Fashioning Professionals: Identity and Representation at Work in the Creative Industries 9781350001848, 9781350001879, 9781350001855

Table of contents :
Cover
Halt-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction: Fashioning Professionals: History, Theoryand Method
Part One: Inventing
1. Media in the Museum: Fashioning the Design Curator at the Boilerhouse Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum,London
2. Fashioning Pop: Stylists, Fashion Work and Popular Music Imagery
3. The Labour of Fashion Blogging
Part Two: Negotiating
4. Fashioning Professional Identity in the British AdvertisingIndustry: The Women’s Advertising Club of London, 1923–1939
5. Satirical Representations of the Bauhaus Architect in Simplicissimus Magazine
6. The Self as an Art-Work: Performative Self-Representation in the Life and Work of Leonor Fini
Part Three: Making
7. Designer Unknown: Documenting the Mannequin Maker
8. Fashioning the Contemporary Artist: The Spatial Biography of Sue Tompkins
9. The Maker 2.0: A Craft-Based Approach to Understanding a New Creative Identity
Index

Citation preview

FASHIONING PROFESSIONALS

FASHIONING PROFESSIONALS Identity and Representation at Work in the Creative Industries

EDITED BY LEAH ARMSTRONG AND FELICE MCDOWELL

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 Paperback edition first published 2020 Copyright © Leah Armstrong and Felice McDowell, 2018 Individual chapters © the contributors, 2018 Leah Armstrong and Felice McDowell has asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Anna Berzovan Cover image: Three lifelike female fashion mannequins arranged in a soiree scene as their creator/mannequin designer Adel Rootstein poses in their midst in her apt (© Terry Smith/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-0184-8 PB: 978-1-3501-2927-6 ePDF: 978-1-3500-0185-5 eBook: 978-1-3500-0186-2 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii List of Contributors ix Acknowledgements xi Foreword xii Elizabeth Wissinger

Introduction: Fashioning Professionals: History, Theory and Method 1 Leah Armstrong and Felice McDowell

PART ONE INVENTING

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1 Media in the Museum: Fashioning the Design Curator at the Boilerhouse Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 29 Liz Farrelly

2 Fashioning Pop: Stylists, Fashion Work and Popular Music Imagery

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Rachel Lifter

3 The Labour of Fashion Blogging Agnès Rocamora

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CONTENTS

PART TWO NEGOTIATING

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4 Fashioning Professional Identity in the British Advertising Industry: The Women’s Advertising Club of London, 1923–1939 85 Philippa Haughton

5 Satirical Representations of the Bauhaus Architect in Simplicissimus Magazine

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Isabel Rousset

6 The Self as an Art-Work: Performative Self-Representation in the Life and Work of Leonor Fini

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Andrea Kollnitz

PART THREE MAKING

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7 Designer Unknown: Documenting the Mannequin Maker

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June Rowe

8 Fashioning the Contemporary Artist: The Spatial Biography of Sue Tompkins

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Caroline Stevenson

9 The Maker 2.0: A Craft-Based Approach to Understanding a New Creative Identity Catharine Rossi Index 202

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 Boilerhouse Press Cuttings, albums one to six (1981–1989), Blythe House, Victoria and Albert Museum. Photographed by the author 31 1.2 British curator, journalist and critic Stephen Bayley pictured with robot exhibits in the Boilerhouse space at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on 23 July 1984. Photo by United News/Popperfoto/Getty Images 41 4.1 ‘What is the typical Advertising Face?’ (1933) Advertisers’ Weekly, 21 December: 406 89 5.1 Thomas Theodor Heine, Simplicissimus (1927), 8 August: 250 © Thomas Theodor Heine/VG Bild-Kunst. Licensed by Viscopy, 2016 111 5.2 Thomas Theodor Heine, ‘Kleine Bilder’ (1928), Simplicissimus, 21 May: 103 © Thomas Theodor Heine/VG Bild-Kunst. Licensed by Viscopy, 2016 113 5.3 Thomas Theodor Heine, ‘Sachlichkeit!’ (1928), Simplicissimus, 10 September: 303 © Thomas Theodor Heine/VG Bild-Kunst. Licensed by Viscopy, 2016 114 6.1 Fini, Leonor (1975) avec la collaboration de José Alvarez, Le Livre de Leonor Fini, Paris: Editions Mermoud-Clairefontaine Vilo Paris, page 33. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini 125 6.2 André Ostier, Leonor Fini wearing a costume for the Bal de Violette, Paris 1948. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini 127 6.3 Leonor Fini, Portrait of Manolo Borromeo, oil on canvas, 1944. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini 133 6.4 André Ostier, photograph of Leonor Fini, Sforzino Sforza and Stanislao Lepri, Palazzo Labia, Venice 1951. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini 135 6.5 Eddie Brofferio, Leonor Fini, Nonza, Corsica c. 1965. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini 137 6.6 Horst P. Horst, Leonor Fini in her studio, Paris 1946. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini 139

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

7.1 ‘Adel Rootstein in her London Studio,’ Life, 15 May 1970, photo by Terence Spencer. Courtesy of Cara Spencer, Terence Spencer Photo Archive © http://www.terencespencerphotoarchive.net 157 7.2 Adel Rootstein with bespoke fashion display mannequins, 1989, photo by Terry Smith © http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/license/50419586 159 8.1 Sue Tompkins, ‘Your Pocket Magic’ (detail), Typewritten text on paper, card, black felt, glass table, 2007. Commissioned by The Showroom, London. Courtesy the artist, The Showroom, London and The Modern Institute, Glasgow 175 8.2 Sue Tompkins, ‘For my Dataday’, 2010, typewritten text on coloured paper. Courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow 177 9.1 Exhibition entrance, ‘Power of Making,’ V&A Museum (6 September 2011 to 2 January 2012), Photo © Oscar Bauer 182 9.2 Makerspace, iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, http:// www.nesta.org.uk/blog/open-dataset-uk-makerspaces, Courtesy of iMAL/Fab Lab.iMAL 183 9.3 Shanghai Maker Carnival 2015. Photo by the author 188 9.4 Issue 1 of Make © Make: Magazine 189 9.5 Issue 1 of Craft © Make: Magazine 192

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Leah Armstrong is a senior lecturer in Design History at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and also Head of Archive at the Papanek Foundation, University of Applied Arts Vienna. She has previously held research and teaching positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Glasgow School of Art and University of Brighton. She completed her PhD at the University of Brighton in 2014, a Collaborative Doctoral Award with the Chartered Society of Designers funded by the AHRC, on the professionalization of design in Britain (1930–2010). Liz Farrelly writes, edits, curates and lectures at University of Brighton. She’s published more than 25 books in the field of design, the latest being Design Objects and the Museum, co-edited with Joanna Weddell (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). Philippa Haughton is a university teacher in Economic History at Cardiff University. She completed her PhD, ‘The Formation of Professional Identity in the British Advertising Industry 1920–1954,’ at Durham University, and is currently revising the manuscript for publication. Andrea Kollnitz holds a PhD in Art History and is an assistant professor at the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. Her research and publications are focused on national identity, fashion discourse and visual culture; fashion portraits and photography; the self-fashioning of avantgarde artists during modernism; art museums and gender and the reception of modernist art. She is co-editor of the anthologies Modernism och mode (Fashion and Modernism, 2015) and A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries, 1925–50 (2017). Rachel Lifter teaches at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute. Her research and teaching explore the intersections of fashion, feminism and popular culture. Her forthcoming book – Fashioning Indie: Popular Fashion, Music and

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Gender – charts the mainstreaming of indie music and explores how gendered identities form within and throughout this cultural process. Felice McDowell is an associate lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. Her research interests are in methodologies of fashion history, archival research, critical theory, life writing, and the visual and textual representation of fashion ‘work.’ She has published in the journals Fashion Theory, Photography & Culture, Clothing Cultures and a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. Agnès Rocamora is a reader in Social and Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion. She is the author of Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and the Media. She is a co-editor of Thinking through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, of The Handbook of Fashion Studies, and of Fashion Media: Past and Present. She is also a co-editor of the International Journal of Fashion Studies. Catharine Rossi is a senior lecturer in Design History at Kingston University, London. Rossi’s research interests include the relationship between craft and design, and her publications include Crafting Design in Italy: from Postwar to Postmodernism (Manchester University Press, 2015). Isabel Rousset is a PhD candidate and teacher at the University of Western Australia. Her work focuses on the relationship between architecture, visual culture, and politics. Her current project explores the intersections between housing design and social and political theory in nineteenth-century Germany. June Rowe is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the University of the Arts, London. June’s doctoral research is a study of the fashion display mannequin and feminine silhouettes and includes a history of British mannequin design. Caroline Stevenson is a curator, researcher and lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion. She works closely with emerging and established artists to research and develop new projects that aim to make visible the social processes surrounding the production of art objects. She has programmed exhibitions and events for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, ICA (London), Tate Tanks and Tenderbooks (London), as well as a range of pop up spaces.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors express thanks to colleagues at the London College of Fashion, University of Brighton, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, for their inspiration and support during the research and writing stages of this book. In particular, they would like to thank the University of Brighton, London College of Fashion and Victoria and Albert Museum for supporting the symposium ‘Fashioning Professionals: A Symposium on the Historical and Contemporary Representation of Cultural and Creative Professions’ which took place at the V&A Museum, 27 March 2015, from which this book project developed.

FOREWORD Elizabeth Wissinger

Scholars and writers of the human condition have been struggling to theorize their way around the subject/object divide ever since philosophers cleaved us in two. Fashion seems a funny place from which to tackle a philosophical conundrum. As this volume adroitly demonstrates, however, fashion’s dynamic sweep enfolds so much of the personal intimacy and public drama of selves struggling to be in the world, one is left to wonder, why start anywhere else? Pulling together far-reaching ideas with the concept of ‘fashioning’, the authors open the analysis beyond the usual suspects of dress, the fashion system or self-expression, to evoke the complex interlocking power dynamics of creating the settings in which the clothed body is lived, and through which it is mediated. Drawing from a range of disparate milieus, this volume procures a collection of makers, do-ers and fashioners, all of whom are part of the same story. It is the story of fashion as a dynamic field of activity, where creativity flows through institutions, technology, ideas and people in no specific order. There is no hero worship or auteur-ship here, nor is there fashion with a capital ‘F’. Instead we are treated to the delicious perspectival shift that results when agency is not hoarded and twisted so that only humans can take credit for it. Putting place, practice and persons on equal footing offers a crucially important challenge to reigning assumptions regarding self, identity and persona, especially as lived through the creative space of fashion. This move is a welcome one in fashion studies today, and almost certainly necessary for studying a field in which innovative thinking has thoroughly troubled the formerly clean divides between the historical realms of costume and dress versus the moving target of changing fashions, and Fashion itself. Contributing to these innovations in the field, the authors zero in on the particularities of practices in specialized settings, such as the largely unsung, yet no less influential, role of the mannequin maker, or the transition of ‘makers’ from mere hobbyists to world saving practitioners set to craft a better future. The collection moves from comparing the stylistic liberties taken in creating both artist and architect in the public eye; contrasting pop music’s over the top

FOREWORD

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fantasies with the subtle signaling of cool in the professions; to tracing the act of fabricating curatorial legitimacy in either the enthralling stillness of a museum or the vibrating elusiveness of the online world. To do fashion studies at this stage in the game, one must be catholic in one’s disciplinary approach, and this volume is no exception; the chapters collected here will please and challenge readers from a broad swath of scholarly fields. In sum, as each professional identity is brought into high relief, we learn about the broader story of self and identity construction within the burgeoning worlds of images and technologies that now characterize life in the developed world. Much like the 'glamour labour' of fashion models that I found to be relevant to everyday lived identities, the 'fashioning' work analysed here is not limited to creative professionals (Wissinger 2015). By exploring the concept of ‘fashioning’, readers of this volume may come to recognize the maker, do-er and fashioner within themselves. With this recognition might even come the sense that doing or making the world, for better or for worse, is in all of our hands. Elizabeth Wissinger, Professor of Sociology, City University of New York, USA

Reference Wissinger, E. (2015), This Year’s Model: Fashion, Media, and the Making of Glamour, New York: New York University Press.

