Power Dressing Research Articles

Power + Fashion

“Power dressing,” itself a women’s dress reform movement, as it came to be called in the 1970s, used to distinguish typical feminine dress styles and was seen as a necessary strategy for a more subdued image on par with the masculine, serious, and formal professional dress, namely the ubiquitous suit and tie. This new ‘career’ woman became visible by her appearance and choice of dress codes that reinforced her position as a businesswoman who was seriously committed to her work. But from the perspective of the first decades of the new millennium, power dressing and power and fashion have far wider meanings and ramifications. For Michel Foucault, power is a regulatory principle that is used to control social interactions and to impose structures that inform the ways in which we act and appear. In line with Foucault’s analysis, to dress is already to respond to tacit frameworks of power, and because it involves already accepted codes of visualisation and behaviour, to “power dress” is not simply to wield or enact power voluntarily but to succumb to it as well. Further, as this paper will reveal, power dressing can also be understood according to Foucault’s “technologies of self”, which sees the historical subject as both subject and object of a network of discursive forces that are considered normative as opposed to constructed. Power dressing still exists today but according to a more nuanced and multivalent configuration. It can also be thought of as a particular form of renunciation that facilitates an embodiment of power much as religious asceticism and privation is (purportedly) constitutive of a more authentic self.

Deciphering Working Girl: Identity, Post-Feminism, and Power Dressing

Deciphering Working Girl: Identity, Post-Feminism, and Power Dressing

Fashioning Gender in Asia and Beyond

Fashioning Gender in Asia and Beyond

Genius and taste: Sara Danius’ couture gowns as extended power dressing

The visual politics of fashion has again become a topic of interest to scholars working both inside and outside the realm of fashion studies, although many, like this author, actually bow to Jennifer Craik’s ground-breaking study The Face of Fashion (1994). This article introduces the notion extended power dressing as a way to further the scholarly study of contemporary female executives’ brand of power dressing in the aftermath of John T. s matrix for successful ‘wardrobe-engineering’. In line with previous studies of the sartorial dress code represented by women in power, this article features a pertinent example from yet another social arena, in the form of the unprecedented couture gowns worn by the late permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, at the Nobel Festivities in Stockholm between 2015 and 2018. The author suggests that these frocks are materialized visions of Danius’ intellectual wit and cultural taste, thus representing a visual articulation of her powerful rank. An important characteristic pertaining to Danius’ extended power dressing is therefore that her situated dress practice, while advocating different practices of resistance and counter-conduct, refuted all sexualization of her as a female subject to the benefit of a self-authored and self-reflecting enfashioning technology. By detailing the intellectual process behind Danius’ gowns, as well as their performance in society, this study shows how power is behaving and how it is structured when comparing the conduct of a certain dominant discourse (in this case cultural tradition and misogyny) to the author’s proposed counter-discourse (resistance and female agency). The author suggests that the visual politics emerging from this meeting represent a unique female subculture adding yet another layer to the visual politics of fashion.

IMF 총재 크리스틴 라가르드의 패션 스타일에 나타난 파워 드레싱 특성

The purpose of this study was to analyze the cases of IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde to discuss power dressing characteristics represented in the fashion style of women political leaders. Study methods included literature reviews on the theoretical background of Christine Lagarde's Political Leadership formation and the power dressing of women political leaders. The results of the study were as follows. First, governor Christine Lagarde's fashion styles worn at formal events were summarized into suits, bags, scarves and jewelry. Clothing type was found to be 98% suits, 5% dress with the colors black, gray and white being worn the most, 84% were achromatic, blue tones and vivid tones were about 16%. Faborite accessories included scarves, jewelry and luxury bags. Scarves were higher frequency utilization at 51% of the total wear. Second, characteristics of power-dressing appearring as fashion styles were summarized as wealthy, honorable, having political power, being, charismatic or, feminine. Luxury suite luxury brands holds a sense of power with many believing they wealth, honor and charisma. Luxury bags, V-zone ornaments of scarves and, jewelry are items of power that people often wear in order to charisma and a symbol of power. They are also, used as an important element in portraying confidence and leadership as IMF governors.

