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Call for papers, Terrains/Théories, issue 8:« The Making of Fashion. Between scene and backstage »

Submission deadline for abstracts: February 28, 2017

Presentation of the journal

Terrains/Théories is a multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal of social sciences which articulates conceptualisation and empirical research. Its approach is cross-disciplinary, embracing sociology, anthropology and philosophy. Its basic premise is that political philosophy – in a broad sense – must go beyond a purely conceptual approach to politics by getting closer to social sciences, while it becomes increasingly important to explain the theoretical choices that guide their research practices and their field surveys.

Further information here: https://teth.revues.org/

Presentation of the issue

Terrains/Théories seeks contributions for a special issue on the “Making of Fashion, between Scene and Backstage”.

“Fashion” is a complex world. On the one hand, it refers to an economic, creative, technological, professional, social, patrimonial and political space. On the other hand, it also means a space for staging and communicating appearances. Fashion is both timeless, and spaceless, always changing and in renewal, while remaining linked to cultures, epochs, territories and traditions.

  • 1 Simmel G., Philosophie de la mode, Paris, Allia, 2013 (1905).
  • 2 Barthes R., Système de la Mode, Paris, Seuil, 1967.
  • 3 Notamment Roche D., La Culture des apparences. Une histoire du vêtement (xviie-xviiie siècle), Pari (...)
  • 4 Borel F., Le Vêtement incarné. Les métamorphoses du corps, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1992.
  • 5 Bourdieu P., Delsaut Y., « Le couturier et sa griffe : contribution à une théorie de la magie », Ac (...)
  • 6 Delaporte Y., « Pour une anthropologie du vêtement », in M. de Fontanès et Y. Delaporte, Vêtement (...)
  • 7 Monneyron F., Sociologie de la mode, Paris, PUF, 2010 ; Godart F., Sociologie de la mode, Paris, La (...)
  • 8 Charpy M., « Normes et transgressions », Modes pratiques. Revue d'histoire du vêtement & de la mode(...)
  • 9 Balut P.-Y., Théorie du vêtement, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2013.
  • 10 Monjaret A. (dir.), « Fashion mix », Revue Hommes & Migrations, avril-juin, n° 1310, 2015 ; Mensiti (...)
  • 11 Charpy M., « Normes et transgressions », Modes pratiques. Revue d'histoire du vêtement & de la mode(...)

In many ways, fashion can be considered as a “total social fact”. Simmel is one of those who have opened the way for this analysis. It especially shows how the duality of fashion articulates, in the same way, the phenomena of imitation and distinction.1. Later, Roland Barthes2 emphasizes the semiological dimension of fashion by analysing clothing as an object of everyday life communication. For Barthes, fashion is a system of meanings. Historians3, art historians4, sociologists5 and anthropologists6 have studied fashion more or less closely. These works often come from a study of textiles, clothing and the body from a technical, cultural, social or gender point of view. More recently, a few publications in sociology7, history8, archaeology9 and anthropology10, as well as the creation of the review Modes pratiques11 or of a Group of Scientific Interest (ACORSO), emphasize a growing interest in fashion even if it still remains very little studied by social and human sciences in France.

  • 12 Aspers P. & Godart F., « Sociology of Fashion: Order and Change », Annual Review of Sociology, vol. (...)
  • 13 Küchler S. & Miller D., Clothing as Material Culture, Oxford, Berg, 2005.
  • 14 Lewis R. Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith, Londres, I. B. Tauris 2013.
  • 15 Mora E., Rocamora A. & Volonté P., « The Internationalization of Fashion Studies: Rethinking the P (...)
  • 16 Rocamora A., New Fashion Times: Fashion and Digital Media, in The Handbook of Fashion Studies, Lond (...)
  • 17 Mendes S. & Rees-Roberts N., « New French Luxury: Art, Fashion and the Re-Invention of a National B (...)
  • 18 Pedersen E. Rahbek G., Gwozdz Wencke & Hvass Kerli K., « Exploring the Relationship Between Busines (...)
  • 19 Steele V., A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk, New Haven, Yale University P (...)
  • 20 Wissinger E. & Entwistle J., Fashioning Models: Image, Text, and Industry, Londres, Berg Publishers (...)
  • 21 Von Wachenfeldt P., « Social Media as the New Fashion City? » in Fashioning the City: Exploring Fas (...)

