Major Project

Your style and the clothes you choose reflect and affect your mood, health, and overall confidence. Scientists call this phenomenon “enclothed cognition”, and Adam Hajo and Adam D. Galinsky, both professors at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, write in the  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , write that enclothed cognition “involves the co-occurrence of two independent factors — the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them.” The researchers had subjects perform tests while wearing a lab coat like medical doctors wear, a coat like painters wear, and while not wearing either coat. They found that subjects’ sustained attention increased while wearing the doctors’ coats in a way that their attention did not increase while wearing the painters’ coats or no coats.   Similarly, Professor Karen J. Pine, of the University of Hertfordshire (U.K.) writes in her very short book  Mind What You Wear: The P...

Subcultures influence on fashion A point on which many costume historians have concurred is that fashion, as it is currently understood-the propensity for continual change in clothing designs, colors, and tastes-is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of humankind, virtually unknown before the fourteenth century and occurring only with the emergence of mercantile capitalism, the concomitant growth in global trade, and the rise of the medieval city. (Among the few exceptions are Tang Dynasty China and Heian Period Japan.) Other scholars have analyzed fashion as an aspect of a distinctively modern and Western consumer culture that first gained impetus in the eighteenth century, concurrent with the onset of the industrial revolution. Either way, to be "fashionable" in this sense of the term must not be understood as a natural, universal, or biologically given aspect of human behavior, but as a socially and historically specific condition. Fashion is, in other ...

Sub-Culture - 'A cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture'. Below is a ten minute film on sub-cultures Subcultural identity allows identification of an individual into a particular social group within society; semiotically, behaviourally & ideologically. It “gives alternative interpretations and values to young people’s subordinate status; it reinterprets the social world” (Thornton, 1995, in, Gelder & Thornton, 1997: p.208).  The significance of a person’s clothing, behaviour or belief system is incredibly important when belonging to a particular group. “Every object may be viewed.. as a sign” (Eco, 1973 in, Hebdige, D, 1979: p.101). Whether it is someone wearing a denim jacket adorned with patches of their favourite punk bands or young adults in modified cars, playing drum and bass music; there are signifiers that give an idea of which subcultural group th...

Tattoos – from subcultural rebellion to a mark of high fashion  Tattoos have gone from a recognized sign of rebellion to a feature on the pages of Vogue. How has tattooing progressed to become somewhat socially acceptable and even fashionable in Western Society?  In contemporary western society tattooing is no longer the trademark of criminal or military personal. Although it is still a diverse subculture in many places, it is now an accessory of the main stream. The industry itself is a multibillion dollar a year trade and the clientele come from all walks of life (Willett 2010, p271). Celebrities, culture and tattoos-a degree of influence: Today it is not un-common for celebrities to have tattoos. Celebrities are said to hold much influence over trends in contemporary society – as do advertisements and popular culture, so it is no surprise to see that prior to this recent rise in tattooing, body art began to appear first on celebrities and within fi...