'Wear your identity': Styling identities of youth through dress – A conceptual model

Abstract

Abstract This article exposes how young people use dress to negotiate, articulate and display identity. A diverse group of young people from Manchester, England, were asked to style themselves using items of clothing, or artefacts, which represented their individual and civic identities. Responses to this styling workshop and the accompanying interviews confirmed the powerful part that dressing can play, as young people navigate different cultural contexts and social environments in their everyday life. The research brings new insights into how dress is used as a catalyst for self-awareness, communication and development of self within multicultural urban settings. It proposes a new model for Dress, Youth and Identity (DYI) that provides a structure onto which young peoples' narratives of dress can be mapped and analysed, building upon the model for Dress and the Public, Private and Secret Self (PPSS) proposed by Eicher and Miller.