In other countries, especially in the English speaking world, like Great Britain or the USA, Fashion Studies provide epistemological and theoretical reflections12 from different perspectives: on material culture13, on religion14; about globalization and internationalization15, on technology16, on luxury17, on sustainable fashion, on networks18, on gender 19, models20, city21, etc. No doubt that the interest of these thematic approaches is their transversality and their complementarity which make possible a “strata-based” understanding (through the dynamics of flows and tension) rather than linear or binary patterns.

The alleged frivolity and superficiality of this subject matter has resulted in disrepute in French research. Private institutions (training institutes or vocational schools) in which technical, design, management and marketing are taught, specialized research company brands themselves or museums, are the only ones who really truly care about this.

However, the study of fashion should whet the appetite of sociologist, ethnologist or philosopher. Multiple, complex and even conflicting, the “worlds of fashion” are indicative of current features in contemporary societies.

  • 22 Becker H. S., « A Dialogue on the Ideas of “World” and “Field” » (with Alain Pessin), URL : http:// (...)

By “world” we mean in the sense of Howard S. Becker “the analysis centers on some kind of collective activity, something that people are doing together. Whoever contributes in any way to that activity and its results is part of that world”22.

  • 23 Goffman E., La mise en scène de la vie quotidienne (Tomes 1 & 2), Paris, Minuit, 1973.

The “fashion world” includes a wide range of collective activities (creation, production, marketing, distribution, etc.) and a host of social actors (producers, creators, artisans, photographers, models, bloggers, consumers, etc.). If media coverage of fashion mostly focuses on exposure and performance to the extent that the “scene” of fashion is overexposed, “back stage” – in the sense of Erving Goffman23 – should not be left out, even if we are now observing the use of the “making-of” in the fashion community.

Unveiling the hidden faces of this world becomes a new communication game. Confrontation between “front stage” and “back stage” means also analysing the interrelations between economic systems, professions (with their invisible workers who build - behind the scenes - the social image of beauty), role-playing games, representations and practices, whose knowledge is necessary to understand the making of the “fashion world”.

We wish to give priority to the analyses of flows and tensions inside the worlds of fashion, of ways of working both within and outside its system, in order to provide insight into the dynamics of the making of fashion, between “front stage” and “back stage”.

Thus, if we do not want to restrict ourselves to an interactionist perspective, we feel it necessary to analyse the complex nature of the “worlds” of the “fashion system”. We quite simply want to develop thoughts which are still in their infancy.

Proposals will have to consider the link between the “front stage” and “the back stage” to understand fashion in its making and unmaking, that is in the process of a permanent reshaping. On the one hand, we wish to understand processes that make it possible to jump from the “front stage” to the “back stage”, and, on the other hand, interrelations and frictions between “front stage” and “backstage”, but also the processes of building negotiation and communication among stakeholders.

We shall be giving priority to ethnographic approaches (but not exclusively) and to cross-disciplinary (sociology, anthropology, philosophy, economics…) and intersectoral perspectives.

We will therefore focus on proposals that analyse the making of fashion through empirical case studies dealing with the following flows and tensions:

  • from global to local

  • from the past to the present

  • from advanced technology to traditional know-how,

  • from dream to everyday life

  • from luxury to precariousness,

  • from the intimate to the public,

  • from masculine to feminine, and vice versa.

Edited by Anne Monjaret (Research Director at CNRS – IIAC/LAHIC/CNRS/EHSS) and Kristell Blache-Comte (PhD student at IIAC/LAHIC/CNRS/EHESS)

Submission guidelines

The deadline for the submission of proposals is February 28, 2017. They should be sent to: Kristell Blache-Comte (kristell.blache-comte@ehess.fr).

Proposals must include:

  • Title;

  • Abstract of 5000 characters;

  • Information about the authors: name, institution, function, professional address, phone number and email.

The editorial board will select proposals and inform authors before March 31, 2017. Authors are kindly requested to respect the editorial guidelines of the journal: http://teth.revues.org/1.

The final papers should have a size of between 45 000 and 60 000 characters (spaces, footnotes and bibliography included) and must be submitted no later than May 31, 2017 for publication in January 2018. Papers will be evaluated in a double-blind, peer review.

