Classifying Fashion, Fashioning Class

Making Sense of Women's Practices, Perceptions and Tastes

Katherine Appleford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780415784122
• eBook ISBN: 9781351856461
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social Classes & Economic Disparity
• Index: History

Drawing together theoretical ideas from across the social sciences, Classifying Fashion, Fashioning Class examines how the fashion-class association has developed and, using the experiences of middle-and-working class British women, demonstrates how this relationship operates today.

Though increasingly academics argue that contemporary class distinctions are made through cultural practices and tastes, few have fully explored just how individual's fashion choices mobilise class and are used in class evaluations. Yet, an individual's everyday dress is perhaps the most immediate marker of taste, and thus an important means of class distinction. This is particularly true for women, as their performances of respectability, femininity and motherhood are embodied by fashion and shaped by class.

In unpacking this fashion-class relationship, the book explores how fashion is used by British women to talk about class. It offers important insights into the ways fashion mobilises class differences in understandings of dressing up, performance and public space. It considers how class identity shapes women's attitudes concerning fashion trends and classic styles, and it draws attention to the pivotal role mothers play in cultivating these class distinctions. The book will be of interest to students in sociology, fashion studies, cultural studies, human geography and consumer behaviour.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Classifying Fashion, Fashioning Class

If someone wears … the fashion it doesn’t always look so good, whereas women who might be of a higher class, or have more money or a different way of seeing things, might just wear something which isn’t within a fashion or a trend, but she still looks good. It’s the way that they present themselves… . It’s class, they’re a different class, or something.

[Carly, 23, University Student]

‘All in the Best Possible Taste’: Fashion, Class and British Culture

In 2013 Turner prizing-winning artist Grayson Perry received a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for the Channel 4 television series, All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry. In this production Perry explores the homes and lives of people living in three British locations which are seen to represent working-, middle- and upper-class communities. Starting in Sunderland, ‘a city with a strong working-class tradition and a proud heritage of ship building and coal mining’ (Perry, 2013), Perry considers the way a sense of community once provided for by manual labour and working-class industries is now found in forms of consumption. Indeed, Perry (2013) argues that ‘football, soap opera, body building, tattoos, hot cars, elaborate hairstyles and the rituals of dressing up for a Friday night on the town’ operate as a ‘pledge of allegiance to the locale’, their tastes functioning as a symbol of ‘loyalty to the clan’ while communicating their class identity to others. In one of the most memorable parts of this first programme, Perry joins a group of working-class women getting ready for a night out. He comments on the spectacular nature of their dress and the time and effort involved in getting ready, as these women ‘put on femininity’ for the evening (Skeggs, 1997). Though their look may be conventionally understood as ‘overdone’ or ‘hyper feminine’ (Skeggs, 1997; Lawler, 2005; Tyler, 2008), Perry stresses the fun and playfulness of the experience and the way in which it generates a real sense of belonging (Moore, 2013).

In the second episode, Perry visits the Kings Hill estate in Tunbridge Wells, a town ‘synonymous with middle-class values’ (Perry, 2013). Here, Perry learns about the middle-class taste for vintage furniture and organic food, and he uncovers their anxieties around maintaining standards and ensuring appropriateness. Once again, he is invited to take part in the process of dressing up, this time for a pink champagne and cupcake party, and in doing so uncovers the ‘discreet’ rules or dress ‘code’ which operates around designer goods and labels. Here, Perry comments on the carefully contrived nature of the middle-class aesthetic, where adherence to ‘rules’ signals one’s social values and secures membership to ‘the tribe’. Middle-class tastes appear to centre closely on establishing and securing one’s respectability, and while these tastes symbolise one’s belonging to one’s class, they also differentiate one class from another, thus distancing the middle-class from their working-class counterparts.