INTRODUCTION: FASHIONING PROFESSIONALS: HISTORY, THEORY AND METHOD Leah Armstrong and Felice McDowell

Introduction From artist to curator, couturier to fashion blogger, architect to designer, the creative industries hold an allure that is unmistakably in fashion. So, what are the sources of validation and legitimation that have worked to uphold this status, past and present? How do the identities of creative professionals contribute to this? Fashioning Professionals considers professional identities in creative industries as social practices, enacted, performed and negotiated through the media, public institutions and professional organizations. It examines how this mediation has shaped the co-construction of identities and personas, exploring how professional identities and representations within the creative industries are both fashioned and self-fashioned. The chapters in this book respond to key transitions in the structure, performance and image of the creative professions over time. Its authors employ empirical studies to examine moments of re-invention in architecture, art, advertising, craft, design, fashion and pop music, from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present day, focusing on the fashioning of professional identities formed to meet social aspirations and ideals. Most recently, this transition refers to an apparent post-industrial, post-professional shift in the aftermath of the ‘creative industries’ as they were once defined. The concept of what it means to be both professional and creative is changing, with new identities being fashioned in new contexts. While Fashioning Professionals documents this emergent interest in contemporary debates about the meaning of work and labour, it also takes a

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longer view of the subject. Situating contemporary case studies within broader frameworks of historical change, it argues that work and the professions that constitute it have been in a constant state of flux, regularly re-fashioning selfimage to meet new social, cultural and economic contexts. This sense of flux, social, economic and cultural, forms a tension that runs through the chapters of this book and gives further context to contemporary commentary on the future of work. This publication showcases the convergence of new explorations across art, architecture, fashion and design history and theory by scholars working in and between these fields. This interdisciplinary approach forms a critical framework through which to interrogate how ‘identity’ and ‘representation’ are put to ‘work’ in various facets of the creative industries. Each author develops an interpretative and methodological approach of fashioning. Here ‘fashion’ in its verb form is employed discursively and provides the theoretical underpinning for each chapter. To fashion is to do and to make. Exploring the dynamics of this term, this book examines the reflexive position of creative professionals as both fashioned and fashioning subjects. Thus fashioning can be utilized as a conceptual tool to problematize the relationship between cultural and selfrepresentation over time and across space. The chapters in this book are thematically arranged around three modes of practice: Inventing, Negotiating and Making (which are elaborated upon at the end of this chapter). Each chapter within these sections offers a different view into the practice of being a creative professional in a different time, context, discipline or industry. By bringing these case studies into dialogue, the book aims to foster a relational view of fashioning, professionalism and creative practice. These case studies suggest that professional identities at work are not only contingent upon institutions but are also temporally and spatially specific, shaped through a negotiation between and across different social environments and groups. Many of the chapters in this volume further address the space between self-image and representation, bringing to light the cultural distance mediated by agents that include the media, other professions and the general public. Overall, the chapters of this book present the transitory status of professionalism and creativity that unite them. They show the inherent instability, fluidity and mobility of identity work in these fields over time and locate the value of fashioning as a theoretical tool and methodological approach in making sense of this phenomenon. Fashioning Professionals responds to a diverse literature relating to work, identity, fashion and professionalization, drawing from the humanities and social sciences. More specifically, the authors in this book draw upon social and cultural theory, social history, fashion theory, art history and business history. The following sections of this introduction provide an overview of these approaches and highlight some key literature that shapes the history, theory and method of Fashioning Professionals.

INTRODUCTION

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Professional cultures, identities and professionalization Professional cultures, identities and professionalization, framed in an AngloAmerican and European context, are intimately bound up with notions of aspiration and progress, within what historians have perceived to be the emergence of bureaucratic systems and structures, consumer culture, Western ‘civilization’, in short ‘modernity’. However, as Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans and others have observed, modernity can be read as a ‘category of historical interpretation’ rather than an historical ‘fact’ (Breward and Evans 2005: 1–5). Questions of representation and identity at work have long interested scholars working on historical periods as diverse as medieval court society (Elias [1939] 2000); the rise of the merchant classes, artisans and bureaucrats from the mid-sixteenth century onwards (Greenblatt 1980; Jones and Stallybrass 2000); the so-called enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the swell of industrialization that continued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Lehmann 2000; Lipovetsky 1994; Wilson [1985] 2005); to what is argued to be post-war modernity (Conekin, Mort and Waters 1999) and ‘late’ or ‘high’ modernity (Giddens 1990). Cultures of professionalism have their own particular historiography alongside these related histories and traditions. The history of professionalization begins with industrialization and the specialization of labour and, as such, is part of a British tradition in social history. British Marxist social historian, Harold Perkin defined the ‘professional society’ as being ‘made up of career hierarchies of specialized occupations, selected by merit and based on trained expertise’ (Perkin 1989: 405). Here, professional status was traditionally structured and institutionalized by the University accreditation system, the Professional Society and accredited by Royal Charter by the Queen’s Privy Council. Writing in 1916 on the ‘making of the professions’, Edward Alsworth-Ross describes the ‘professionalized’ spirit, which is the very antithesis of the commercial spirit (Alsworth-Ross 1916). This formed the basis by which the professions of medicine, law, engineering and, later, architecture, were afforded professional status in the early nineteenth century. As such, professionalism and professionalization, as socialized concepts, pertain to the precept of ‘good moral character’ that has been culturally aligned with and represented through the figure of the gentleman and the notion of public service and in opposition to overt commercial practices of the salesman (Armstrong 2016; McKendrick 1986; Nixon 2000). Sociologists have stressed the importance of ‘moral character’ and responsibility in the shaping of the professional ideal. Richard Tawney, in The Acquisitive Society (1921) argued that a profession is ‘not simply a collection of individuals who get a living from themselves by the same kind of work’, but

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a ‘body of men who carry on their work in accordance with rules designed to enforce standards both for the better protection of its members and for the better service of the public’ (Tawney 1921: 88). In 1939, Talcott Parsons described professionalism as a mechanism through which normative social order could operate (Parsons 1939). Sociologists within the Durkheimian tradition have further developed a ‘criteria’ of professional status. Emile Durkheim, writing in 1933, used ‘scientific’, quantitative studies to establish a theory of ‘morality’ in social relations, which included professional ethics and codes. These codes, according to Durkheim, correspond to legal ‘sanctions’ which form the basis by which a social group (like a family or a profession) judge one another. This Durkheimian approach influenced subsequent studies, including Geoffrey Millerson, who defined professionalization as a process that works through the logics of belief systems, ethics, lifestyles and attitudes (Millerson 1964). While these origins can be located in Victorian Britain, the structural and social value of the professions formed a valuable model for international export by British industrial capitalists and has been widely imitated and emulated in the globalized economy, through the inheritance of bureaucratic structures of business and governance (Allen 2014; Nkomo 1986; Kothari 2005). The period after the Second World War marked a high-point for professional culture in Europe and America, through the intensification of strategies of professionalization by governments seeking to improve efficiency and drive aspiration in the midst of a burgeoning consumer economy. During this period, the professional ideal moved into specialized industries that included design, advertising and journalism, industries that would later be conventionally characterized as the ‘creative industries’. These practices, once considered something ‘other’ than professional in character, sought to establish status alongside the older professions of law, engineering and architecture (Armstrong 2016; Nixon 2000; Sparke 1984). Some of these burgeoning industries set up professional bodies through which to regulate values and codes of conduct (Armstrong 2016; Haughton this volume; Nixon 2000). These Societies attempted to impose boundaries, disciplinary and gender-based, around the identity of the professional in these industries. In the context of design for instance, this involved the conscious demarcation and rejection of the ‘amateur’ crafts including textiles, ceramics and fashion (Beegan and Atkinson 2008; Woodham 1997). However, the project of professionalization may be judged only a partial success in the long term, as ‘creative’ practices like advertising adopted the status and character of a ‘semi-profession’, caught between the conflicting status of the artist and the professional (Armstrong 2016, 2017; Nixon 2000; Saint 1983). Historians and sociologists have a shared interest in professionalism as a particular ‘logic’ or ‘rationale’, the values and limits of which have been powerful forces in shaping social structures and the individual’s relations with those structures. In this sense, historians and sociologists have studied

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professionalization as a method of accounting for the organization of labour according to values, ethics and ideals attached to notions of gender, nationality or political ideology. In particular, the dynamics of gender play a crucial and formative role in the co-construction of ‘ideal types’ that organized and co-produced the image of the professional in the public imagination. In his examination of the figure of the ‘organization man’ for instance, Michael Roper explored the performative function of masculinity in the fulfilment of this aspirational ideal and work ethic (Roper 1994). These studies underline the extent to which individuals have been able to invent, negotiate and make their professional identities ‘work’ according to pre-determined goals and ideals. Crucially, this view of professionalism as a cultural ideal and performance suggests that it is an unfinished project, subject to re-fashioning to fit new social, economic and political contexts. Sociologists have been problematizing the relationship between work, ethics and professional identity since the 1980s in response to the rise of a socalled post-organizational, post-industrial society, most influentially defined by Anthony Giddens as ‘reflexive modernity’ (Giddens 1990). As sociologist Mats Alvesson stated in 1990, the structural basis by which we can understand the professions is ‘more and more problematic due to rapid changes, increased social mobilization and the decline of traditional work ethic’ (Alvesson 1990: 374). Cultural economists Scott Lash and John Urry, writing in 1994, argued that the commercial cultural industries were integral to this shifting set of values of what it means to be at work (Lash and Urry 1994). Furthermore, Maurizio Lazzarato, writing in 1996, articulated the phenomenon of ‘immaterial labour’, defined as ‘labour which produces the informational and cultural content of the commodity’ (Lazzarato 1994). Under this reading, work takes on a new meaning and value. He states: immaterial labour involves a series of activities that are not normally recognized as ‘work’ – in other words, the kinds of activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and, more strategically, public opinion. (Lazzarato 1994:132) This re-definition of work has important implications for professionalism and the process of professionalization (Rocamora this volume). Jonathan Crary has drawn powerfully on Lazzarrato and David Harvey to describe the 24/7 working culture celebrated and promoted under the conditions of neoliberalism (Crary  2013). One important consequence of this extended understanding of what it means to be ‘at work’ is the blurring of boundaries between professional and personal, labour and leisure. Irregular work hours and contracts, so-called ‘flexible’ working environments and freelance lifestyles have now reached a plateau of attainment in the labour market, so that we can no longer be absolute about the characteristics – ethical, moral or legal – that define professional status. Fashioning Professionals

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responds to this ambiguity, seeking to explore the invention, negotiation and making of professionalism in sectors that may be unfamiliar or contestable as professions, such as fashion styling, mannequin design, blogging and ‘the maker 2.0’ (Lifter; Rowe; Rocamora; Rossi, this volume). If professional conduct is never finished or complete, then it is also inherently temporal, subject to invention and re-invention over time. Indeed, every profession undergoes moments of self-reflection or transition in response to social, political, cultural and economic change (Brint 1994; Schön 1994). As the case studies in this book reveal, the organizing strategies of professionalization are not fixed or static, but constantly moving to shape work differently across locations and time periods.

Precarity, flexibility and work in the creative industries As design researchers Alex Wilkie and Ignacio Farías recently put it, the term creativity has become a ‘black box’ in scholarship, a seemingly meaningless category into which an unlimited number of practices and disciplines can be placed (Wilkie and Farías 2016). While this may accurately refer to its dissipated contemporary usage, it is important to acknowledge the historical contingency of the term, particularly to identify its somewhat problematic and antagonistic relationship to the culture of professionalism. The term ‘creativity’ reached a high-point, certainly in terms of its currency in an Anglo-American context, in the 1990s. However, long before this, theories of ‘creativity’ had been discussed by philosophers John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead, who conceived of creativity as a generative activity that could be used to harness a new experiential approach to education and research (Dewey 1934; Whitehead 1926). Wilkie and Farías attribute Whitehead with the original coining of the word to refer to ‘a metaphysical concept to refer to processes by which entities and phenomena, human and non-human alike, come into being and change’ (Wilkie and Farías 2016: 4). Under this reading, it occupies an alternative status to the professions and other structurally bound forms of labour. This reading of creativity and its relation to questions of materiality persists to some degree in the work of contemporary scholars such as Tim Ingold, who has studied creativity as a process of making through ‘the imposition of form’ (Ingold 2010: 92). However, from a socio-economic perspective, the historiography of creativity also forms an important dialectic with work and labour histories. For scholars of the Frankfurt School, the creative or ‘culture industries’ referred to the industrialization of culture and its commodification for a mass audience

