Curves & A-lines: Why Contemporary Women Choose to Wear Nostalgic 1950s Style Clothing

Abstract

<p>This thesis asks why contemporary women choose to wear nostalgic 1950s style clothing. To answer this question, it uses a material culture framework, which puts the object, in this case, 1950s style clothing, at the centre of the research. Material culture approaches to studying clothing and style are relatively underused in the field and as such there are limited theoretical frameworks for researchers to use. This thesis makes a contribution to the field by presenting a theoretical framework that can be replicated in future research. In adopting a material culture framework, this these first asks, what does the object have to say about the culture that uses it? This is achieved through an object analysis of the clothes. This analysis found that the clothes embed a different conception of female identity from today’s contemporary clothes. This identity is not, however, a mere reflection of 1950s social culture, but an iteration of contemporary female identity that both challenges and sits alongside the mediated ideal of female bodies and personhood. Following on from the object study, this thesis then examines what the culture has to say about the clothes they wear. It uses an interpretative paradigm to inform a multi-method approach. Data was collected through two sets of ethnographic interviews, an immersion study and an international survey.</p> <p>The research examines the wearing of a historic clothing style in a wider social context and represents a shift away from looking at alternate dressing in a narrow subcultural context. Twenty-seven women were interviewed to gain insights into their understanding and use of nostalgic 1950s style clothing. The women also provided photographs of their clothes so that the object was ‘present’ in the interview, providing context for their answers. The women revealed that they were looking for clothing that represents them both physically and psychologically. To clarify which of the themes that arose from the interviews were gender-bound, three men were interviewed from which a comparison could be made. The men revealed a less complex nostalgic relationship to the 1950s than the women did. Men did not have to negotiate the retrograde gender roles of the actual 1950s in the way women did. Sitting alongside these interviews is an immersion study. Material culture approaches call for the researcher to interact with the object, and thus the researcher wore and used the clothes in the manner of the participants. An international survey was conducted investigating how home-sewers use their craft to access 1950s style clothing, finding admiration for previous sewing techniques sat alongside a desire to control quality and fit in clothing. The thesis finds that there are multiple understandings of what nostalgic 1950s clothing represents, revealing a rich dialogue between the clothes and the culture that wears them.</p>