Fashion - critical and cultural studies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Fashion - critical and ethnic studies - Essay ExampleThe essay Fashion - critical and cultural studies concerns the feminine fashion. The durability and versatility of the garb as a defining set is almost as dumbfounding as its continuing appeal. Even after it lost its widespread popularity, the continued use of the sash in Hollywood depictions of the feminine preserved its use, established its historic connotations and illustrated how it attributeized something larger than itself. Contemporary fashion has given the corset a new lease on life as women continue to turn to this garment as a means of identification within the modern world. Although the corset has traditionally been viewed as a symbol of female submission, any intrinsic meaning is subject to wide interpretation. What the immediate meaning usually comes from is operable imagery, past or present, the suggestive pictures that have pervaded public consciousness and are loaded with shared associations. The tight-lacing of the seventeenth and 18th centuries indicate the degree to which the corset was considered a means of female sexual expression and doctor ideas of female beauty. Understanding how the corset has been used in Hollywood, revitalized in cult fashions and re-introduced in towering fashion illustrates how it can operate to convey female submission and aggressive sexuality depending upon the internal and outside(a) factors at play in its design and use within modern fashion. Hollywood and the big wee movie producers have employed the corset in any number of ways from the beginning of the industry. The corset was already used in everyday dress when Hollywood emerged and it was already a strategic garment in Vaudeville and Broadway. Even then, women craved the fashions they saw on stage depending upon the persona of the actress and the intentions of the wearer. Broadway and Vaudeville spark advance Anna Held is the first great example of the corset as a defining garment of the femal e character. around of her fame was not attributed to her singing voice, but rather to her rolling eyes, eighteen inch waist and naughty songs. As is shown in Figure 1, Held continued the practice of tight-lacing in order to portray an enticing, sexually appealing charr with a tiny waist and accented upper features.