For further information, please contact the editor: amelie.lebihan@u-paris10.fr

Notes

1 Simmel G., Philosophie de la mode, Paris, Allia, 2013 (1905).

2 Barthes R., Système de la Mode, Paris, Seuil, 1967.

3 Notamment Roche D., La Culture des apparences. Une histoire du vêtement (xviie-xviiie siècle), Paris, Fayard, 2007 (1989) ; Perrot Ph., Le luxe : Une richesse entre faste et confort, xviiie-xixe siècle, Seuil, Paris, 1998 ; Perrot Ph., Le Corps féminin (xviiie-xixe siècles) : le travail des apparences, Paris, Seuil, 2015 (1991).

4 Borel F., Le Vêtement incarné. Les métamorphoses du corps, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1992.

5 Bourdieu P., Delsaut Y., « Le couturier et sa griffe : contribution à une théorie de la magie », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, n° 1, vol. 1, 1975, p. 7-36 ; Yonnet P., Jeux, Modes et masses. La société française et le moderne 1945-1985, Paris, Gallimard, 1985.

6 Delaporte Y., « Pour une anthropologie du vêtement », in M. de Fontanès et Y. Delaporte, Vêtement et sociétés /1. Actes des Rencontres des 2 et 3 mars 1979, Paris, Laboratoire d’ethnologie du Museum national d’histoire naturelle, Société des amis du Musée de l’homme, 1981, p. 3-13.

7 Monneyron F., Sociologie de la mode, Paris, PUF, 2010 ; Godart F., Sociologie de la mode, Paris, La Découverte, 2010 ; Levy C., Quemin A. (dir.), « Pour une sociologie de la mode et du vêtement », Sociologie et sociétés, vol. 43, n°1, 2011.

8 Charpy M., « Normes et transgressions », Modes pratiques. Revue d'histoire du vêtement & de la mode, n° 1, 2015.

9 Balut P.-Y., Théorie du vêtement, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2013.

10 Monjaret A. (dir.), « Fashion mix », Revue Hommes & Migrations, avril-juin, n° 1310, 2015 ; Mensitieri G., « La chance d’être là ». Le travail dans la mode entre glamour et précarité, Thèse de doctorat, Paris, EHESS, 2016.

11 Charpy M., « Normes et transgressions », Modes pratiques. Revue d'histoire du vêtement & de la mode, n° 1, 2015.

12 Aspers P. & Godart F., « Sociology of Fashion: Order and Change », Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 39, 2013, p. 171-192; Kawamura Y., Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies, New York, Berg, 2005 ; Rocamora A. & Smelik A. (dir.), Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, Londres, I. B. Tauris, 2015.

13 Küchler S. & Miller D., Clothing as Material Culture, Oxford, Berg, 2005.

14 Lewis R. Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith, Londres, I. B. Tauris 2013.

15 Mora E., Rocamora A. & Volonté P., « The Internationalization of Fashion Studies: Rethinking the Peer-reviewing Process », in International Journal of Fashion Studies, 1/1, 2014, p. 3-17 ; Maynard M., Dress and Globalisation, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004.

16 Rocamora A., New Fashion Times: Fashion and Digital Media, in The Handbook of Fashion Studies, Londres, Bloomsbury, 2013.

17 Mendes S. & Rees-Roberts N., « New French Luxury: Art, Fashion and the Re-Invention of a National Brand », in Luxury, 2/2, 2015, p. 53-69; Von Wachenfeldt P., « The Language of Luxury in Eighteenth- Century France » in Fashion in Popular Culture. Literature, Media and Contemporary Studies, Chicago, Intellect, University of Chicago Press, 2013.

18 Pedersen E. Rahbek G., Gwozdz Wencke & Hvass Kerli K., « Exploring the Relationship Between Business Model Innovation, Corporate Sustainability, and Organisational Values within the Fashion Industry », Journal of Business Ethics, February 2016, p. 1-18.

19 Steele V., A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2013.

20 Wissinger E. & Entwistle J., Fashioning Models: Image, Text, and Industry, Londres, Berg Publishers, 2012.

21 Von Wachenfeldt P., « Social Media as the New Fashion City? » in Fashioning the City: Exploring Fashion Cultures, Structures, and Systems, The Royal College of Art, 19-21 September 2012.

22 Becker H. S., « A Dialogue on the Ideas of “World” and “Field” » (with Alain Pessin), URL : http://howardsbecker.com/articles/world.html

23 Goffman E., La mise en scène de la vie quotidienne (Tomes 1 & 2), Paris, Minuit, 1973.

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