Fashion and fandom on TV and social media: Claire Underwood’s power dressing

Abstract This article seeks to discuss the relation between TV series characters, fashion and fandom through social media. It focuses on a specific kind of TV series, quality dramas, and in particular Netflix’s House of Cards (Netflix, 2013–). This series is a model example of the way clothing is a key factor that elicits audience engagement: the fashion universe of the female protagonist, Claire Underwood, is clearly included in the story, contributing to the definition of both the environment and the character. The relevance of style, outfits, clothes and fashion accessories is underlined by several online fandom interactions: audiences talk daily about how particular characters dress or act, check and share information and images about outfits and brands and buy online the products seen on TV. Audience members build and negotiate their gender identity through a performative self-representation, using (buying and wearing) fashion-symbolic materials provided by TV. These practices, now enabled by the social TV phenomenon, allow audiences to engage with the contents in a sort of expanded TV experience, which is the focus of this article. In particular, the aim of the article is to explore the process of fashion appropriation and reworking enacted by the audience with respect to Claire Underwood’s power dressing and to provide evidence as to how TV shows can offer diverse fashion experiences by which individuals can be inspired in representing the self.

마가렛 대처의 파워 드레싱 연구: 패션 스타일링을 중심으로

The objective of this research is to provide data for the power dressing of female politicians when analyzing the fashion styling of Margaret Thatcher. The method is based on considering Margaret Thatcher's life and political career, together with the power dressing of politicians from domestic and foreign literature, advanced research and internet. In addition, 133 clothing photos of Margaret Thatcher's costumes are collected from the internet and several web-sites. The fashion styling being displayed from 4 May 1979 to 28 November 1990 are classified with the 1st term, 2nd term, 3rd term depending on the prime minister. We then analyze items, colors, patterns and fashion accessories. And also observe the power dressing through Thatcher's fashion styling. The results of this study are as follows: Margaret Thatcher expresses authority through blue clothes which symbolizes conservatism at conservative parties, black clothes at formal parties, two or three piece of various colors at international conferences. She also has simple and impressive styles emphasizing accessories such as ribbons or pearls necklaces and earrings, brooches, and handbags. Margaret Thatcher fulfills the styling power dressing of a strong and feminine figure by using items symbolizing authority as a powerful woman.

Fabrication of a Stretchable Solid-State Micro-Supercapacitor Array

We fabricated a stretchable micro-supercapacitor array with planar SWCNT electrodes and an ionic liquid-based triblock copolymer electrolyte. The mechanical stability of the entire supercapacitor array upon stretching was obtained by adopting strategic design concepts. First, the narrow and long serpentine metallic interconnections were encapsulated with polyimide thin film to ensure that they were within the mechanical neutral plane. Second, an array of two-dimensional planar micro-supercapacitor with SWCNT electrodes and an ion-gel-type electrolyte was made to achieve all-solid-state energy storage devices. The formed micro-supercapacitor array showed excellent performances which were stable over stretching up to 30% without any noticeable degradation. This work shows the strong potential of a stretchable micro-supercapacitor array in applications such as wearable computers, power dressing, electronic newspapers, paper-like mobile phones, and other easily collapsible gadgets.

The Baron's complaint

The Baron's complaint

Lekking displays in contemporary organizations

The purpose of this paper is to draw on scientific models in conceptualising the evolutionary bases of contemporary behaviours, and make cross-species comparisons, to account for male managerial activities in situ in health organizations. In the animal world, males of many species display in order to induce females to mate. Such lekking behaviour involves inter alia, strutting, puffing out, catching attention via the use of ornamental physical characteristics, exhibiting gaudily-coloured body parts, singing or splashing, and other courting and wooing strategies. The paper applies these behavioural repertoires as an explanatory device for male-dominant organizational lekking in a set of contemporary settings. It draws on six studies of managerial talk, appearance and behaviour in order to do so. Within the organizational lek male managers display mainly by power dressing, positioning, and exercising power and influence via verbal and behavioural means. Social and religious mores prohibit overt sexual coupling in organizations but lekking for other rewards is nevertheless pursued by male managers. The paper explores this managerial patterning, compares it to the lekking behaviour of other species, and discusses points of comparison and departure. It shows how male managers display within various sub-habitats, and discusses the central issues of appearance, tasks and work assignment, physical interaction structure, and talk and physiognomy. Understanding what makes people tick via deep explanations than are customarily rendered is a vital contribution of scholarship to the practical world of management. The evolutionary bases of contemporary behaviours, and cross-species accounts, may prove useful paradigms for other theorists and empiricists in organizational studies, and could encourage the development of a new field that might be labeled evolutionary organizational behaviour.