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(Adorno and Horkheimer [1944] 1997). Much contemporary work on the creative industries draws upon ideas originating from the Frankfurt school, ranging from cultural studies to more controversial socio-economic and environmental theories of the ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002). For others, particularly in Britain, the term ‘creative industries’ historically marks the moment of transition from a goods-based to service-based industry in the context of the ‘New Economy’ (Harvey 1989; Julier 2010, 2016). Justin O’Connor argues that the creative industries have an even more culturally specific, narrow heritage, as a ‘tactical manoeuvre by the UK’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport to secure more funding from the Treasury’ (O’Connor 2012: 390). Indeed, as Verwijnen and Lehtovuori have shown (1999), the concept has been imported and exported between nation states since the 1990s, recently enshrined in a manifesto for creativity commissioned by the national government in Beijing (Wu Wei 2011). Like professionalism, here creativity becomes an aspirational social ideal, an imperative for industrialized economies, tied to notions of progress and wealth. Like professionalization therefore, creativity has functioned for academics as an organizational strategy, framing and fashioning professions through industrialization to post-industrialization (Du Gay and Pryke 2002: 3; Julier 2010: 241; McRobbie 2015). Under the pressure of professionalization and the rise of the creativity paradigm, crafts-based practices like ceramics and furniture making have at different times fallen outside the category of creative industries, as the language, style and image of ‘creativity’ took root in a new specialized vocabulary of entrepreneurship and innovation (Adamson 2013; Sennett 2008). Creative industries can hence be used to historically trace the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism and from organized to disorganized capitalism (Du Gay and Pryke 2002: 3). As Justin O’Connor states, ‘economies of scale, massive upfront capital costs, large marketing budgets, vertical integration, managing a dispersed, autonomous labour pool – these are some of the characteristics long noted in this risky sector’ (O’Connor 2012: 404). The accelerated speeds at which the creative industries now perform are a defining feature of neoliberal market economics in which they operate, where outsourcing has sharply driven competition. This can be identified in industries and practices as diverse as blogging, styling, curating and maker culture (Rocamora, Lifter, Farrelly and Rossi, this volume). The mediatory function of the creative worker is another important characteristic of the historiography of creativity. Throughout his writings on ‘cultural production’ and ‘taste’ Pierre Bourdieu examined the ways in which cultural products and beliefs were both constructed, circulated and maintained by various social agents in and between what he termed ‘fields’ of culture (Bourdieu [1984] 2000, [1992] 1996, 1993). For Bourdieu a particular type of social agent within the field of cultural production was that of the ‘cultural

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intermediary’ who emerged from ‘the new petite bourgeoisies’ of post-war Anglo-America and whose profession primarily involves that of ‘presentation and representation (sales, advertising, public relations, fashion, decorations and so forth)’ (Bourdieu [1984] 2010: 359–362). Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, cultural theorist Keith Negus, writing in 2002, commented upon the fact that the term ‘cultural intermediary’ had come to be used as a shorthand for those working in the creative industries. Negus argues that creative workers mediate the ‘enduring distance between production and consumption’ (Negus 2002). A key aspect of this mediation is the blurred boundary between work and leisure, a feature of creative work that has been accelerated under the conditions of late capitalism (Crary 2013) and through the advancement of ‘new media’ platforms. The contemporary and historic features of this mediation are explored in the first section of this book, ‘inventing professionals’ in three industries: blogging, curating and styling. Building on a similar theoretical framework Angela Mc Robbie states work in the creative industries can be understood as permanently transitional (McRobbie 2002: 97) and has become a working imperative for young people who face an increasingly pressurized and fractured labour market, where they are expected to invent or create jobs for themselves (McRobbie 2015). In this sense, studying the language, behaviours and environments of those who define themselves as ‘creative professionals’ can be an illuminative method of theorizing the changing dynamics of the labour market. Work identities are driven by characteristics that may be defined as inversely relational to the other professions, so that youth, energy and self-expression become valuable skills in industries focused on the production of the new. Similarly, and as a physical manifestation of these values, workers in these industries are expected to find pleasure in their work, working flexibly from home, in social environments like cafés and in other ‘non-places’ (Augé 1995). ‘Co-worker spaces’ and ‘maker spaces’ have now proliferated in the form of open plan offices principally occupied by young professionals, which appear to solidify this transitory status (Valoura 2013). As such, creativity and its attendant meanings can be a productive way of thinking through the dynamics of labour, work and professionalism over time. Furthermore, gendered work takes on particular significance in the context of the creative professions, where the distinctions between male and female roles have been lived out and celebrated in the specialization of work and its visibility in public life, from fashion designer, gentleman-architect, ad-man and graphic designer (McRobbie 1998; Jobling 2005; Nixon 2003; Saint 1983). These gendered identities are participative in the broader cultural demarcation of ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’. Many scholars and practitioners in the design field point towards the systems of exclusion, on the basis of gender, discipline and social status, imposed by the terms of professionalism (Beegan and Atkinson 2008; Buckley 1986; Seddon 2000). Other scholars have identified the gaps

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and spaces in which individuals were able to negotiate or resist these boundaries (Pursell 1993). Several chapters in this book move towards this nuanced gender perspective (Haughton, Rowe and Kollnitz, this volume). While much of the literature on creative professions concerns the concept of precarity, the chapters in this book also indicate possibilities for resistance, whether organized through a social institution or as a form of self-expression (Farrelly, Haughton, Rousset, Kollnitz, this volume). As design historian Ross Elfline recently argued in reference to the 1960s ‘radical architecture’ movement in Italy, the ‘refusal to work’ has been a strategy and disposition adopted in creative practices designed to critique the system within which they practise and work (Elfline 2016: 57). As such, work in the creative industries also has a disruptive potential, underpinned by political disengagement with mainstream social and political structures. The figure of the ‘disruptor’, from the blogger to the ‘digital maker’, has become a familiar protagonist of contemporary commentary on the creative industries, alongside the mystique of the Silicon Valley worker (Katz 2015). Nevertheless, these figures remain relatively enigmatic within academic research. Two chapters of this volume direct attention to these new so-called ‘disruptors’, in the form of the fashion blogger and ‘maker 2.0’ (Rocamora and Rossi, this volume).

Fashion and professional identities As Elizabeth Wilson points out in her seminal text Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, ‘Fashion, then, is essential to the world of modernity, the world of spectacle and mass-communication. It is a kind of connective tissue of our cultural organism’ (Wilson [1985] 2005: 12). Within histories of modernity ‘fashion’, as concept, practice and object that is believed, imagined, made and brought, is key to understanding fundamental aspects of modern culture and the so-called democratic age (Breward and Evans 2005; Lehmann 2000; Lipovetsky 1994; Wilson [1985] 2005). Whether one is addressing the object-garments, mass-media, modern entertainment systems and visual cultures, associated with the production and consumption of ‘fashion’ and the ‘fashion system’, for scholars of fashion, ‘fashion’ is not simply a product of modernity but rather the two, fashion and modernity, merge, nurture and feed off one another in a symbiotic relationship. Indeed in Ulrich Lehmann’s detailed study Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity (2000) the etymologies of the French words for fashion and modernity, la mode and modernité, are shown to be interdependent, and therefore mutually productive in terms of both linguistics and culture (Lehmann 2000: 5–19). From a panoramic overview of modernity, as it has unfurled throughout different spaces, places and cultures, affecting the lives, desires and deaths of

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countless and varied peoples, identity, it is argued, ‘becomes a special kind of problem in “modernity”’ (Wilson [1985] 2005: 11). Identity is also fundamental to fashion, as Giles Lipovetsky points out in his own discussion of the modernity of fashion, ‘Fashion is one of the faces of modern artifice, of the effort of human beings to make themselves masters of the conditions of their own existence’ (Lipovetsky 1994: 24). The ability to aestheticize and individualize one’s appearance through dress and body is an ongoing and constructive part in the recognition and understanding of one’s self. In this way fashion in modernity can be seen as a democratizing force (Lipovetsky 1994; Wilson [1985] 2005) in that the mass populace are invited to participate in processes of ‘individual expression’ (Lipovetsky 1994: 29–37). However, the ‘liberation’ of fashion and the ‘freedom’ of the individual to choose, make and display his or herself through various sartorial modes and bodily embellishments is paradoxical, particularly if one considers factors such as the capitalist system that fashion continues to flourish under (Sullivan 2016; Wilson [1985] 2005); debates around ethics and sustainability (Black 2008; Fletcher and Tham 2015) and the contradictory, if not harmful, effects of having too much choice regarding a seemingly never-ending series of possibilities offered to the individual ‘self’ and thus negotiated in the contemporary age (Featherstone 2007). Evidently fashion, then, is a process and practice that does not take place in isolation but is in continuous momentum with numerous other elements that constitute the modern ‘world’ around us, our relations to it and its relations to us. It is not one thing but is many, and as subjects continue to process, practise and perform their many ‘selves’, the ‘professional’ – whether one identifies oneself as a ‘professional’ or not – constitutes an important element in the understanding of an ‘individual’ and his or her identity. In terms of histories of fashion and modernity this juncture between dress, person and work can be traced within the shifts that took place from medieval to Renaissance court society in Europe. According to Norbert Elias processes of ‘civilizing’ that took place in this environment concerned how one behaved, ones’ manners, ones’ bodily deportment, ones’ gestures, ones’ evident self-restraint and ones’ dress, in this way ‘taste’ (see also Bourdieu [1984] 2010) and fashion, as such, emerged as an increasingly significant element within the relative dynamics of social mobility and success at court (Elias [1939] 2000). If one considers how privileged aristocrats had to ‘perform’ according to these requirements in order to maintain or gain symbolic and economic reward from the crown, this can be seen as a type of ‘work’ in itself. Furthermore, Elias’ analysis also considers how this civilizing process also took place within the emerging middle-classes, occupied by figures such as wealthy merchants. Interestingly it is here where social mobility, a key characteristic in our understanding of modernity, is most starkly connected to the conception of work:

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[The wealthy merchant] is compelled to do it [work] not by simple need but by the pressure of the competition for power and prestige, because his occupation, his elevated status, provides the meaning and justification of his life; and for him constant self-constraint has made work such a habit that the balance of his mental economy is upset if he is no longer able to work. (Elias [1939] 2000: 383) The ways in which dress, appearance, conduct, work, lifestyle and identity connect and intersect within the shifting tectonics of class, privilege, money and status can be traced throughout various moments and milieus of Western modernity, from the attire of the self-proclaimed Dandies (Entwistle 2000) to that of the iconic somber suit of the so-called ‘Great Masculine Renunciation’ instated by male members of an emerging middle-class during the nineteenth century (Breward 1999; Edwards 1997). Moreover, it occurs in working environments that largely convalesce outside institutional frameworks and office spaces, occupied by artists, musicians, writers, and poets, whose historical and contemporary ‘bohemian’ lifestyles (Miller 2011; Wilson 2000) are not just ways of living but are also ways of working. In this sense, as Joanne Entwistle argues, how identity is performed concerns ‘our location in the social world as members of particular groups, classes, cultural communities’ (Entwistle 2000: 114). Furthermore, ‘The clothes we choose to wear represent a compromise between the demands of the social world, the milieu in which we belong, and our own individual desires’ (2000: 114). While there is a rich history concerning the rise of ‘official’ uniforms worn by individuals (see Craik 2005; Lemire 2005; Tynan 2013) in connection to the variable elements of modernity and of the rise of the modern democratic ‘state’ and its ‘power’ (Foucault [1977] 1991), the present publication considers aspects of what is arguably an ‘unspoken’ uniform. Rather than being enforced by formal codes, requirements and technical legality under a contractual agreement, this ‘uniform’, or rather way of dressing as part of one’s work, is practised none the less according to, largely, informal codes of conduct and taste that inform aspects of one’s identity and identification with ‘work’. This is a particularly poignant point for a study that proposes to address ‘creative professionals’, as aforementioned scholarship into the ‘cultural industries’ and ‘professionalization’ points out, who one is and what one does in terms of the ‘individual’ and their productive ‘outputs’, or labour, are slippery boundaries that are in constant negotiation and flux. An important element in the ways that one defines oneself as a professional within the cultural industries is through what the American sociologist Erving Goffman termed ‘the presentation of self’ ([1959] 1990) which, to reiterate, is manifest in conduct, appearance, body and dress. Therefore this understanding of the ‘professional’, as a key element in the ongoing formation of identity and practice in the expression of self and individuality, is both a product of

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and productive in the understanding of fashion and modernity, and the ‘creative professional’ is a particular instance in which this takes place.

