Significance Of Dress Research Articles

Maid to serve: ‘Self-fashioning’ and the domestic worker trope in contemporary South Africa

Abstract This article investigates how the domestic worker sartorial trope is reflected and embodied in contemporary South African culture. Domestic work has received very little public or media attention from feminists, trade unionists, or even political activists broadly until the recent movement of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). This article observes how the South African political party, the EFF, use the domestic worker dress as a subversionary tactic in sociopolitical culture. By appropriating the archetypal domestic worker dress, the EFF demonstrate both identification with the domestic worker and a subversion of what the domestic worker dress has, for so long, inferred. In the context of post-apartheid South Africa, the author examines the domestic worker trope and the significance of dress. This article uses critical discourse analysis and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus to explicate both the personal and political significance of the domestic worker dress in contemporary South Africa.

Dressing the Part? The Significance of Dress in Social Work

This paper explores practice educators' views about the significance of dress for social work in the context of UK social work education. The findings, drawn from three focus group discussions, suggest that practice educators regard dress as an important way in which social workers demonstrate values in action. Dress is also seen to play a part in the development and maintenance of a professional social work identity, and is relevant to the physical and bodily experiences of ‘doing’ social work. Social workers should be aware of the significance of dress and self-presentation, and where student social workers fail to demonstrate such awareness, practice educators may have questions about their understanding of the complexity of practice. The paper notes that while participants expressed similar views about the meaning and impact of dress, these are based on the observation and experience of practice, and there is little research evidence specifically concerning dress in social work. The study contributes to an understanding of why practice educators consider that dress may be relevant in the assessment of a student's practice readiness, and suggests areas for further research about this everyday yet significant aspect of a social worker's working life.

Hijab in London

This article is about the significance of dress as a visible indicator of difference in multicultural London. It focuses in particular on the hijab (Muslim woman's headscarf), suggesting that its adoption by middle-class Muslim women is often a product, not so much of their cultural backgrounds as of the trans-cultural encounters they experience in a cosmopolitan urban environment. The article explores the transformative potential of hijab, demonstrating how its adoption not only acts as a moment of metamorphosis in the lives of wearers, but also has significant effects on the perceptions and actions of others. These themes of metamorphosis, visibility and agency are explored in relation to the complex conflicting resonance of hijab in the West, and how that resonance is constantly being reshaped both through contemporary political events and their media coverage as well as through the actions and campaigns of hijab wearers.

Doing Dress and the Construction of Women's Gender Identity

The purpose of this article is to build on and strengthen the understanding that occupation is central to the creation and expression of identity. The first goal is to explore the ubiquity of dress in Western society, as well as its seemingly mundane presence in daily life. The complexities and nuances of this occupation are explored. The second goal is to examine the occupation of ‘doing dress’ through the lens of women's gender identity. The authors utilize the specific lens of women's gender identity due to the significance of dress as a marker of gender identity. This article concludes with the need for more studies and analyses in occupational science that focus on dress and its importance to identity.

Book Reviews

Beads of Life: Eastern and Southern African Beadwork from Canadian Collections by Marie‐Louise Labelle. Canadian Museum of Civilization Mercury Series, Cultural Studies Paper 78. Gatineau, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2005. 208 pp.Suzanne Gott is Assistant Professor of Aboriginal and Visual Arts at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada. Trained in art history, folklore, and African studies, her ethnographic research focuses on women's visual culture in Ghana's Ashanti region, particularly on the significance of dress, fashion, and urban performative display.

Understanding fashion history

The generous reception given to Understanding Fashion History when it was first published in 2004 recognised it as a timely reappraisal of the role of fashion and its place in society. The book introduces the reader to the ways fashionable dress has been defined and studied since the late 17th century, considering the theories that surround the subject, the assembling and use of collections of fashion and textiles, the significance of dress and art, the tension between uniformity of appearance and disguise, and the purpose of theatrical costume. This book has been read and recommended by academics, collectors, curators, students and general readers who want context for the contemporary obsession with fashion. Constantly in demand, it has become a classic text in its field.

The cultural significance of dress and textiles

Renne, Elisha P. Cloth that Does not Die: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. xxi + 269 pp. including appendix, notes, glossary, bibliography, and index. $40.00 cloth. Hendrickson, Carol. Weaving Identities: Construction of Dress and Self in a Highland Guatemala Town. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993. xiv + 295 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00 cloth, $15.95 paper. Schevill, Margot Blum. Maya Textiles of Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992. xiii + 295 pp. including notes, bibliography, and indices. $65.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

The Color of Life: The Significance of Dress in The Portrait of a Lady

The Color of Life: The Significance of Dress in The Portrait of a Lady

Contesting Clothes in Colonial Brazzaville

The significance of dress in mediating social relations was deeply rooted in the Central African experience. In pre-colonial times, clothing, jewellery and insignia conveyed identity, status, values and a sense of occasion. Those with access to European trade cloth and second-hand clothes integrated them into their dress. Central Africans had a strong sense of the “politics of costume” long before new sources and ideas of clothing arrived with colonialism.Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa, then became the scene of opportunity, experimentation and choice. Foreign workers from West Africa, the French Antilles and the Central African coastal regions pioneered new styles which were quickly appropriated and adapted by other townspeople. Europeans, in their attire, also seemed to confirm the importance of dress and were a model for those who considered themselvesévolués.In handing out clothing, European employers and missionaries had their own agenda, which was rejected by many townspeople as an autonomous fashion sense developed in Bacongo and Poto-Poto, the African districts of Brazzaville. With an entrenched monetary economy, cloth and clothing became widely available to all with cash. Styles, costs and values became issues of contention. Clothing not only symbolized change but became a vehicle for change.In the late colonial period, the sources allow a deeper understanding of the relationship of dress to controversial social issues. Clothing became an arena for contesting and asserting class, gender and generational roles.