Fashion and Music


Book Description

The relationship between popular music and fashion has been a culturally significant one since the 1950s, and this book explores how music and musicians play a key role in the shaping of identity, taste and consumption. Using a range of historical and contemporary examples, this book uncovers the way in which fashion and music have worked to shape contemporary attitudes to bodies and identities. Focusing on performers as much as fans, on the mainstream as much as the underground, Fashion and Music provides a lens through which to examine themes of gender, sexuality, ageing and youth, ethnicity, body image, consumer culture, fandom and postmodernity.




Fashion & Music


Book Description

This book will broaden readers’ understanding of the links between the music and fashion industries. It highlights the challenges currently facing the fashion industry in terms of hyper-competition, definition of ever-faster trends, changing consumer demands etc. In fact, the fashion industry is heavily influenced by the digital revolution in the music industry, which has changed the face of individual music consumption and social reference, and therefore, also has impacts on fashion consumption and social reference. This understanding is crucial in order to realign any fashion company’s strategies to the demands of modern fashion consumers. In terms of content, the book first discusses the social perspective of fashion and music. This includes an analysis of music as a key influencer of fashion trends, both theoretically and on the basis of a case study on grunge music. Then the role of music in the fashion business is addressed, and covers in-store music and the role of music in fashion communication. Following up, the role of fashion in the music business is analyzed. This includes the trend of co-design of fashion collections, music artists’ role of differentiation by style, and the market for music fashion merchandise articles (both theoretically and drawing on a case study). In closing, potential lessons learned from the music industry are developed for the fashion industry. This includes an analysis of the digital revolution and the advent of the crowdfunding idea (both theoretically and in a case study).




VFILES


Book Description

From the fashion and music brand and talent incubator VFILES comes a style book celebrating the young, diverse street trends influencing the hottest looks and sounds in fashion and music today. VFILES was started for the kids in the line, the kids at the fashion shows and concerts who are always pushing culture forward. A ubiquitous social media platform at the crossroads of art, design, popular culture, and street savvy, VFILES represents what’s happening on the streets right now. Known for creating one of the buzziest shows of New York Fashion Week, VFILES regularly launches the next big talents in all areas of the music and fashion worlds. The pages of VFILES: Style, Fashion, Music showcase the most exciting moments from VFILES’s creations and collaborations over the last ten years. The authors look at the young innovators shaping contemporary culture and highlight their influence on some of the biggest names of today. With photos of such style arbiters as Rihanna, Cardi B, Janelle Monáe, Solange, and Erykah Badu wearing VFILES designs, this book celebrates all aspects of street culture, from hair and makeup to art, design, and lingo. A visual feast of street style, along with glamorous runway and editorial images of hip hop celebrities in their distinctive looks, these pages celebrate the intersection between music and fashion. This book embodies the VFILES credo that you can’t have fashion without music or music without fashion. And you can’t have either without the street.










Lady Gaga and Popular Music


Book Description

This book is a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary examination of the music and figure of Lady Gaga, combining approaches from scholars in cultural studies, art, fashion, and music. It represents one of the first scholarly volumes devoted to Lady Gaga, who has become, over a few short years, central to both popular (and, indeed, populist) as well as more scholarly thought in these areas and who, the contributors argue, is helping to shape—directly and indirectly—thought and culture both in the fields of the "scholarly" and the "everyday." Lady Gaga's output is firmly embedded in a self-consciously intellectual pop culture tradition, and her music videos are intertextually linked to icons of pop culture intelligentsia like Alfred Hitchcock and open to multiple interpretations. In examining her music and figure, this volume contributes both to debates on the status of intertextuality, held in tension with originality, and to debates on the figuring of the sexualized female body, and representations of disability. There is interest in these issues from a wide range of disciplines: popular musicology, film studies, queer studies, women’s studies, gender studies, disability studies, popular culture studies, and the burgeoning sub-discipline of aesthetics and philosophy of fashion.




Swing Dance


Book Description

With all things vintage enjoying a boom worldwide, swing dancing has well and truly swung back into fashion. From vintage festivals and tea dances to weekend socials and hundreds of weekly classes held around the world, multiple forms of the dance that was created in 1930s Harlem by Frankie Manning are growing ever more popular. Swing Dance explores the vibrant contemporary swing-dancing scene, looking at the different dance styles and the associated culture, community and fashion. Illustrated with vintage and contemporary photography, as well as specially commissioned step-by-step guides, it provides everything you need to know, whether you fancy kicking up your heels in the Charleston or mastering the Lindy Hop ‘swing out’. The four major dance styles are covered – Charleston, Collegiate Shag, Balboa and Lindy Hop, including the Strolls, which are guaranteed to fill the dance floor. Each chapter begins with an overview of the fascinating evolution of the dance style. ‘Get the Look’ examines the fashions for guys and girls, including hair and make-up, and a clothing, shoes and accessories checklist, while ‘The Music’ suggests the top ten tunes to practise to. Then follows a breakdown of the basic step patterns upon which the dance is built, and a guide to some of the key moves. There are also insider tips from old-timers and today’s leading swing dancers as well as fun, easy-to-follow page-embedded video demonstrations produced exclusively for the book and accessible via scannable QR codes.




In the Culture Society


Book Description

How do different artistic and cultural practices develop in the contemporary consumer culture? Providing a new direction in cultural studies as well as a vigorous defence of the field, Angela McRobbie's new collection of essays considers the social consequences of cultural proliferation and the social basis of aesthetic innovation. In the wake of postmodernism, McRobbie offers a more grounded and even localised account of key cultural practices, from the new populism of young British artists, including Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin, to the underground London sounds of drum'n'bass, discussing music by artists such as Tricky, Talvin Singh and Goldie; from the new sexualities in girls' and women's magazines like More! and Sugar to the dynamics of fashion production and consumption. Throughout the essays the author returns to issues of livelihoods and earning a living in the cultural economy, while at the same time pressing the issue of cultural value.




The Magic of Fashion


Book Description

Drawing on 20 years of ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological theory, anthropologist Brian Moeran argues that fashion magazines are able to cast a spell over their readers by using practices and rituals found in age-old magical and religious rites.




Fashion eBook


Book Description