Reviews for Dress Smart 2nd Edition: A Guide to Effective Personal Packaging

The average rating for Dress Smart 2nd Edition: A Guide to Effective Personal Packaging based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-17 00:00:00 John Stapleton p.1 - Fashion-ology debunks the myth that the creative designer is a genius. Fashion is not created by a single individual but by everyone involved in the production of fashion, and thus fashion is a collective activity. p.4 - Fashion is not visual clothing but is the invisible elements included in clothing. It is the result of the acceptance of certain cultural values, all of which are open to relatively rapid influences of change. p.5 - The building of fashion cultures does not depend on the amount of money that consumers spend on clothing. I argue that a fashion system supports stylistic changes in fashion. The system provides the means whereby fashion change continually takes place. p.11 - Finkelstein explains how fashion is perceived from a feminist's point of view: "Feminist readings of fashion have often portrayed it as a kind of conspiracy to distract women from the real affairs of society, namely economics and politics. Fashion has been seen as a device for confirming women to an inferior social order, largely because it demands an unequal expenditure of time and money by women on activities which do not attract the professional attention and efforts of men. Fashion works to intensify self-absorption and thereby reduces the social, cultural and intellectual horizons of women (1996:56). p.13 - In 1904, Simmel, an expert in seeing the dualistic side of social phenomena, saw fashion as the desire for imitation and differentiation, and many other sociologists and social scientists (Summer 1940) shared his view. p.15 - Traditionally, the study of fashion and/or clothing has been a brand of art history and has followed its methods of attention to detail. Comparable to the study of furniture, painting and ceramics, a major part of its project had been accurate dating of costume, assignment in some cases of "authorship" and an understanding of the actual process of the making of the garment, all of which are valid activities (Wilson 1985:48). Cultural anthropologists make cross-cultural comparisons of traditional, non-industrialized societies in terms of dress. Their studies help us understand that using clothing to express modesty is a function that is determined by the culture, learned by the individuals and is not instinctive in nature. Some scholars, such as Sombart (1902), Nystrom (1926) and Anspack (1967) approach fashion from an economic point of view. Sombart saw the connection between fashion and economics and remarked: "Fashion is capitalism's favourite child" (1902). 2 - Sociological Discourse and Empirical Studies of Fashion p.20 - Elaborately elegant, neat, spotless garments imply leisure. The less practical and functional a garment is, the more it is a symbol of high class. p.22 - In Spencer's view, fashion is a symbol of manifestation of relationships between superiors and inferiors that function as a social control. p.26 - For Baudrillard, fashion is one of those institutions that best restores cultural inequality and social discrimination, establishing them under the pretense of abolishing them. Fashion is governed by the social strategy of class. p.32 - What sociologists of fashion can contribute to the project of cultural analysis is a focus on the institutions of fashion and the social relations among fashion professionals, the social differentiation between groups of designers, status of the designers, their ethnic heritage, and fashion systems worldwide. It is a sociology of culture that recognizes the importance of and pays much attention to the social-structural processes of cultural production and consumption. It operates with an understanding of social institutions and cultural symbols, which include activities and objects signified through culture. Thus, it provides the interpretation of structural features of cultural life. In the study of culture, it is necessary to understand not only technical processes and arrangement for manufacturing and distribution of cultural phenomena but also the culture through which the products are given meaning. Culture is the means through which people create meaningful worlds in which to live. These cultural worlds are constructed through interpretations, experiences and activities whereby material is produced and consumed. Likewise, fashion can be a matter of personal consumption and identity, and also a matter of collective production and distribution. p.33 - Fashion is legitimate to study as a symbolic cultural object and as a manufactured thing produced in and by social organizations. Fashion is not visible or tangible and therefore uses clothing as a symbolic manifestation. The production of symbols places emphasis on the dynamic activity of institutions. Cultural institutions support the production of new symbols. The sociology of culture represented most prominently by the study of arts organizations and institutions is known as "the production-of-culture approach" and begins from the assumption that the production of cultural objects involves social cooperation, collective activities and groups. p.36 - the production-culture perspective includes studies dealing with many different aspects of culture, and applies to studies of the arts, media and popular culture, market structures, and gatekeeping systems on the careers and activities of culture creators (Crane 1992). 