In the final episode, Perry goes to meet individuals living in the Cotswolds, a place associated with the ‘landed upper class’, demonstrated by the abundance of stately homes set amongst the picturesque scenery (Perry, 2013). Here, Perry learns more about ‘impeccable appropriateness’ and once again notes the high level of importance placed on respectability. Moreover, amongst this group he also finds an ‘understated aesthetic’, a noticeable shabbiness about individuals’ clothes and home furnishings. Though he acknowledges that the tatty nature of suit jackets and sofas is due, in part, to the ongoing financial cost of looking after a stately home, Perry argues that it is also a significant characteristic of the upper-class taste, and that this ‘understated aesthetic’ unites them on the one hand, and yet distances them from the middle and working classes on the other. Thus, once again tastes appear to operate as an important class indicator and class distinction.

Notably, across these three episodes Perry considers the role that fashion tastes and fashion practices play in mobilising these class distinctions, and through his dressing up he highlights the way in which ‘common sense’ class distinctions, based on dress, form an important part of class understanding in British culture and everyday life. Despite fashionable styles or trends being more eclectic or more affordable, classed understandings of taste, femininity and public space inform individuals’ practices of dressing up and looking good, and decisions over what (not) to wear are equally motivated by class anxieties and differences in social attitudes more broadly.

Perry uses his experiences across the programme, and his analysis of class and taste, to produce a collection of tapestries, entitled The Vanity of Small Differences. This work draws together his conclusions on class and reflects on the way tastes mobilise class distinctions in social values, attitudes and anxieties. Arguing that the British are ‘marinated’ in the material culture of class throughout their lifetime (Perry, 2013), Perry situates class at the heart of British culture, with The Vanity of Small Differences demonstrating the way class is woven into individuals’ everyday lives, shaping the way we perceive and understand the social world, perform social roles and identities, and how we engage or distance ourselves from each other. The continued relevance of class in British society, and the way that class distinctions are mobilised through the most mundane and ordinary practices, such as fashion, is striking, leading Perry to conclude that ‘more than any other factor, social class determines one’s taste’, and at the same time taste is ‘inextricably woven into our system of social class’ (Perry, 2013).

‘Accounting for Taste’: Fashion and Class Debates in the Academy

In 2012 when Grayson Perry’s show was first aired, I had just completed my PhD at the London College of Fashion, University of Arts London. My thesis explored the relationship between fashion and class in contemporary British dress, in respect of women’s fashion practices and tastes and their class evaluations, and this work informs much of this book. Grayson Perry’s assertions chimed with many of my arguments: the working-class enthusiasm for fashion trends, glamour and sociability, and the middle-class concerns with maintaining standards, authenticity, respectability and discreet, yet expensive, forms of dress. In fact, there was some degree of astonishment as I saw my arguments relayed to me via the television screen. On reflection, however, the similarity between my work and Grayson Perry’s documentary, not to mention the way in which it was so positively received (see Dent, 2012; Walton, 2012; Mangan, 2012), served to demonstrate the continued relevance of class in British society. Indeed, the series itself, the audience response, the press coverage and the subsequent recognition from BAFTA emphasised the salience of social class in British culture and in individuals’ lives, in terms of tastes, cultural practice and social experiences.

Moreover, Perry’s documentary, and the response to it, emphasised the continual and commonplace associations individuals make between fashion and class. His ‘dressing up’ highlights the critical role fashion plays in materialising individuals’ classed dispositions and orientations, and the way in which clothing is typically read as a marker of class distinction or class status in individuals’ everyday encounters. Though historically fashion’s role in mobilising class is widely recognised, today this association is one which is often overlooked in academic debates, and yet, as Perry’s work demonstrated, the fashion‒class relationship is still very much alive, and an important association is made between fashion tastes and class identity across British culture and within individuals’ daily lives.

It is not just my work that Perry’s arguments resonate with either. As I discuss in Chapter 2, academics from across the disciplines of sociology, cultural studies, human geography and fashion studies have made the case for the continued relevance of class in British society and the way in which class is mobilised through cultural tastes and practices, from gardening to comedy (Taylor, 2008; Friedman, 2015). Indeed, Perry’s arguments closely align with the theoretical position of Pierre Bourdieu ([1984] 1996: 2), whose pivotal work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste argues that ‘tastes … function as markers of class’. Symbolic representations of individuals’ economic, cultural and social capital and their class habitus, as I discuss further in Chapter 2, tastes convey individuals’ understandings, knowledge and experiences of the social world, serving to unite ‘all those who are the product of similar conditions while distinguishing them from all others’ ([1984] 1996: 56). Cultivated in our early years, within the context of the family, as discussed in Chapter 7, these tastes and practices, ways of being and doing, are developed throughout our lifetimes and thus become so entrenched that they have a natural feel to them and are largely unconscious. Our tastes, practices and perceptions are part of the fabric of who we are, and thus they are only truly realised or acknowledged when individuals are faced with conflicts or challenges from those with a differing class habitus, or when they have been socially mobile and thus find themselves amongst another class group.