Gender in the early medieval world: East and West, 300-900

1. Introduction Julia M. H. Smith Part I. Gender in Late antique, Byzantine and Islamic Societies: 2. Gender and ethnicity in the early middle ages Walter Pohl 3. Clothes maketh the man: power dressing and elite masculinity in the later roman world Mary Harlow 4. Social transformation, gender transformation: the court eunuch, 300-900 Shaun Tougher 5. Sex, lies and textuality: the secret history of Prokopios and the rhetoric of gender in sixth-century Byzantium Leslie Brubaker 6. Romance and reality in the Byzantine brideshows Martha Vinson 7. Men, women and slaves in Abbasid society Julia Bray 8. Gender and politics in the harem of al-Muqtadir Nadia Maria El Cheikh Part II. Gender in Germanic Studies: 9. Dressing conservatively: women's brooches as markers of ethnic identity? Bonnie Effros 10. Gendering courts in the early medieval west Janet L. Nelson 11. Men, women and liturgical practice in the early medieval west Gisela Muschiol 12. Gender and the patronage of culture in Merovingian Gaul Yitzhak Hen 13. Genealogy defined by women: the case of the Pippinids Ian Wood 14. Brideshows revisited: praise, slander and exegesis in the reign of the Empress Judith Mayke de Jong 15. 'What is the word if not semen?' Priestly bodies in Carolingian exegesis Lynda Coon 16. Negotiating gender, family and status in Anglo-Saxon burial practices, c.600-950 Dawn Hadley Index.

Under the Cover of Clothing: Scripted Clothing Performances in the Apocalypse of John

Phrases such as “dressed to kill,” “power dressing,” “casual dress,” “sexy attire,” “dressed to impress,” “frumpy attire,” “dressed fashionably,” and “fashion statement,” are value laden and express cultural themes and narratives. Scattered throughout the Apocalypse are references to a cast of characters dressed and decorated in ways befitting their role in the unfolding drama of the eschaton. What is worn relates to their identity individually and collectively, their loyaltyies, and their epistemic authority. Furthermore, through deploying the trope of body ornamentation, the author of the Apocalypse forms impressions of those loyal or disloyal to God, extends the personas of friend and foe to make them visible in the public sphere, and eroticizes the body metaphorically to inform readers about his standards. Taking into account the functions of attire and adornment delineated by social psychologists, this essay proposes to examine the shifting course of values reflected in the clothing and ornamentation motifs deployed in the Apocalypse of John.

Power dressing and meta-analysis: incorporating power analysis into meta-analysis.

This paper highlights the lack of consideration that is given to power in the health and social sciences, which is a continuing problem with both single study research and more importantly for meta-analysis. The power of a study is the probability that it will lead to a statistically significant result. By ignoring power the single study researcher makes it difficult to get negative results published and therefore affects meta-analysis through publication bias. Researchers using meta-analysis, who also ignore power, then compound the problem by including studies with low power that are more likely to show significant effects. A simple means of calculating an easily understood measure of effect size from a contingency table is demonstrated in this paper. A computer programme for determining the power of a study is recommended and a method of reflecting the adequacy of the power of the studies in a meta-analysis is suggested. An example of this calculation from a meta-analytic study on intravenous magnesium, which produced inaccurate results, is provided. It is demonstrated that incorporating power analysis into this meta-analysis would have prevented misleading conclusions being reached. Some suggestions are made for changes in the protocol of meta-analytic studies, which highlight the importance of power analysis.

Power dressing: Women in the military

(1999). Power dressing: Women in the military. Australian Journal of Art: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 149-163.