Fashion History As Hybrid. A Transnational Perspective on the Distribution of Fashion History in Sweden, 1950–1980

Abstract

The fashion press has long played a powerful role as one of the most important primary sources for fashion history in the West. This article argues that the popular fashion history of the post-war decades is written in a methodological field that can be characterized as a hybrid: in-between the practices of journalistic writing and academic research, as well as curating, teaching, etc. The history of fashion in twentieth-century Sweden has in general not been particularly well known or documented, which may have contributed to make the field of fashion literature particularly open to influences from media, popular culture and international publishing. The object of this article is to propose a methodological examination of this frequently neglected group of fashion publications, with a particular emphasis on the illustrations. Inspired by a print culture perspective, popular fashion history and theory books are considered both as material objects and vehicles of ideas, texts and images. The focus on the situation in Sweden offers a perspective from the geographical margins of a conventional fashion history narrative.