3 - Fashion as an Institutionalized System p.45 - For Leopold (1993:101), a fashion system takes part in the clothing production process. A fashion system is the inter-relationship between highly fragmented forms of production and equally diverse and often volatile patterns of demand. p.46 - Barthes (1967) and Lurie (1981) use linguistics systems in parallel to fashion systems to explain fashion and clothing. Clothing can be used as a metaphor. This has been criticized by many fashion writers as clothing and fashion cannot be used for communication as acutely as the language we speak. Such approach to fashion and dress is very limited and does not expand further. Despite the title of the book The Fashion System (1967), Barthes is not talking about a fashion system but a clothing system. One can use his complex analysis in finding a distinction between the fashion system and the clothing system. The clothing system teaches us how to wear garments and what to wear in specific social and cultural contexts because each context has different social meanings. p.51 - Without a system that includes a diffusion mechanism, any style of dress is confirmed within its own system of clothing. There is a whole network of people involved in clothing production and fashion production. p.52 - I argue that fashion systems exist only in specific types of cities where fashion is structurally organized. In my analysis, I employ the term "fashion system" to describe organizations, institutions and individuals interacting with one another and to legitimate fashion designers and their creativity. The term does not describe the process of sewing clothes, which belongs to a separate kind of system, that is the clothing of manufacturing system. p.54 - Unlike Karl Marx, who traced all power relations back to the means of production, that is, economic capital, Bourdieu (1984) argues that there are three fundamental types of capital. Economic capital involves command over economic resources. Social capital commands relationships, networks of influence and support into which individuals can tap by virtue of their social position. Cultural capital explains the way in which both tastes and perceptions of what is beautiful or valuable, and social groups are ranked in society. Using cultural capital, according to Bourdieu, the elites constantly distance themselves from the non-elites. Economic, social and cultural capital are the objects and the weapons of a competitive struggle between different groups and/or among individuals within the group. Admission into the French fashion system grants both social capital and economic capital that separate the elite designers from the non-elites outside the system, that is, designers of mass-produced apparel. Designers need to earn symbolic capital for their products for those customers who wish to share that capital to differentiate themselves from those with whom they do not with to identify. For Bourdieu, "symbolic capital" is essentially economic or cultural capital that is acknowledged and recognized, and then trends to reinforce the power relations which constitute the structure of social space. The symbolic value of goods is realized whenever people engage in consumption and thereby express their social identity. p.55 - Fashion as an institution produces hierarchy among all makers of clothes by adding social, economic, cultural and symbolic capital to clothes, which are then transformed into luxury, elite clothes. Luxury clothes are meaningful only in relation to non-luxury clothes, but in modern capitalist societies anyone can obtain luxury clothes in less expensive ways. The motivation to attain is based on the desire to make a slight difference with others because luxury items provide a sense of superiority as an image and added values are attached to them. 4 - Designers: The Personification of Fashion p.59 - Fashion systems transform clothing into fashion. Fashion is a symbolic production while clothes are a material production. Fashion is a symbolic production while clothes are a material production. Fashion is a symbol manifested through clothing. 5 - Production, Gatekeeping and Diffusion of Fashion p.76 - The fashion system invents new cultural meanings, and this invention is undertaken by opinion leaders who help shape and refine existing cultural meaning, encouraging the reform of cultural categories and principles. These groups and individuals are sources of meaning for the masses, and they invent and deliver symbolic meanings that are largely constructed by prevailing cultural co-ordinates established by cultural categories and cultural principles. p.88 - The fashion system is about fashion production and not clothing production. Individuals, such as influential leaders of fashion, and institutions that help create and spread fashion, such as fashion magazines and newspaper periodicals, are participants in the system. When we separate clothing production from fashion production, the difference between clothing and fashion become even more succinct. Fashion is produced as a belief and an ideology. People wear clothes believing that they are wearing fashion because it is something considered to be desirable. Clothing production involves the actual manufacturing of fabric and shaping it into a garment. The ideology of fashion needs to be sustained so that consumers return to purchase the items of clothing which are labeled as "fashion." The contents of fashion trends, that is particular items of clothing, may be abandoned and replaced with new styles, but the form of fashion remains and is always considered desirable in modern, industrialized nations.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-12-16 00:00:00 Martyn Graham I was delighted about getting an overview over fashion studies. The academic writing style made it hard to read, but I fought myself till the middle and skimmed the rest. Fashion design students may find some quotes for an essay, but I was more bored by this book.