Fashioning When addressing the question of how individuals ‘attend unconsciously or consciously’ to norms and expectations of work (Entwistle 2000: 11) within particular facets of the cultural industries, in connection to how they present themselves, dress and fashion can form critical junctures of analysis. However, as Entwistle (2000) has pointed out, there are both differences and exchanges between the terms ‘dress’ and ‘fashion’ in their meanings and application. At a basic level studies of fashion have tended to focus on ‘a system, idea or aesthetic’, while studies of dress look more to ‘meanings given to particular practices of clothing and adornment’ (Entwistle 2000: 3). More recent scholarship into fashion, or ‘fashion studies’ has witnessed a growing and fertile crosspollination of theory, method and approach from studies of both ‘fashion’ and ‘dress’ (Breward 1998; Findlay 2016; Geczy and Karaminas 2012; Granata 2012; Rocamora and Smelik 2016; Woodward 2007). The present publication is broad in scope with regard to the types of creative professions that are addressed and the ways in which ‘fashion’ has been invoked in order to do this. The nuances of each chapter concerning these elements are outlined in the concluding section of this introduction. It is important, however, to clearly state that while ‘fashion’ has been a guiding concept throughout the construction of this book, how this term has been applied in the ethos of the publication invites a different way of looking at the emergence of creative professionals. This is an approach that is aware of ‘dress’ and practices of clothing and adornment that take place in conjunction with systems, ideas and aesthetics within a definition of ‘fashion’. However, the book also considers different avenues of ‘self-presentation’ as acts of representation. If identity has become a site of work in high modernity (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991) whereby reflexivity and self-scrutiny constitute the project of modern life, how does one’s work and labour come into play? And how do we represent these aspects in practices of self-presentation that form part of a ‘reflexive project’ of self? Fashion offers a profusion of useful tools to address these questions, one of which is the conceptual term: ‘fashioning’. While the word fashion has been closely associated with meanings and values associated with that of modernity, and in particular with speed, rapidity, restless change and the ephemeral (Wilson [1985] 2005: 3), scholars of early modern England and Europe have looked at how the word ‘fashion’ has different and historically relevant meanings (Greenblatt 1980; Jones and Stallybrass 2000). In their study of renaissance clothing in sixteenth-century England Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass discuss the etymology of the word ‘fashion’ in the

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English language. They note that ‘ “fashion”, as referring to “the mode of dress … adopted in society for the time being” is first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1568’ (Jones and Stallybrass 2000: 1). Indeed, sixteenth-century England and Europe experienced what can be seen as ‘the innovative force of fashion’ (2000), different centres of fashion developed, court dress became more nationalistic, and the wealth and prosperity of cities such as London and Paris increased therefore enabling subjects, outside of court circles and the aristocracy, to consume and dress in an upwardly mobile manner, despite attempts to enforce sumptuary laws of the time (Breward 1995; Entwistle 2000). Thus by the end of sixteenth century ‘fashion’ acquired new semantic relevance: ‘to counterfeit or pervert’ (Jones and Stallybrass 2000: 1). However, in its verbal form the changing styles of clothing was not the naturalized referent of ‘fashion’, according to Jones and Stallybrass it ‘commonly referred to the act of making, or to the make or shape of a thing, or to form as opposed to matter, or to the enduring manners and customs of a society’ (Jones and Stallybrass 2000: 1). Drawing upon this sixteenth-century verbal use of the word ‘fashion’, Stephen Greenblatt refers to Edmund Spenser’s reflections upon writing the epic and unfinished poem The Faerie Queene, in 1589 Spenser writes that the intention and meaning he has ‘fashioned’ ‘is “to fashion a gentleman”’ (Greenblatt 1980: 2). For Greenblatt this is an example of a writer drawing upon particular connotations of the period that occur through utilizing the verb fashion, while the word had been in long use for ‘the action or process of making, for particular features or appearance, for a distinct style or pattern’ it is in the historical and cultural context of the sixteenth century ‘that fashion seems to come into wide currency as a way of designating the forming of a self’ (1980). In this sense, fashioning may be understood as the changing of the physical form of a person. Yet, for Greenblatt, what is significant is that ‘fashioning may suggest the achievement of a less tangible shape: a distinctive personality a characteristic address to the world, a consistent mode of perceiving and behaving’ (1980). This notion of fashioning does not suggest that the deliberate ‘shaping in the formation and expression of identity’ (1980: 1) suddenly occurs within the sixteenth century, indeed there has arguably always been a sense of selves, rather than ‘in the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process’ (1980: 2). Greenblatt mobilizes his understanding and analysis of fashioning in his examination of several key writers from this period, such as Thomas More, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Thus the conceptual framework of fashioning is applied through literary criticism, whereby Greenblatt is concerned about literature in culture and how ‘the written word is self-consciously embedded in specific communities, life situations, structures of power’ (Greenblatt 1980: 7). In this context ‘self-fashioning’, as a specific form of fashioning, ‘is always, though not exclusively, in language’ (1980: 9). Jones and Stallybrass’s study of

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renaissance clothing of the same period, demonstrate how the verbal form of fashion, or fashioning, has wider implications, particularly in relation to clothes, the social subject and memory. They argue that modern analysts of fashion have focused upon fashion as a rapid change of style, series of playful surfaces, which repeats, even when critiquing it, ‘the antithesis between clothes as the surface/ outside and the person as the inside/depth’ (Jones and Stallybrass 2000: 2; see Entwistle 2000). For Jones and Stallybrass fashion and fashioning constitute various acts of ‘investiture’ (Jones and Stallybrass 2000: 2), the means by which a person is given form, shape, and social function. Therefore: it was investiture, the putting on of clothes, that quite literally constituted a person as a monarch or a freeman of a gild or a household servant. Investiture was, in other words, the means by which a person was given a form, a shape, a social function, a ‘depth’ [….] ‘Fashion’ can be ‘deeply put on’ or, in other words, that clothes permeate the wearer, fashioning him or her within. This notion undoes the opposition of inside and outside, surface and depth. (Jones and Stallybrass 2000: 2) Rather than antithesis, or a series of binary oppositions, tensions between surface and depth, ‘fashion-as-change’ and fashion ‘as “deep” making or as enduring cultural pattern’ (Jones and Stallybrass 2000: 5) can be viewed as a series of relations that are in continuous momentum ‘with the social practices through which the body politic was composed’ (2000: 2). This concept of fashion and fashioning to make, shape and give form to the self in tension with notions of ones’ social function is highly relevant to the ongoing analysis of fashion, modernity and identity. In this publication the terms fashion, to fashion, and fashioning, are applied to an analysis of different creative professionals and professions throughout recent modern history. Crucially it also contends that these professional identities are co-constructed. Therefore, creative professionals are both products of, and productive in meanings and values that inform our understanding and knowledge of what ‘work’, ‘labour’, ‘practice’, ‘creativity’ and ‘identity’ are and can be, past and present. In this context ‘fashion’ in its verb form – to fashion: to do and to make – is employed discursively so that creative professionals and professions may be explored more fully, as both fashioned objects and self-fashioning subjects.

Representation ‘at work’ In terms of the very ways one behaves, speaks and interacts with others in accordance to how one is dressed and appears, ones’ work, labour and professional life play an important part in this ‘compromise’, or negotiation,

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between our identity and sense of individualism, and the modern social world in which we live and work. One of the central overarching aims of the book is to show how fashioning can be utilized as a conceptual tool to problematize the relationship between cultural and self-representations. The case studies examined in this book show that professional identities are continually in a state of fashioning, over time and across space. Therefore ‘representation’ forms a key element to the methodological underpinning that runs throughout the course of this publication. As a theoretical concept ‘representation’ is largely associated with the examination and analysis of various textual elements that contribute to the linguistic and visual world that, arguably, constructs our understanding of the social and cultural world in which we live (Sturken and Cartwright 2001: 12). According to Stuart Hall: It is by our use of things, and what we say, think and feel about them – how we represent them – that we give them a meaning […] In part, we give things meaning by how we represent them – the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, the values we place on them. (Hall 1997: 3) In this way the analysis of representations offers a way of addressing, discussing and dissecting the ‘meaning’ of things, which, in this argument, gain their meaning within systems of language and image – in short ‘culture’ – from where they are both produced and are productive in. Conceptually ‘representation’ has provided a useful theoretical tool to numerous areas of scholarship that are largely text-based, such as history, English literature, art history, design history, fashion studies, media studies, areas of cultural studies. Within strands of scholarship that identify themselves as more sociologically based, and therefore often address more contemporary case studies, the analysis of textual representations in conjunction with methods such as interviews, focus groups, ethnography and ‘field’ work can offer numerous benefits and critical insights into one’s research materials (Granata 2012; Jenss 2016; Kaiser 2013; Rocamora this volume). However, as recent scholarship into areas of ‘work’ within the field of fashion argue to think through representation invites one to consider not only the communicated meanings, or ideologies, of representations, but also the doings of representations. As Joanne Entwistle and Don Slater point out in their analysis of models as ‘brands’ in ‘a common methodological move, representations are read “symptomatically” – they are analyzed not as specific mediations in their own right but as evidence of wider constructions of [in the case of models] gender that they simply reflect and reproduce’ (Entwistle and Slater 2012: 20; see also Wissinger 2015), therefore, they argue, ‘we still need an account that moves from

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text/image and into everyday practice’ (Entwistle and Slater 2012: 21; McDowell 2017; McDowell forthcoming). Here a key term employed is that of mediation,1 whereby the object of research is not simply ‘images’ and ‘representations’. Mediation, in this sense, is a ‘non-linear process’ which, as Nick Couldry points out, captures ‘a variety of dynamics within media flows’ (Couldry 2008: 380). By ‘media flows’ Couldry means ‘flows of production, circulation, interpretations or reception, and recirculation, as interpretations flow back into production or outwards into general social and cultural life’ (2008). These arguments, regarding representations as being part of a wider scheme of analysis that consider factors such as mediation, offer a range of possible theoretical perspectives, which in premise, this publication concurs. Such discussion and debate invites a reading of how textual elements are constantly in process and that this is in conjunction with the identity and identification of individuals, as both subjects and objects within this very process and practice of mediation. However, it is by paying close attention to a range of representations as they are put ‘to work’ in different areas of the creative industries, both historically and contemporaneously, that the chapters and research of this study begin to question how professional identities are social practices, enacted, performed and negotiated through the media, public institutions and professional organizations. The authors in this volume investigate and discuss how creative professionals are fashioned through mediation, as a form of fashioning that shapes and constructs identities, personas and everyday practice. Fashioning Professionals presents possibilities for thinking comparatively across the practices of art, architecture, advertising, design, music and fashion. The book is structured according to three modes of fashioning that can be summarized as inventing, negotiating and making. The next section gives an overview of these sections.

Fashioning professionals: Inventing, negotiating and making Creative practices and professional identities are continually being invented. This first section focuses on the invention of identities at work in different time periods, geographical and disciplinary contexts. The role of the media as a site on which these professions are formed is explored in each of the chapters. In the first chapter Liz Farrelly examines the fashioning of a new type of design curator during the 1980s, the so-called ‘Designer Decade’. Located in the Boilerhouse Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Boilerhouse exhibitions were described as ‘three-dimensional journalism’. Here, design journalist and curator Stephen Bayley prepared the way for London’s new Design Museum by attracting high-profile media coverage and aligning the curator with the newly fashionable

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design profession. Drawing on empirical research in a unique media archive, this chapter examines the design curator within the milieu of the original ‘design museum’, the V&A, with reference to the professional standing of the curator, the contemporary design object in the Museum and the effect of Thatcherism on the Museum. Farrelly argues that Bayley used to the media and his self-image to delineate and provoke, representing a new identity for the design curator from within the V&A, but independent of its rules and traditions. She shows how Bayley’s fashioning of the design curator mirrored the development of the field of contemporary design and London’s new Design Museum. In Chapter 2, Rachel Lifter analyses the work of three pop stylists: Nicola Formichetti, who was Lady Gaga’s stylist from 2009 to 2013; Mel Ottenberg, who has been Rihanna’s stylist since 2011; and Marni Senofonte, who styled Beyoncé’s 2016 body of work. Comparison of the three reveals distinctions between the fashion stylist and the stylist for music. Lifter argues that over the last thirty years, fashion styling has professionalized and the fashion stylist has become a recognized contributor to the creation of fashion at various stages of its material and symbolic production. In contrast, those people who style music constitute a largely invisible workforce, their labour obscured by a set of music industry logics that foregrounds musical acts’ personae. Although Formichetti, Ottenberg and Senofonte are exceptional pop stylists, analysis of their work also points to broader historical shifts in both the styling of pop music and the professional status of the creative people who do this type of work. She argues that Formchetti and Ottenberg effectively re-code the practice of pop styling as a form of fashion work. This lens provides a framework for scholars and pop cultural critics to explore Senofonte and others’ styling work as both the visualization of musical acts’ personae and as fashioned imagery produced through the mobilization of fashion knowledges. Building on the theme of ‘self-invention’ so integral to the creative industries, in the third chapter Agnès Rocamora reflects on a series of semi-structured interviews with twenty-six UK-based fashion bloggers. The chapter draws on Lazzarato’s notion of immaterial labour to interrogate fashion blogging, and uses the case of fashion blogging to illuminate the nature of immaterial labour to think through the agency bloggers have to negotiate and legitimate as well as to invent their practice. After discussing the discursive construction of blogging, the chapter looks at the strategies bloggers develop to negotiate the ideals of trust and authenticity central to the logic of blogging. In doing so it also engages with the notion of free labour and elaborates on the issue of bloggers’ relation to brands, as well as on the ideas of commodification and monetization. It argues that blogging must be seen as a continuum between hobbyists and pro-bloggers that muddies the distinction between hobby and work. Professionalism has historically been defined as a culturally and socially bound concept, the limits of which have been negotiated throughout history

