A Goodrum

Globalization, cultural economy, and not-so-global cities: the New Zealand designer fashion industry

Research on so-called ‘global cities’ dominates the existing literature on globalization, fashion, and cities. In this we paper analyze the recent rise of a designer fashion industry in Auckland, New Zealand. The designer fashion industry has emerged as an unlikely success story as the New Zealand economy has globalized. Together with other creative industries, designer fashion is seen as an industry that can revamp New Zealands international image and in doing so foster additional foreign investment. As the industry has succeeded, Auckland has disproportionately benefited, with sustained industry agglomeration and increasing infrastructural development in this city. However, the symbolic benefits of the designer fashion industry have proved more elusive. We show that the New Zealand designer fashion industry borrows symbolic capital from the global cities of designer fashion. We argue that this borrowing of symbolic capital underlines the need to think more carefully about the geographical specificity of the material, political, and symbolic processes associated with globalization and the cultural economy.

Framing Rural Fashion: Observations from Badminton Horse Trials

This visual essay offers a perspective designed to extend and complicate the dialogue surrounding rural fashion through a consideration of just one of the spaces it (recognizably) inhabits. As a case study, the spectacle of Badminton Horse Trials provides a multitude of associations: an internationally renowned sporting event, geographically and culturally located within the English countryside; an affiliated and substantial ‘pop-up’ shopping village, which makes the Trials a retail and fashion event as much as an equestrian event; a landscape setting that supports a temporarily constructed space, embracing aspects of both the rural and the urban(e); and a frame/stage for a series of socially codified interactions informed by dress and communicated through visible appearance and self-presentation. The combination of word and image presented here invites interrogation of the field of fashion and the overlapping contingencies of visual/verbal communication, with a view towards opening up a discourse within fashion to a wider theoretical and practice-led visual community.

A severity of plainness: the culture of female riding dress in America during the 1920s and 1930s

This article examines the relationship between riding dress and a particular group of women who wore it – wealthy, white, American, amateur sportswomen. It considers the cultural and historical context in which it was worn, that is, America (the USA) during the 1920s and 1930s. Drawing on archives at the National Sporting Library and Museum, Virginia, the discussion pieces together contemporary newspaper reports, sporting periodicals, personal scrap books, photographic evidence, advertising material and instructional equestrian textbooks. Together, these voices speak of the female riding ‘habit’ dress as being more than the sum of its parts. Rather, it was imbued with all manner of intangible – and sometimes contradictory – qualities to do with contemporary taste, consumer culture, appearance management techniques and the politics of gender. Strict codes governed every detail of the horsewomans attire and each equestrian discipline had its own set of esoteric regulations on appearance. This meant that the equestrienne had to be highly skilled not only in the art of horsemanship but also the art of dressing and the consumption of dress. The horsewoman was the subject of self-scrutiny, peer group expectations, media surveillance and class-based snobberies and was judged both aesthetically and morally as much on her bodily appearance as her athletic ability. Dress afforded the rider certain contemporary freedoms and also imposed constraints. Above all, however, it was central to the material and social construction of a rider-ly identity and therefore the discussion illustrates the historical complexities of the relationship between dress, sport, leisure and women.

The dress issue: introduction

Encouragingly, the response to my original call for papers for this special issue surpassed all my expectations. So much so, the final published product is formed of two parts (with this issue being the first instalment). This appetite and enthusiasm is instructive and suggests there is a critical mass of scholars ‘out there’ thinking about, and working on, the relationship between dress and leisure. Moreover, there appears to be a need and desire for scholarly venues where this dress-related research may be aired and shared. The purpose of The Dress Issue is to bring together these voices to exhibit the richness and relevance of dress research to, and for, leisure studies (and vice versa). The contributors and articles showcased here map the potential and scope proffered through the study of dress, presenting a mix of different global contexts, scholarly traditions and research practices. My hope and intention is that, together, the two issues make a substantial, fresh, contribution to leisure research, laying out a trajectory for its future development and identifying an emerging field of excellence. I open by showcasing two short examples here, which show off the affinity and connections between leisure and dress, manifested, in these particular cases, through the quirks of colloquial language. Dress terminology, and specific items of dress have, over time, formed leisure-related shibboleths and are widely accepted in popular culture as referring to persons or personalities – perhaps even personifications – within the leisure tenor. My first example is that of the anorak, a hooded, hip-length, often waterproof, item of outerwear with a zip or button fastening running its front length. The design is derived from, or inspired by, traditional Inuit dress with the fur-lined hood offering protection from freezing temperatures. The anorak emerged as a fashionable item (in Britain) during the mid-twentieth century. However, the term ‘Anorak’ (again in Britain) is applied sometimes somewhat derogatorily, not to an artefact of dress but to members of hobbyist interest groups (often middle-aged men) who follow niche pursuits and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of them. Train-spotters may be regarded as Anoraks, and are most associated with the term, as they are imagined as standing at the end of railway platforms for many hours, pursuing their leisurely pastime noting serial numbers and sightings’ details, whilst dressed in serviceable but dated clothes (the anorak among them). My second example is that of the ‘Green Welly Brigade’, a pejorative term, applied collectively to members of a distinctive niche of the well-heeled British upper classes during the 1980s. Privileged and wealthy, this group were part of, or aspiring to, the landed aristocracy, who enjoyed a lifestyle of weekends in the British countryside and participation in traditional field sports such as horse riding, fishing and shooting. The unofficial ‘uniform’ of the Green Welly