Moreover, Bourdieu argues that individuals can trade, accumulate and profit from their various forms of capital. Greater capital provides greater access and movement through the social space, and results in a hierarchy of legitimacy ([1984] 1996: 87), in which some tastes and practices are valued more than others. Those who lack the requisite capital, whether it is due to a lack of educational qualifications or knowledge of high culture, find themselves subject to ‘nonrecognition’ or ‘misrecognition’, in which their social identity and social practice is considered invisible or inferior. Indeed, as Stuart Hall (1996: 5) maintains, it is ‘only through the relation to the Other, the relation to what it is not, to precisely what it lacks, to what has been called its constitutive outside that the “positive” meaning’ of any social identity can be constructed. Thus, it is through the delegitimisation and devaluing of working classes that the middle-class respectability and a middle-class identity can be made. Yet, for those with the least capital, this lack of recognition causes ‘real damage, real distortion’ and ‘real harm’, as it allows for their continual marginalisation and discrimination, and leads them to internalise their inferiority (Taylor, 1994: 25).

This understanding of class has had a profound impact on academic research and class debates, and since the mid-1990s authors have been keen to explore the ways in which class is mobilised through cultural practices, focusing particularly on the misrecognition of working-class women. Indeed, as authors such as Beverley Skeggs, Stephanie Lawler, Linda McDowell, Angela McRobbie, Diane Reay and Imogen Tyler have shown, while middle-class practices are viewed as the legitimised norm, those of working classes exist as the ‘Other’ and are often viewed with disgust. Read as excessive, inauthentic, vulgar, feckless and lazy, this image is reinforced through various media representations, political commentaries, and cultural and social stereotypes which are then used to marginalise and exclude them from various social spaces (McKenzie, 2015; Jensen, 2014; Evans, 2016). Moreover, such representations serve to encourage an understanding of working classes, and particularly working-class women, as morally inferior, while they reaffirm the respectability of the middle-class.

Within these debates, fashion is often identified as an important way in which class is mobilised. Certainly, research which considers working-class women’s performances of femininity and of motherhood highlights how fashion choices are read as excessive and inauthentic and used to contextualise them as a threat to moral society, dangerous and sexually deviant (Skeggs, 1997; Storr, 2003; Lawler, 2005; Tyler, 2008, 2013). Equally, research into working-class stereotypes, such as the chav, indicate how specific forms of dress are employed as working-class markers (Hayward and Yar, 2006; Nayak and Kehily, 2014; Tyler and Bennett, 2010), and within subcultural theory too, the relationship between fashion and class is well established, with key subcultural texts from Dick Hebdige ([1979] 2002), Tony Jefferson ([1975] 2000) and Paul Willis (1977) demonstrating the way male working-class youth use fashion to challenge class inequality and a sense of powerlessness and alienation.

Yet, while existing research has highlighted important aspects of the fashion-class dynamic, particularly within working-class contexts, academic research which focuses attention on the ways class is mobilised through women’s ordinary and everyday fashion practices is lim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Classifying Fashion, Fashioning Class
• 2 Women Talking Dirty: Making Sense of Fashion and Class
• 3 Class Fashion or Consumer Fashion: The Relevance of Class in Contemporary Fashion Consumption
• 4 Fashioning a Performance: Respectability, Femininity and Space
• 5 Dressing Up: Performance, Perceptions and Practice
• 6 Looking Good: Fashion, (Dis)Taste and Buying Practices
• 7 Mothers and Motherhood: Nurturing the Fashion‒Class Relationship
• 8 Conclusion
• Index