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by institutions and individuals. This second section looks at the politics of negotiating boundaries of gender, social status and political ideology at work in the creative industries. In the first chapter of this section Phillipa Haughton presents a focused social history of the Women’s Advertising Club of London (WACL). Based on close empirical analysis of the WACL archive, Haughton challenges the interpretation of professionalism, in advertising as well as in other occupations, to be the preserve of men. Her analysis shows that a small number of women in advertising not only adopted and enacted professional identity, but took an active role in its construction. Addressing a key period in which the industry first sought to consolidate professional status, this chapter sheds new light on how professional values in the advertising industry were created and evolved. It argues that negotiation, and at times, antagonism, between the sexes played a significant role in the fashioning of professional identity in advertising. Moving away from the institutional history of advertising, this chapter employs the writings and activities of members of WACL, recorded in the club’s minute books and in the trade press, to examine how executive female advertising practitioners embodied and performed professional identity. It examines how they described and promoted female advertising practitioners; their contribution to shaping professional norms in the industry through their behaviour; and their networking with colleagues, both at home and abroad, in advertising and other professional occupations. In doing so, the chapter reveals the contested relationships between gender, professional identity and success. The image of the architect is perhaps one of the most familiar and celebrated professional identities in the popular imagination, but in Chapter 5, Isabel Rousset takes an alternative view, exploring satirical representations of the Bauhaus architect in late-Weimar Germany to address how architects fashion themselves and are fashioned in times of social and political change. By analysing visual and textual representations of Bauhaus architects from the satirical magazine Simplicissimus, she argues that these representations did more than simply reflect pre-established notions of professional identity. Rather, they helped construct and fashion professional identity in ways that blurred the line between perceptive cultural critique and ideological attack. Rousset argues that in order to understand how Bauhaus practitioners were fashioned, it is necessary to understand the complex dynamics of representation in the changing political context of Weimar Germany. As such, Rousset’s perspective presents the powerful agency of a particular form of media in framing professional identities in ways that challenge the intentions and ideals of the professions’ leading protagonists. It suggests that fashioning professional identity has political as well as social and cultural implications. Building on these notions of agency and self-representation in the next chapter, Andrea Kollnitz offers new perspectives on artistic self-expression and

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performance through fashion, costume and self-stylization, problematizing the marginalized significance of fashion and self-fashioning in notions of the artist’s professional identity. Focusing on an evocative but hitherto hardly investigated case, her chapter explores the self-fashioning and self-representation of the Italian Surrealist painter Leonor Fini. Kollnitz argues that having gained an international reputation as both a skilled portrait painter, an imaginative surrealist artist and author and as an often photographed fashion icon in close collaboration with the fashion world, Fini may be understood as an artist who consciously made her life and personal appearance an artwork. The analysis raises questions about fashion and costume as creative artistic expression and sheds light on connections between fashion, costume and the gendered artist’s role and thus questions the male dominated discourse of surrealism, which has partially devalued Fini’s self-fashioning practices as feminine superficiality. Fini’s practices and photographic representations are examined in conjunction with her textual self-representation in the book Le Livre de Leonor Fini (1975) and her public reception, in order to investigate the relationship constructed between her qualities and characteristics as an artist and her fashion practices and self-representation. The investigation provides new insights into connections between dress, gender, art and creativity as well as the relationship between public and personal practices of self-fashioning at work. Fashioning Professionals suggests that professional identity in creative work is fashioned through an intimate relationship with material culture. This final section of the book focuses on the making of professional identities in three creative practices and traditions; art, design and craft. In the first chapter of this section, June Rowe examines the social history of an ambiguous and elusive practice; the mannequin maker. Based on detailed empirical analysis, she argues that the fashion mannequin designer is an anonymous professional, only faintly acknowledged as a cultural contributor to the fashion industry in fashion and design histories. A history of these designers reveals complexities in their creative representations and professional identities. The chapter examines how the role of the mannequin designer is defined and where their representations exist. Early mannequin makers were predominantly male sculptors who gained recognition as artistic pioneers with their developments in display figures. The chapter surveys the shifts in representations from the male sculptor designer of mannequins to the female mannequin designer. Focusing on the design practice of Cora Scovil in America in the 1920s and Adel Rootstein in London in the 1960s the chapter considers the fashioning of their professional identities and the significance of their work in raising the professional status of the mannequin maker to designer. In Chapter 8, Caroline Stevenson opens an alternative reading of the materially formed artistic environment through the notion of ‘spatialized’ artistic biographies. Stevenson argues that where contemporary artists work and

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live and who they are connected to, personally and professionally, impacts significantly on the shaping of both their identities as artists and the kind of work they create. While the narratives of artists’ lives and works have historically been recorded through the genre of artists’ monographs, this chapter presents a contemporary critical framework through which to consider the connections between artists’ lives and the works they produce. Here, the artists’ biographies are discussed in the context of the field of contemporary art production, where a series of new professions have emerged recently as a result of the increased marketization of art. Therefore this chapter is interested in the fashioning of artists’ identities over time and across geographic locations, as well as through various means of self and institutional representation. Drawing upon a curatorial project Stevenson undertook with Glasgow-based artist Sue Tompkins, she demarcates the ways in which artists’ biographies trace appropriated symbolic materials and narratives found in the geographical and discursive sites where they live and work. In doing so, she presents a compelling reading of Tompkins’ biography across time and place. The final chapter of the book weaves together several recurring threads, by considering the fashioning of ‘the maker 2.0’, a creative identity with historical craft roots that has gained new purchase and meaning today. A complex and composite identity, Catharine Rossi focuses specifically on a new type of twentyfirst-century maker, one who combines craft tools and techniques with the digital technologies of the third industrial revolution and the sharing and participatory ethos of Web 2.0. Ostensibly invented in 2005 by Californian MAKE: magazine, and subsequently heavily promoted through the magazine publisher’s multimedia platforms, this ‘maker 2.0’ is a prominent international figure, appearing in exhibitions and marketing campaigns, and championed by governments who see the maker 2.0 as key to their post-industrial and knowledge economies. Rossi’s investigation not only enables deeper understanding of the maker, but also offers insights in the ‘crafting’ of creative identities in our digital age more generally, further enriching perspectives on creative work offered in the book’s opening section.

Audience, geography and future work Fashioning Professionals responds to a longstanding and wide-reaching scholarship on themes of work and labour, fashion, representation and identity, of which there is a rich diversity of perspectives from fields in the humanities and social sciences. As such, its contribution to this literature is necessarily specific and limited to a number of key issues pertinent and relevant at this particular moment for the study of work in the creative industries in the opening decade of the twenty-first century. The case studies in this volume represent a select number of professions, occupations, practices and identities that have constituted creative work. The geographical specificity of this book has shaped

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its interpretative framework and subject matter, through the exploration of professionalism, fashion and modernity from an Anglo-American and European perspective. This bias reflects rather than challenges the overall bend towards this account of work and labour in contemporary Western scholarship. Forthcoming research will no doubt provide a useful corrective through which to explore alternative values, meanings and conceptualizations of fashion, professionalism and identity at work. If one of the main points of this has been to document and analyse the inherently unstable, fragile and fluctuating nature of identities at work in the creative industries, it seems clear that this instability will continue in the future, particularly as the globalized labour market now begins to absorb the disruptive effects and impacts of accelerated automation and neoliberal market logics. ‘Creative professionals’ – however they may be defined in years to come – will continue to find new ways to invent, negotiate, make and fashion their identities in an ever-changing world of work.

Note 1 While the present publication looks towards ‘mediation’, as Rocamora argues the concept of ‘mediatization’, which refers to the ‘transformative power’ of media, offers equally valuable insights into the ways in which subjects participate in processes and practices of self-fashioning (Rocamora 2016).

References Adamson, G. (2013), The Invention of Craft, London: Bloomsbury. Adorno, T. and M. Horkheimer ([1944] 1997), Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Verso Books. Allen, J.R. (2014), ‘Picturing Gentlemen: Japanese Portrait Photography in Colonial Taiwan’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 73 (4): 1009–1042. Alsworth-Ross, E. (1916), ‘The Making of the Professions’, International Journal of Ethics, 27 (1): 67–81. Alvesson, M. (1990), ‘Organisation: From Substance to Image?’ Organisation Studies, 11 (3): 373–394. Armstrong, L. (2016), ‘Steering a Course between Commercialism and Professionalism: The Society of Industrial Artists Code of Conduct for the Professional Designer in Britain’, Journal of Design History, 29 (2): 161–179. Armstrong, L. (2017), ‘A New Image for a New Profession: Self Image and Representation in the Professionalisation of Design in Britain 1945–1960’, Journal of Consumer Culture. Online First, https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540517708830 Augé, M. (1995), Non-Places: An Introduction to Anthropology of Supermodernity, New York: Verso Books. Beck, U. ([1982] 1992), Risk Society, London: Sage.

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Beegan, G. and P. Atkinson (2008), ‘Professionalism, Amateurism and the Boundaries of Design’, Journal of Design History, 21 (4): 305–313. Black, S. (2008), Eco Chic: The Fashion Paradox, London: Black Dog. Bourdieu, P. ([1984] 2010), Distinction, trans. R. Nice, London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. ([1992] 1996), The Rules of Art, trans. S. Emanuel, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1993), The Field of Cultural Production, trans. R. Johnson, Cambridge: Polity Press. Breward, C. (1995), The Culture of Fashion: A New History of Fashionable Dress, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Breward, C. (1998), ‘Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress’, Fashion Theory, 2 (4): 301–314. Breward, C. (1999), ‘Renouncing Consumption: Men, Fashion and Luxury, 1870–1914’, in A. de la Haye and E. Wilson (eds), Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning and Identity, 48–62, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Breward, C. and C. Evans (2005), ‘Introduction’, in C. Breward and C. Evans (eds), Fashion Modernity, 1–7, Oxford: Berg. Brint, S. (1994), In an Age of Experts, the Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public Life, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Buckley, C. (1986), ‘Made in Patriarchy: Toward a Feminine Analysis of Women and Design’, Design Issues, 3 (2): 3–14. Conekin. B, F. Mort, and C. Waters, eds (1999), Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain 1945–1964, London: Rivers Oram Press. Couldry, N. (2008), ‘Mediatization or Mediation: Alternative Understandings of the Emergent Space of Digital Storytelling’, New Media & Society, 10 (3): 373–391. Craik, J. (2005), Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression, London: Bloomsbury. Crary, J. (2013), 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, New York: Verso Books. Dewey, J. ([1934] 2005), Art as Experience, New York: TarcherPerigee. Du Gay, P. and M. Pryke (2002), Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life, London: Sage. Edwards, T. (1997), Men in the Mirror: Men’s Fashion, Masculinity and Consumer Society, London: Cassell. Elfline, R. (2016), ‘Superstudio and the “Refusal to Work”’, Design and Culture, 7 (1): 55–77. Elias, N. ([1939] 2000), The Civilising Process, trans. E. Jephcott, Oxford: Blackwell. Entwistle, J. (2000), The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. Entwistle, J. and D. Slater (2012), ‘Models as Brands: Critical Thinking about Bodies and Images’, in J. Entwistle and E. Wissinger (eds), Fashioning Models: Image, Text and Industry, 15–33, London: Berg. Featherstone, M. (2007), Postmodernism and Consumer Culture, London: Sage. Findlay, R. (2016) ‘“Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made on” Encountering Clothes, Imagining Selves’, Cultural Studies Review, 22 (1): 78–94. Fletcher, K. and M. Tham, eds (2015), Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion, London: Routledge. Florida, R. (2002), The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, New York: Basic Books. Foucault, M. ([1977] 1991), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan, London: Penguin.