True Brits? Authoring National Identity in Anglo-Japanese Fashion Exports

Abstract This article employs the cases of two luxury fashion retailers, Mulberry and Paul Smith, to examine the export of British goods and British identities to Japan. Anglo-Japanese trade cannot only be rationalized in economic terms. Rather, the article argues for a more nuanced understanding of the complex interrelationships between the economic, cultural, and symbolic within these transactions and the ways that contested representations of Britishness are inscribed across them. It is asserted that these complex relationships are evident throughout the length and breadth of the fashion commodity chain, with constructions of Britishness being inscribed at manifold points along it. As such, the article reveals that Anglo-British exports—and the visions of Britishness bound up in them—are the sum of many parts and players, and that these players inhabit the under-researched “backstage” regions of the fashion system beyond the marketing discourses, which have tended to constitute the prime subject of previous studies.

The Dress Issue part two: introduction

It is my pleasure to introduce this, the second of two parts, which together comprise the Annals of Leisure Research special on dress. The very fact that this special issue runs to two instalments is worth noting since it suggests a field of scholarship that is as vibrant as it is fertile. If strength comes in numbers, then the articles comprising The Dress Issue collectively stake a firm claim to the territory concerned with the leisuring of dress and the dressing of leisure. The 10 research articles that form The Dress Issue (the sum of both parts one and two) lay testimony to this. They traverse all manner of subjects, examples and approaches as well as all manner of dress. For example, part one assembled articles on the dress of sporting leisure and featured critical discourses on dress objects as far ranging as Victorian swimming costumes, contemporary branded yoga pants, high performance wetsuits, novelty tie dyed t-shirts and traditional equestrian turn out. Part two of The Dress Issue is equally as diverse in its offerings and is themed, for want of a better way of putting it, around dress and non-sporting recreation. Additionally, part two includes – indeed, is headed up by – a critical commentary essay authored by Steven Miles on the ‘age of prosumption’. Miles’ stimulating contribution sets the pace for this instalment of the special issue. My intention is not to repeat everything from my previous, extended, introductory essay that served as an opener to part one. In that essay, I laid out some of the touch points that dress and leisure seem to have shared, or share, in common (such as the body and industry) and I went on to offer up some suggestions for future areas of research (e.g. the sensorial and experiential). My intention with this editorial essay is to draw attention not only to the vibrancy and range of dress topics and dress types represented in the articles but also to highlight the vibrancy and range of methods taken by the authors in researching them. Showcased here are scholarly approaches drawn from, and inspired by, design practice, ethnography, cultural geography and social psychology, all of which promote the possibilities in, and for, ‘the doing’ of dress research in leisure studies as an interdisciplinary canon. I am especially pleased that this part of the special issue includes two articles (by Twigger Holroyd and Hindle et al.) grounded in creative co-production and the experience of making. Projects built around the study of dress (as both a material and cultural form) lend themselves readily to the use and application of such creative methods of critical exploration. It makes sound sense to use the creative process as a conduit for researching a creative field. Germane is the proposition (the provocation, perhaps?) from Ingold (2007, 3) on the value of making in, and as, knowledge production. He asks:

Riding Dress History, with a Twist: The Side-Saddle Habit and the Horse during the Early Twentieth Century

This chapter offers context — the back story, if you will — to what we will see as an emerging contemporary, cultural, and sporting enthusiasm for side-saddle riding. The discussion takes the form of an historical exegesis of the dress worn by female side-saddle riders, focusing on the early decades of the twentieth century and, geographically speaking, on the UK and the USA. Foremost, the chapter is concerned with describing the codes of dress and etiquette that governed the wearing of the side-saddle ‘habit’ (as it was, and is, termed), tracing back the heritage of today’s female side saddlers to examine the historical provenance of their attire and appearance. At first glance, formal female habit dress was deceptively simple,1 comprising an outfit of waistcoat, jacket, and skirt (as well as accessories such as a top hat, stock tie, knee boots, and close-fitting breeches worn as undergarments) that belied the richly nuanced, literal and metaphorical, layers of material and meaning beneath. The discussion here draws, in particular, on the advice presented in equestrian instruction manuals and printed advisories on the appearance and correct ‘turn-out’ of female side-saddle riders between the years 1900 and 1939. In presenting a dress history of the side-saddle habit, the discussion highlights the origins and the evolution of this intriguing, esoteric, mode of dressing.