The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion

"The Face of Fashion" is a study of fashion and the body which aims to establish the relations between codes and systems of clothing and the conduct of everyday life.; Jennifer Craik questions the trickle-down theory that fashion is dictated by elite designers and opinion leaders with evidence of a trickle-up effect from sub-cultures, mass consumer behaviour and everyday bricolage of fashion items.; The text addresses the neglected area of men's fashion, as well as women's fashion, within a broad examination of the role of fashion in gender identity.; The argument is developed through a number of key agencies and processes: consumerism and everyday fashion; the iconization of the body through fashion models and photography; the use of cosmetics to "make-up" the body; the nexus between fashion and gender; the changing fashions in underwear and swimwear as maps of the revealed body.; These topics are approached from an interdisciplinary perspective that treats fashion systems as ethnographic traces of the cultural projection of the body