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PART ONE

INVENTING

1 MEDIA IN THE MUSEUM: FASHIONING THE DESIGN CURATOR AT THE BOILERHOUSE GALLERY, VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON Liz Farrelly

Introduction Between the 1970s and 1990s, a new type of specialist museum emerged on the global stage focusing on the collection, study and exhibition of modern and contemporary design. Some institutions evolved out of publicly funded decorative arts museums, others were private ‘start ups’, but all aspired to present ‘design’ in museums.1 In the UK, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) accommodated contemporary design albeit peripherally (Burton 1981, 1999; James 1998), but the authority of the Museum to speak for design was challenged when the Boilerhouse Gallery, an independent initiative (run by the Conran Foundation) and dedicated to Industrial Design and everyday objects, opened within the Museum’s precincts. Concurrent with this institutional shift, the economic influence of Thatcherism fundamentally altered the UK’s design industry, which in turn informed the scope and direction of the Boilerhouse Gallery’s legacy, London’s new Design Museum. During this reordering, the identity of the design curator was transformed. Operating at the nexus of change and attracting the attention of the British media was Stephen Bayley. Press coverage traces Bayley’s trajectory from academic enfant terrible and journalist, to curator and director of the Boilerhouse Gallery,

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to Chief Executive (his preferred title) of the Design Museum (Usherwood 1991) and ultimately, ‘design guru’. This chapter explores the mediated fashioning of the design curator with reference to the V&A, London’s design industry, and the development of a very public private museum. From the Boilerhouse Gallery (sited at the V&A from 1981 to 1986) to the Design Museum (opened in Shad Thames in 1989), this museological experiment played out against the backdrop of Thatcherism and the seismic social, political and economic upheavals that Prime Minister Thatcher (1979–1990) instigated. Thatcherism was defined by contradiction, with a reinvigorated Britishness and the moral certainty of ‘family values’ on the one hand and a retrenched Welfare State on the other (Buckley 2007: 198). Meanwhile, ‘free’ markets, deregulated finance, inflated property values, the privatization of public utilities and a renewed ‘enterprise culture’ facilitated the globalization of capital, encouraged de-industrialization and widened the gap between rich and poor. The endorsement of the individual over society (Buckley 2007: 242) translated as cuts in income tax and government spending, with publically funded cultural institutions suffering while private enterprise and the service sector, including the design industry, boomed (Buckley 2007). In the decade from 1985, UK design consultancies doubled their income; a number went public through stock market flotation and Thatcher welcomed industry leaders to Downing Street to debate the idea of ‘Design for Profit’ (Julier [2000] 2008: 20, 25–26). As the ‘Heritage Industry’ expanded, in the form of privately run visitor attractions in abandoned industrial sites (Hewison 1987; Lumley 1988), government reduced funding to the V&A. As a result of these monetary restrictions, curator and historian Anthony Burton suggests that ‘curatorship in the English national museums changed’ (Burton 1985: 383). The acquisition of big-ticket items for permanent collections, requiring research and catalogue writing, lost out to popular temporary exhibitions that brought in audiences and revenue but demanded that curators work ‘fast and to deadlines […] junior staff […] are clever and pushing […] the atmosphere is sharper’ (1985). In 1989, the reorganization of V&A departments and working practices, intended to separate the management of collections from the pursuit of knowledge, perceived as threatening the role of the curator, which sparked a crisis in the Museum. As Linda Sandino’s oral history research suggests, this reorganization was ideologically motivated: [It] was seen by some as almost an assault, precipitated by a government that made a virtue of its radical attempts to destroy traditional values, install a freemarket economy and privatize public services: i.e. ‘Thatcherism’. (Sandino 2012: 89)

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As if to underline the Thatcher government’s disregard for ‘museum culture’, the restructuring led to resignations of top-level staff, wide redundancies (Strong [1997] 1998), a high-profile row in the media and debate in the House of Lords (Hansard 1989). With the V&A in turmoil it was notable that Prime Minister Thatcher opened the Design Museum with a speech declaring ‘museum’ to be too ‘dead’ a descriptor for the Conran Foundation’s new initiative (Thatcher 1989 quoted in Sandino 2012: 87). Thatcher’s public endorsement of the Design Museum situated it in opposition to the wider museum community. Traces of the Conran Foundation’s activities can be found in both the V&A Archive and the Archive of Art and Design (Lomas 2000). The discovery of six large ‘Boilerhouse Press Cuttings’ albums (Figure 1.1) reveals the extent of media coverage generated by the Boilerhouse Gallery, from the announcement of a liaison with the V&A in October 1980 up to (but not including) the opening of the Design Museum in July 1989. Bayley asserts that the V&A compiled the albums (Bayley 2016) although the Boilerhouse Gallery was not a Museum department and no archival details are attached to the albums. The albums contain 263 articles, seven transcripts of radio and television broadcasts and press releases relating to the Boilerhouse Project issued by the V&A; the selection contains reviews, interviews, columns and features in newspapers, colour supplements, magazines, trade, industry and academic journals. Eighty-six writers appear in the albums including broadsheet architectural critics, design journalists, design historians and two future directors of the

Figure 1.1 Boilerhouse Press Cuttings, albums one to six (1981–1989), Blythe House, Victoria and Albert Museum. Photographed by the author.

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Design Museum, Alice Rawsthorn and Deyan Sudjic. Ninety-four publications are represented in the albums, with a geographic spread stretching from Japan to Italy, to the USA. Notably, the range of publications extend beyond art and design media to include ‘lifestyle’ and ‘shelter’ magazines, women’s and youthoriented ‘style’ magazines, ‘the music press’, the burgeoning genre of men’s magazines and titles for serious hobbyists, including automotive, computers and electronics. The press cuttings albums contain almost a decade of media coverage chronicling the development of a new museum of design, but although preserved in an archive they are not of the archive. The albums are not ‘transparent’ as there is no ‘description of their context’ (Breakell and Worsley 2007: 177) and they remain unprocessed. Referring to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Felice McDowell points out that ‘documents are … actively and socially connected to one another, and therefore also non-definitive in their meaning’ (McDowell 2015: 7). Whereas complete magazines preserved in libraries and private collections may continue to inform practitioners and scholars by means of the contextual mix of editorial and advertising (McDowell 2015: 3–4), the press cuttings have been separated from their context and recontextualized, building a narrative from the collected articles. Through juxtaposition and repetition, this ‘raw material offers an endlessness of readings’ (Breakell and Worsley 2007: 177). ‘Modernity is ocularcentric’ asserts Gillian Rose in Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials ([2001] 2007: 4). To analyse the visual, Rose suggests identifying key themes ([2001] 2007: 157) and examining the role of images in the depiction of social difference ([2001] 2007: 7). As Agnès Rocomora and Anneke Smelik (2016) assert, clothing is a means of constructing identity, our relation to things is socially and culturally dependent and identity shifts as ‘there is a constant negotiation between the material and the symbolic’ (2016: 11–13). Leah Armstrong’s study of the professionalization of the designer, focusing on the work of the Chartered Society of Designers, reveals the social, gendered, commercial and mediated processes of identity building in action: self-fashioning by ‘being seen’ (2014: 29); the stipulation of professional dress codes and gentlemanly behaviour (2014: 41); and the creation of a public and fashionable identity for the designer through media coverage that invariably included photographic portraits (2014: 245–246, 256–257). With close reference to text and image, this chapter triangulates the media coverage in the press cuttings albums with synchronous archival material and contemporary interviews to discover how Bayley, through the media, used his appearance to delineate and provoke, visualizing a new type of design curator from a position within the V&A but independent of its rules, at a time when the Museum was undergoing seismic change and the new Design Museum was being planned. As Sandino suggests:

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Museum biographies are shaped by a network of social, political, cultural and historical forces … we are able to explore how such forces shape the individual and how the institution, as the product of these forces, in turn shapes its personnel. (Sandino 2012: 88) Bourdieu’s definitions of taste (partially conscious classificatory schemes that generate lifestyle), field (a social microcosm) and habitus (meaningful practices and meaning-giving perceptions) also provide a useful theoretical tool with which to analyse the image of the V&A curator (Bourdieu [1984] 2010: 166–169; Rocamora 2016: 240–241).

Imaging the V&A curator The role and identity of V&A curators (known as Keepers due to their origin as Civil Servants) veered between visibility and concealment, connoisseurship and administration. In his essay ‘The Image of the Curator’ (1985), published in The V&A Album 4, Anthony Burton explores the curator’s ‘image of himself, and the public’s image of him’ (only one woman is mentioned and pictured in the article). He describes the identity crisis that ‘haunts’ the V&A as the product of a nineteenth-century schism between key personnel, Henry Cole and John Charles Robinson. Burton explicitly aligns Cole’s approach with the Conran Foundation, stating: ‘At the start, Cole wanted to run his museum as a didactic, taste forming agency, rather like the present Boilerhouse’. However, Burton argues that it was Robinson who sourced, acquired, studied and valued the ‘unassailable masterpieces’ that earned the V&A kudos as ‘the greatest museum of decorative arts in the world … Robinson quietly made it a connoisseurs collection’. By contrast, Cole interpreted this as freelance, entrepreneurial adventuring and preferred to ‘exclude scholars’ from the Museum. His Keepers were ‘selected for their administrative ability’, urged to stick to ‘day-to-day’ tasks and left the Museum ‘bereft of scholarship’. Burton asserts that without academic scholarship the curator’s role ‘degenerate[s] into triviality’ (1985: 378). Art historian Linda Sandino (2012: 88) has mapped ‘curatorial identity’ at the V&A by recording oral histories of staff employed from the late1940s to the present day. Sandino suggests that ‘a network of social, political, cultural and historical forces’ shape the individual and institution in tandem. Using philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity, she conflates two distinct roles, coining the term ‘curatocracy’ to suggest that the V&A curator combines the “embodied eye” of a connoisseur with the vocational duty of a public servant (2012: 97). A century on from Cole and Robinson’s dichotomy, the dual skillset of scholarship and administration was neither rationalized nor reconciled; curators were Civil Servants and academic knowledge, perceived as ‘skills in

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excess of the requirement of the job’, did not earn a higher pay grade whereas ‘administrative efficiency’ did (Burton 1985: 383). Burton draws upon a ‘plentiful’ visual record of the interwar generation of V&A staff (Burton 1985: 381), which shows curators pictured with museum objects in a (visitor-free) gallery or (book-lined) office. The only woman mentioned in Burton’s article is Miss Margaret Longhurst, Keeper of Architecture and Sculpture from 1938 to 1942, described as ‘modest…womanly…formidable…at the service of her collection’. In a black and white portrait, her light-toned knitwear and waved greying hair meld with the stone base reliefs in the background. The men in the article are depicted in the ‘classic pose’ of the Keeper, at a desk or workbench: ‘contemplating or appraising a work of art by both sight and touch…a keen eyed scrutiny tautly declares their critical sensibility’ (1985). By contrast, the director Sir John Pope-Hennessey (1967–1973) stands, guarded by Bernini’s marble Neptune, in a pose that Burton likens to a ‘big game hunter’, gazing imperiously at the viewer; Pope-Hennessey was able to secure ‘important acquisitions’ through his network of art market and aristocratic contacts. The Circulation Department (Circ) at the V&A played a crucial role in reimagining the design curator. Circ shifted the V&A’s collecting towards contemporary design, facilitated diversity in programming and displays and enjoyed a wider gender, educational and class balance in its curatorial team than other departments of the ‘parent’ museum, with a majority of female assistants trained at art schools, ‘left-wing in sympathy’ and ‘concerned to address the “working class” as well as the elite scholarly connoisseur’ (Sandino 2012; Weddell 2012, 2016: 15). The world’s first touring department, Circ was also ‘the growth-point of the Museum [with its] national collections of the present’ (Wakefield and White quoted in Weddell 2012), sourcing design objects from Britain and abroad. Staff were regarded as ‘less scholarly in their approach to objects, perhaps due to the specific demands of travelling shows’ (Weddell 2012). When director Roy Strong ruled on the closure of Circ in 1977 due to cuts in government funding – a decision that made him deeply unpopular – staff were dispersed to various departments within the Museum (Strong [1997] 1998; 180–183). Burton mentions the public’s perception of V&A curators as ‘hidden’, remaining out of sight ‘doing whatever it is that professional museum staff do’ (1985: 373). Such mandarin behaviour2 was culturally acceptable because Civil Servants were expected to ‘avoid publicity’ and required permission from a departmental head to publish or speak to the Press. Curators also signed the Official Secrets Act (1920) even after the National Heritage Act (1983) devolved the running of the Museum to a Board of Trustees. Sandino asserts that the Official Secrets Act ‘inhibits free communication and reinforces bureaucratic hierarchies’ (2012: 87, 93). As has been shown, even though the community of V&A curators was far from homogenous, the image of the ‘hidden’ Keeper, working behind the

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scenes, is in sharp contrast to that of Stephen Bayley whose public persona as a design curator, critic and ultimately, museum director, was highly visible in the media. Evidence that the Boilerhouse Project was keen to clarify its status within the Museum, including a request for a copy of ‘Museum Regulations’ (VAA MA/57/1/23), may have led staff to presume that Bayley had signed the Official Secrets Act. Either way, Bayley’s media presence could have been perceived as flaunting the rules.

