In the wake of this week’s verdict out of Florida on the case of Trayvon Martin, I have (as I am sure many of you have as well) been thinking a lot about fashion and apparel signals, both intentional and unintentional. Learned signals can transform perceptions, but they vary with context.
On the subject of fashion signals, I have in the past turned to work such as Wolfgang Pesendorfer’s “Response to ‘Fashion Cycles in Economics’” and Judith Donath’s “Note on Fashion” or “Signals, Truth & Design”.
With respect to the case of Trayvon Martin, Threadbared have published a piece titled “The Hoodie as a Sign, Screen, Expectation, and Force,” which includes an excerpt from in-progress research. I’ve embedded a video below where Mimi Thi Nguyen, Threadbared Co-Founder and Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, speaks briefly at the 7:42 mark on her research, but of course the whole video is interesting and recommended.
Further, a 2010 research collaboration between Otto von Busch, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion and Konstnarsnamnden produced “Neighbourhoodies: courageous community, colours, blazing bling and defiant delight.” More information on this project is available here.
Really looking forward to Mimi Thi Nguyen’s reasearch on this.
Image Source: CC License, Neighbourhoodies
Mary has a PhD in Sociology from University of Edinburgh, researching responsible fashion and transnational labour rights activism in the wake of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh.
