long hair and naked body”.

Fashion and body image

2022-04-11T18:41:39+00:00

This article seeks to understand how the ideal of the perfect body is built under the influence of fashion, intervening in social and cultural representation and its impact; and what is the way to a possible inclusion of body diversity in fashion. Likewise, contribute to the studies of fashion and body image by presenting different scenarios that reflect the incipient demand by consumers in relation to exclusion in fashion. Some voices of different social actors of the Argentine territory, who seek to be heard, will be relieved. They are loaded with values and experiences that manifest a need for change.

Sustainable fashion sector through a gender diversity perspective: evidence from Italy

2022-02-28T18:40:02+00:00

In recent decades, the multiple pressures determined by the extremely complex context in which organizations have found themselves operating, have imposed incessant changes in management and strategic policies, in order to face and, therefore, identify new solutions to possible problems.

The world of production and, in particular, that of fashion is called upon to assume precise moral responsibilities based on socially shared ethical principles, capable of creating, through wise and far-sighted strategies, a sustainable value for all the actors of the ‘web of life’.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how the involvement of organizations operating in the fashion industry is necessary to “build” lasting sustainability, as it is capable of integrating growth with competitiveness, environmental protection and social development. This is due to the extraordinary synergies that can arise from the structured adoption of paths marked by sustainability, the inclusion of diversity and the promotion of local development-oriented dynamics.

Talking about diversity in fashion with Benedetta De Luca

2022-03-29T18:40:42+00:00

The issues that revolve around the expression “Diversity in Fashion” can be addressed from various points of view. Through a sociological and media analysis approach, also introduced in the various historical periods, it can be deduced how there have been profound changes regarding the concept of fashion and how it has approached diversity. Today, with the advent of the internet and social media, fashion and big brands have found a way to convey particular themes and very sensitive messages, including that of the inclusiveness of all kinds of bodies. The purpose of this essay is to understand the dynamics and mechanisms of fashion and inclusiveness through the valuable contribution of the influencer Benedetta De Luca, spokesperson for these issues.

Female ecopreneurship in the Italian Fashion Industry: a preliminary study

2022-04-11T12:49:27+00:00

L'imprenditorialità femminile è un ambito di ricerca che, nel corso del tempo, ha progressivamente catalizzato l’interesse degli studiosi. Parallelamente, è emerso in letteratura il tema di stringente attualità dell'imprenditorialità sostenibile, e più specificamente dell'eco-imprenditorialità, che vede un ruolo significativo delle imprese femminili in molti campi, tra cui quello della moda. Tale fenomeno è riconducibile alla crescente domanda di prodotti sostenibili e dall’affermarsi del paradigma della responsabilità sociale nella gestione strategica d’impresa.

Partendo da un’analisi di alcuni dei driver emergenti che connotano l'industria della moda, fra i quali, prioritariamente, la sostenibilità e l'economia circolare, il paper conduce una revisione ragionata della letteratura sui temi dell'ecopreneurship e dell'imprenditoria femminile, con un focus sull'industria della moda, attraverso un'analisi web-based condotta allo scopo di analizzare il fenomeno dell'eco-imprenditoria femminile nella moda in Italia. Il lavoro analizza alcuni case studies declinabili quali possibili fonti di ispirazione ed emulazione nonché auspicabili “scintille” per la generazione di start-up.

Fashion as a process of inclusion and exclusion in young people

2022-04-11T18:41:37+00:00

The essay, starting from the Manifesto of Inclusion and Diversity of Fashion, intends to address the concept of fashion in its ambivalence and complexity, in particular the focus is on inclusion and exclusion social processes that fashion determines within a group of young people.

Is inclusive marketing a real change of perspective?

2022-03-28T18:40:51+00:00

In a society defined as 5.0, we are witnessing the demolition of all borders and the advent of the digital network. These changes allow the birth and development of cultural hybridizations (Kotler, Kartajaya, Setiawan, 2021). The overcoming of old clichés allows us to conceive as normality what was previously only an exception. This new relational attitude has also affected purchasing behavior. Companies approach their customers by redesigning their brand, building visual identities that reflect the characteristics of the target they refer to, by acquiring a new language. The numerous campaigns in favor of women, the LGBT + community and the disabled are clear examples of this. It is therefore natural to ask if companies have really become more sensitive to these issues or if they feel that they must ‘necessarily’ accept these values, as a sort of diktat. These considerations, together with the analysis of marketing strategies, guided our investigation to understand, on the one hand, the methodologies, the marketing strategies to approach ‘other’ users and expand their share of the market. On the other hand, observing the current marketing trends to give voice to the new emerging socio-cultural realities, we have tried to bring out the first effects, and the trends, of the new campaigns on the culture and mentality of the consumer public

L’idea della moda è plurale: linguaggi, soggetti, corpi, culture

2022-04-11T18:41:46+00:00

The three volumes that make up Moda & Mode, tradizione e innovazione (Franco Angeli, 2020), edited by Maria Rosaria Pelizzari, address the idea of fashion as a continuous experience of the present. 79 authors have made their contribution to this project, dealing with fashion in numerous fields of knowledge, ranging from sociology to psychology, from history of art to linguistics and literature, from economics to communication sciences, putting in evidence the sense in which the idea of fashion, even if usually imagined in the singular, is plural and multiple.