Situating the Boilerhouse at the V&A In 1980, Strong extended an invitation to Terence Conran’s educational charity, the Conran Foundation, to establish the Boilerhouse Gallery within the V&A (Strong [1997] 1998) Conran trained as a textile designer, made his name with his homewares store Habitat (opened in 1964), shaped taste as a restaurateur and publisher, and cemented his international reputation as a design consultant with Conran Associates before reinventing himself as a retail and property tycoon (Ind 1995; Phillips 1984). Never shy of controversy, in the early 1960s he ‘represented a new type of designer, who had flouted the ideals of the previous generation’ (Armstrong 2014: 169). Like other designers of consumer goods Conran was considered a tastemaker (Sparke 1986), but what placed him apart was his manipulation of consumer desire over need, supplanting the worthiness of ‘good design’ by marketing ‘life-styles’ (Hewitt 1987: 40). The Conran Foundation’s aim was to found the UK’s first Museum of Industrial Design (AAD 6/4231/1992), which Conran perceived as central to the education of future designers: ‘something as useful for today as the V&A was for me’ (Conran quoted by Bayley 1989). As initial plans were being formulated Strong’s offer boosted the Foundation into the public arena. This phase of activities was known as the Boilerhouse Project and while it constituted a hiatus from the main goal it promoted the idea of a new design museum by building an audience by staging temporary exhibitions. Strong was keen to encourage contemporary programming at the V&A and this liminal arrangement was a means of introducing the Museum’s audience to the idea of a twentieth-century gallery. To fill that gallery, Strong ruled that 50 per cent of the Museum’s annual purchase grant should be spent on twentieth-century objects (V&A Museum 1989: 58). With space at a premium, the redundant boiler house yard behind the Aston Webb Screen on Exhibition Road was chosen for the new venture. The cost of renovation was borne by the Conran Foundation with the refurbished gallery reverting to the V&A at the end of a five-year lease, referred to as ‘The Licence’ and dated 12 October 1981 (VAA DIR7/2/7). As explained in a Memo from Roy Strong to the Keepers, the V&A was being supplied with the ‘next phase of its building programme at no cost to government’ (VAA MA/57/1/23). The Conran

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Foundation’s financial commitment constituted a substantial donation and represented the most generous gift to the Museum since its inauguration (Strong [1997] 1998: 269) But friction occurred between Museum management, curatorial staff and the Boilerhouse Project, which was criticized for occupying valuable space, breaking protocol for loan requests and exhibit deliveries (VAA MA/1/C2410), and hampering key personnel during the Museum’s transition to a Trustee institution (Strong 1998: 346). However, the reception wasn’t completely negative, as Sir Alexander Glen writing in The V&A Album 2 suggests: Sir Roy Strong and Sir Terence Conran have placed an implant within a great Museum which – if it can be brave and aggressive enough – could transform a much wider area than South Kensington. (Glen 1983: 10) Glen’s language attaches masculine attributes to the identity of the curator and speaks volumes about the gender imbalance at the Museum, at least among the higher echelons of decision makers as documented by Burton (1999). The quote implies a hopeful exchange, via the presence of contemporary design, between the Museum and London’s expanding design industry. Initially Bayley and Conran proposed that the new museum of design (with the Boilerhouse as rehearsal) be aimed at designers and ‘industrialists’. The first entry in the press cuttings albums, a cover story in Designer magazine written by Bayley and Conran, could be read as a manifesto for the ‘centre’: We hope the public will be interested in what we’re doing, and regard the centre as a popular national asset, but that isn’t our first concern. We’re interested primarily in the profession, and in business and industry, and want most of all to be a service to designers. (Conran and Bayley 1981) As the experiment unfolded, the range of publications and articles in the albums reveals the diversity of exhibition programming at the Boilerhouse Gallery: from an explication of the evolution of the product designer and a global exploration of national characteristics in design; to populist investigations of brands, including Sony and Coca-Cola; from frivolous moments such as The Bag (‘designer’ shopping bags); to the groundbreaking final show, 14:24 British Youth Culture, which mixed fashion, music and subcultures. These shows attracted multifarious audiences and their unexpected popularity represented a change of direction for the Conran Foundation, from its original aim of addressing a narrow professional and commercial audience (Conran and Bayley 1981) to encouraging a wider public to engage with design. Bayley asserted that the Boilerhouse Gallery ‘became London’s most popular gallery of the 1980s confirming our conviction that design was a sufficiently important subject to deserve a museum of its own’ (1989). Visitor Numbers are difficult to prove as the V&A’s visitor count did not extend to

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the quasi-independent venue, but in a letter to Strong Bayley quotes ‘0.5 million visitors per year’ (DIR 7/2/7), and daily totals for individual exhibitions of 1,300 (Taste) and 1,500 (Issey Miyake’s Body Works) were reported in an article by Colin McDowell (1985). Articles in the albums acknowledge the Boilerhouse Gallery’s widening remit and the realization that a design museum could further expand the audience for design through varied programming.3 The wider implication was that the Boilerhouse Project (and later the Design Museum) became a source of knowledge, for the study, practice, promotion and business of design and many of the articles in the press cuttings album quote Bayley as he assumed the role of spokesperson for design. As a go-to media pundit he increased the visibility of design by representing and mediating the profession to the public. Central to the increased status of design as a profession was its currency of fashionability. The press cuttings albums reveal the extent of interest in a future design museum and demarcate the scope of design discourse in this period; from the state of British industry to the sartorial preferences of its curator.

Stephen Bayley in print By the time Bayley entered the Museum along with the Boilerhouse Project, Burton’s (1985) portrait of the Museum curator as a materials specialist, object connoisseur and Civil Servant had evolved into a more nuanced persona. Bayley adopted an oppositional stance within the Museum, manifest in his subversive wearing of the uniform of commerce, the banker’s suit, while referencing its modernist credentials. In doing so Bayley constructed a complex statement about taste, citing Adolf Loos (and by implication Beau Brummell) as sartorial heroes while going against the gentlemanly code of ‘fitting in’ (Lubbock 1983: 43; Shapira 2011: 220). Instead, Bayley challenged the aesthetic culture of curatorial dressing by wearing a suit, which redefined the image of the design curator in a statement more ‘subversive than a turquoise mohican’ (Bayley quoted in Keers 1987b). In an interview with the author, Bayley stresses his disinterest in fashion while asserting that ‘appearances are overwhelmingly important’. Closely associated with the Boilerhouse Gallery in all the media coverage, Bayley’s age and appearance drew attention and took on special significance because his sartorial choices were intended as provocation: In those days I used to wear suits made by David Chambers, which is significant because he also made suits for Peter Langham [the restaurateur], David Bowie, Paul McCartney, and indeed for Terence [Conran] too. So we all used the same quite sharp suits. At the Boilerhouse before the Big Bang [financial deregulation in 1986], I found it quite fun to look a bit like a banker in

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the V&A, with very loud pinstriped suit, red braces … that might have created tension, it was a tension I quite enjoyed creating. (Bayley 2016) In an early article he is referred to as ‘Young Bayley’ (at 29), described as ‘hyperactive’ and ‘sharpish’ and captured in a grainy black and white, fulllength portrait. He is introduced as a journalist and art historian, mentioning posts at University of Kent and the Open University, he ‘drift[s]’ between the ‘roles of scholar and journalist … a debunker rather than an academic’ (Engel 1981); mixing cords and tweeds he resembles the popular image of a lecturer. Soon though, his self-styled image moved from one ‘field’ (Rocamora 2016: 234) to another, academic to curator, the casual garments replaced by clothing and objects that send a direct message of belonging not only to the design world but to global commerce. In the architectural trade journal Building Design the Boilerhouse Project was said to be ‘abrasive’ while Bayley was both a ‘purist’ and a ‘man with a burning passion’ who Conran called the ‘young stoker’ (Abrams 1982). The headline, ‘Conran’s great white hope’, is printed over a view of the newly completed but still empty, white-tiled Gallery, with Bayley himself exhibited. Abrams’ description catches every detail: He operates from a fishbowl at one end, a spare clinic screened from the exhibition space, with silver venetian blinds and furnished with a shelf of international design magazines, a row of Mies chairs, an Arteluce Anglepoise and a white desk adorned with sophisticated office toys. (Abrams 1982) As suggested by Abrams’ shorthand, these design objects were familiar to the professional readership of the weekly magazine and signals that Bayley’s taste aligned with their own. In Distinction, Bourdieu defines the construction of taste and lifestyle, through the choice of goods: Taste, the propensity and capacity to appropriate (materially or symbolically) a given class of classified, classifying objects or practices, is the generative formula of lifestyle, a unitary set of distinctive preferences which express the same expressive intention in the specific logic of each of the symbolic subspaces, furniture, clothing, language. (Bourdieu [1984] 2010: 169) Taking cues from the milieu of his wished-for audience, Bayley transplants the cool sophistication of a contemporary design studio into the basement of the V&A. He may have chosen the design objects on his desk, but the office, like the Boilerhouse Gallery, was designed by Oliver Gregory, a founding partner of Conran Associates (AAD 6/4239-1992, Twemlow 2013: 288), in a contemporary, commercial aesthetic that could just as easily be applied to clients in retail, leisure and commerce.

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Throughout the collected press cuttings Bayley is photographed alongside objects and locations: behind his neat desk in the culture bunker; in front of the monumental architecture of the V&A; and atop scaffolding at the soon to be Design Museum, with mention of the muddy site and its proximity to the city. The convention of photographing curators and directors inhabiting ‘places’ (Burton 1985; McDowell 2013) is extended by the juxtaposition of design curator with objects, models, drawings and plans (Figure 1.2), suggesting that the role is interchangeable with that of designer or architect. Bayley was aligning his version of the design curator with the design industry, by way of the modernity of the objects he selected. In the process, a readership of design professionals is presented with an institution that appears both inviting and relevant. Of all the images of Bayley in the press cuttings albums it is the photograph accompanying his own words in a feature, ‘Good Taste, Bad Taste’, for the Sunday Express Colour Magazine that most directly challenges the status quo at the V&A (Bayley 1983b). In a photograph that takes up most of the first page Bayley occupies a PK24 Hammock Chair in front of the Museum’s Cromwell Road entrance (the carved wooden doors are closed). The caption reads: ‘Stephen Bayley in “the ultimate in good taste” – chair designed by Poul Kjaerholm.’ Manufactured by Fritz Hansen, the PK24 retails for more than £10,000 depending on the specification and is one of the most expensive chairs in production. Wearing a multi-patterned shirt that references city-slicker stripes, teamed with tailored jeans, white socks and black loafers, his insouciant youthfulness and the purist simplicity of the chaise, which acts to endorse his taste, appear in sharp contrast with the stolid institution behind. The chaise used as a ‘prop’ may have been supplied by the Museum, as the Circulation Department acquired a PK24 in 1968 (CIRC.726A to E-1968), but the ‘loan’ is not acknowledged. Instead, it is as if Bayley and this contemporary design object are alien to the Museum but demand admission. The confrontational stance of the photograph is echoed in the didactic tone of the article, which tells readers what their bad taste choices represent. Adopting an ‘educational’ role, Bayley offers the reader a self-improving, crash course in taste: Only gifted artists and designers can predict these changes [in taste] but anyone can understand the principles. Although the history of taste has been one of change, confrontation and reversal, certain patterns constantly recur. Learn these and you’re in there with the tastemakers. The rules are simple… (Bayley 1983b) Bayley dismisses the attitude that Bourdieu identifies as linking artists and intellectuals through ‘disinterestedness’ ([1984] 2010: 316). Instead, he uses ‘taste’ to directly engage a new audience with design. As a design journalist

