Sociology of Fashion

Introduction In this essay I will compare and contrast the fashion styles, trends, culture and ethos of the post-war era of the 1950’s and the youth revolution of the 1960’s. I will address the ways in which fashion was utilised by members of society at this time to shape class-based identities. I will address consumption as a cultural phenomenon and theory on fashion of communication as a backdrop. Following this and in order to gain a degree of critical depth I will focus on two British subcultures the ‘teddyboys’ and the ‘Mods’ drawing on the work of cultural theorist Dick Hebidge and illustrate the ways they utilised style in order to symbolise the values and meanings they shared as two distinctive subcultures one from the 1950’s and one from the 1960’s Slater argues that all consumption is cultural ‘consumption is always and everywhere a cultural process, but ‘consumer culture’ – a culture of consumption – is unique and specific: it is the dominant mode of cultural reproduction developed in the West over the course of modernity’(1997:8). He offers four explanations to support his argument (1997:132). Firstly consumption always involves meaning, that is perceptions, as opposed to only sensations, so in the context of style and fashion, textiles or clothing are interpreted or ‘read’ by consumers in many ways. Secondly these meanings are shared by members of the same cultural or sub-cultural groups. Thirdly consumption is a culturally specific activity and therefore carries different meanings in different cultural contexts, and finally it is through consumption that we produce and reproduce cultures, social relations and society itself. We build identities as members of culture by enacting ‘meaningful structures of social actions’. Slater gives the example of contrasting families who sit down to dinner contrasted with families who graze and says through these differences ‘altogether different families and family relations are being reproduced.’ While Slater

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