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and curator with privileged access to the media, the Museum and the design industry, Bayley assumes the role of intermediary for the public, which is both visitor and consumer. On the following double-page spread headed, ‘Stephen Bayley’s Selection’, he endorses Brooks Brothers shirts and Burberry raincoats over Louis Vuitton luggage, Bass Weejun loafers in preference to Gucci and some Rolex watches (not gold). Senior personnel within the Museum must have seen this article as it is included in a Directorate folder (VAA DIR 7/2/7), but whether Bayley sought permission for this ‘location’ shoot isn’t recorded, nor was the institution’s to it. In a later interview with the fashion writer, Colin McDowell, Bayley makes reference to this article and the Boilerhouse Project’s media policy: We are fearless at getting publicity. What really moves me is when something like the Express Magazine does a feature. The message is fairly crude: it has to be to appeal to Sunday Express readers but at least one is making them aware of something they were completely unaware of. (Bayley quoted in McDowell 1985) McDowell flinches at Bayley’s attitude, hitting back in a deprecating tone: ‘Mr. Bayley’s elitism clearly does not preclude helping the less fortunate’ (McDowell 1985). Photographed at his desk, on a Marcel Breuer tubular steel chair, wearing a striped shirt with a cutaway collar and a light-coloured, polka-dotted tie, Bayley combines symbols of culture and commerce; he could be a designer or a banker. Unlike V&A staff, no one was monitoring Bayley’s published utterances, which in this instance earned him criticism for condescending to his readership. Despite that, Bayley’s intention was to build a diverse audience for design exhibitions, and he was prepared to cross boundaries between the so-called ‘curatocracy’ and the public to do so. Beryl McAlhone assesses the positive and negative coverage of the Boilerhouse Gallery’s opening (McAlhone 1982), and highlights the importance attached to earning media coverage during the development of the design museum, a theme reiterated throughout the press cuttings albums. The novelty and frequency of the temporary exhibitions guaranteed opportunities for Bayley to discuss his evolving aims and strategy.4 Taste was the second thematic show curated in-house. As if to prove its academic credentials, the catalogue (with an introduction by Bayley) comprised an anthology of texts ‘about Values in Design’ by Adolf Loos, Herbert Read, Nikolaus Pevsner and others (Bayley 1983a). The display design caused a furore by placing ‘good’ objects on classical plinths and ‘bad’ on dustbins, prompting one lender to reclaim his architectural model (balanced on both). This is Bayley at his most provocative; admonishing the public to think independently while demonstrating the power of his choices. In response to the media row ‘…Bayley has given Blueprint, if not an exclusive

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Figure 1.2 British curator, journalist and critic Stephen Bayley pictured with robot exhibits in the Boilerhouse space at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on 23 July 1984. Photo by United News/Popperfoto/Getty Images.

interview (far from that), then certainly an entertaining one’, remarks James Woudhuysen (1983), with Bayley deliberately echoing Henry Cole when he reminds the readership of the recently launched design magazine: ‘Our critics … forget that one of the Boilerhouse’s jobs is to educate.’ In an interview with the advertising trade journal Campaign (McAlhone 1985), Bayley announced the Thames-side site for the new Design Museum while justifying his programming at the Boilerhouse Gallery: You can’t do narrow intense displays solely for professionals … I suppose we’ve slightly compromised … I sometimes like to think of myself as austere and Olympian in my tastes, but you do get hooked on the public after a while. We’ve realised more and more that exhibitions in the Boilerhouse are just three-dimensional journalism. (McAlhone 1985) Photographed in the Gallery (wearing a pinstripe suit with pleat-front trousers, V-neck pullover, white shirt and bowtie), Bayley explicitly aligns ‘austere and Olympian’ style with the image of professional designers and architects. But to build audiences beyond the profession and generate repeat visits, this design museum (in waiting) developed a rapid turnover of temporary exhibitions. McAlhone explains the strategy: ‘…they started out with the idea that it was better to have 25 people spend an hour there, than 2,500 spend

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five minutes. But now he wants both, and has learned how to pull off the second aim’. Bayley’s pragmatism was perceived as a means to an end and ‘having swapped seriousness for mischief he will have to swap back again’ when the Boilerhouse Project becomes the Design Museum. McAlhone makes a negative connection between increased attendance and the quality of the exhibition policy, even though high visitor numbers and press coverage indicated ‘success in what is essentially a promotional activity’ (1985). Press coverage promoted the Boilerhouse Gallery (as there was no advertising budget) and was touted as an indicator of future interest in a new museum when Bayley was attracting sponsorship. The idea of an exhibition as ‘three-dimensional journalism’ presents Bayley as a populist figure, in opposition to the scholarly, academic connoisseurship of a museum curator focused on research and ensconced within a collection. Journalism requires opinion, novelty and the presentation of material in an engaging rather than exhaustive manner. In the 1980s, architecture and design journalism experienced a boom with the launch of new titles including Creative Review (1980) Blueprint (1983) and Design Week (1986). Alice Twemlow’s (2013) study of the development of design criticism explores this expansion through comments from Bayley. The design media catered to an industry increasing in turnover and visibility. Beryl McAlhone authored a report for the Design Council stating that the UK design industry earned £1,089m in 1985, while staff numbers grew by 19 per cent in the following year (1987: 13). As Guy Julier has argued, in the 1980s and 1990s, this complex and ‘vibrant’ interaction of production, consumption, practice and representation was refashioning the profession, turning a design industry into design culture ([2000] 2008: 39).

From gallery to museum In the period after the Boilerhouse Gallery closed (31 August 1986) and before the Design Museum opened (5 July 1989) generating press coverage was a vital strategy for maintaining the profile of the Conran Foundation. After five years in the public eye but without the ‘hook’ of an exhibition programme it was imperative that the initiative remain relevant, business-like and motivated in order to secure financial partners. Bayley generated column inches by writing, broadcasting, lecturing and featuring in articles that were by turn professional, political and populist, for example: speculation on Sir Roy Strong’s successor at the V&A (Sudjic 1987); unpicking scandal at the Design Council (Tresidder 1988); and extolling the joys of ‘new man’ family life (Harding 1987; Mort [1996] 2009). Bayley’s wardrobe again took centre stage in a photo shoot with Paul Keers (1987). The article promotes Keers’ new book, A Gentleman’s Wardrobe, which

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celebrates traditional gentleman’s clothing as ‘classic, timeless [and] absolutely right’ (1987: 8).5 In the article Keers identifies a group of men who ‘impose a complete philosophy on their entire wardrobe’ (1987), including Stephen Calloway ‘curator of paintings at the V&A’ whose ‘scholarly interest in the past [includes] dress’. Bayley is also featured; he wears a chalkstripe, double-breasted suit, white shirt, hand-painted tie to ‘add a mild element of whimsy’ and tassel loafers, explaining that he ‘invariably wears a classic, well-cut two-piece suit’ mixing British brands such as Paul Smith and Church’s with ‘Italian designers’. His personal dress code reveals more sartorial heroes; Kandinsky (for painting in a suit) and: the Bauhaus painter Maholy-Nagy… He pointed out that the best way of being subversive is to look like a banker. And that is basically what I’m doing… The idea is to look like the corporate department of Solomon Brothers, but think like a crazed Trot. (Keers 1987b: 6) Here Bayley confirms his tactic of sartorial subversion and deliberately creates dissonance between image and ideology, using the most traditional of male attire, the suit (Spencer 1992).6 After Bayley’s brush with lifestyle journalism the press cuttings albums document the building of the new Design Museum in London. The Topping Out Ceremony is a significant moment in the completion of a capital project, when the construction team hand over to the interior contractors, and had the required effect of earning news coverage for the Conran Foundation’s new venue. A Management Today (1988) article features Bayley wearing a light-blue linen jacket with a dark, checked shirt standing in front of a building-site hoarding, a far cry from the ‘hidden’ curator of the V&A. The article praises Bayley for having ‘turned temporary accommodation in the Victoria and Albert Museum into a major attraction, the museum has also had conspicuous success in attracting corporate sponsors’ (1988). Bayley’s public-facing ‘self-presentation’ (Management Today 1988), through a mix of props and performance, was evolving into a role, which his paradoxical ‘Trot’ in banker’s clothing fitted perfectly, as he courted ‘the initial tranche of sponsors – Courtaulds, Ford, Olivetti, Otis, Perrier and Sony’ (Bayley quoted in Management Today 1988) with the aim of securing thirty sponsors. More than simply offering one-off promotional opportunities, the usual ‘logo on an exhibition banner’, Bayley envisioned the new Design Museum working in collaboration with industry alongside a sponsor’s ‘marketing or R&D’ teams (Management Today 1988). He was aware of commercial practices in American museums and the future funding landscape, with less public and government money available to underpin the museum community (Philips and Whannel 2013). Looking every inch the global player, Bayley recognized the need to internationalize design culture (Julier [2000] 2008: 37) so as to engage with the

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realities of global capital. He sidesteps criticism about the ‘international’ stripe of his sponsors by stating, ‘We’re not jingoistic or xenophobic. We’re in the world of global marketing today,’ and adds a veiled criticism of those institutions left behind: ‘If we [the Design Museum] can’t fund ourselves in the future, it’s not worth doing’ (Management Today 1988). However, the Design Museum did not attract the required sponsorship and Bayley left soon after the Museum soon after it opened. Bayley had stated that the Design Museum would develop along very different lines to the V&A, highlighting the institutionalization of its staff: Design, by its nature, is a dynamic subject, but the civil service exists in a large part to resist movement and change and so, when Cole’s museum was progressively institutionalized, the original irreverent and reforming spirit which created it was driven out to make room for bureaucrats and keepers, instead of leaders and critics. The V&A continued its magnificent way and became the world’s outstanding custodial museum of the applied arts; the price it paid for this status was to lose it dynamism and replace it with a vast collection of treasures. (Bayley 1985) In equating personnel, the institution and its structures, Bayley is making a similar point to Sandino, when she talks of Museum biographies shaped by social, political, cultural and historical forces that create the individual and the institution (2012: 88). Bayley also identified disciplinary and sartorial differences between himself and the Museum curator, using the label ‘academic art historian’: how can you be interested in design and not care about your appearance? I had that argument so many times. But then that is a sort of central problem about academic art historians. (Bayley 2016) By contrast his definition of design is expansive: ‘Design is not a coherent thing, it is just an attitude to the world’ (Bayley 1985), which could fit the expanded definition of Design Culture (Julier [2000] 2008: 40–41). Over the last decade design museums too have radically altered. Motivations have varied, from repositioning a decorative arts museum (New York), to integrating a number of smaller, single-subject museums (Barcelona), or bringing a seminal collection to the fore (Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein), while London’s Design Museum has relocated, tripled in size and achieved the status of a ‘national’ museum. Whatever the prompt, these redesigns aim to engage with a wider range of audiences by creating multi-purpose spaces and interactivity through interpretation and display. But the cost has been high in terms of disruption and resources (£83 million in London, $91 million at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum) and it remains to be seen whether this strategy will pay dividends.7 That design museums are deemed worthy of

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such effort is indicative of a growing impetus to better understand the breadth of design (Julier 2017).

Conclusion Within the context of the V&A, Bayley intended his appearance and behaviour to be provocative and subversive; the antithesis of the Museum’s ‘hidden’ curator. At the height of Thatcherism he assumed the costume of commerce in the form of the banker’s suit, wearing it within a publicly funded institution subject to severe budgetary cuts and reorganization. Bayley hoped that the Design Museum would exist in contradistinction to the V&A and was dressing like the designers and industrialists that he aimed to attract to his exhibitions. Using the media to disseminate his ideas, Bayley perfectly fit the zeitgeist of the 1980s ‘Designer’ decade (Buckley 2007: 209) by managing to be both anti-political and oppositional. If fashioning can be understood in its verb form as ‘to do or to make’ then Bayley’s decade of provocation fashioned a new design curator alongside a design museum (Entwistle 2016). The suit itself never goes out of style but is continually reinvented: examined by design and dress historians (Breward [1999] 2009, 2016); celebrated in exhibitions with glossy catalogues (Cicolini 2005; Takeda, Spilker and Esguerra 2016); and consumed in the marketplace, where tailor Thom Browne’s suits were recently declared ‘anti-establishment’ and exhibited at the V&A (Moore 2008: 264–266). When the Museum’s first German director, Martin Roth, took up his post in 2011 he advocated for staff to wear suit and tie (The Telegraph 2012).8 Roth also appointed a new senior curator of contemporary design, Kieran Long, previously an architectural journalist and editor (Dezeen 2012). Long might be considered a provocateur in his role, as he fit Bayley’s redefinition of a design curator, through the intersection of the media industry and the design profession. The design curator has become a key protagonist, a mediator between designers, industry, the Museum and other curators. A comparison between Bayley’s ‘three-dimensional journalism’ as exhibition making and contemporary design curation may further reveal a trajectory of curatorial development, with relation to design, design history and the design object. So, perhaps something of Bayley still inhabits the V&A, thirty years after the Boilerhouse Project left the building.

Notes 1 Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York, reopened 1976; Designmuseo, Helsinki, reopened 1978; MAK, Vienna, reopened

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1986; Design Collection, Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich, 1987; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 1988; Museu de les Arts Decoratives, Barcelona, 1989; Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 1989; Design Museum, London, 1989; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1990; Centre de creation industrielle and Musée national d’art modern, Paris, merged 1992; Bauhaus Museum, Weimar, 1995; La Triennale di Milano, reopened 1997 (Hufnagl 2004). 2 ‘Mandarin’ describes a high-pay grade inter- and post-war functionary working in quangos and government (Hewison 1987; Maguire and Woodham 1997; Meynell 1988). 3 Falk and Dierking (1992) and Falk (2009) codified the concept of multiple museum audiences and developed the discipline of Visitor Studies, which places the visitor at the centre of museum activity. Their self-identifying categories of Explorer, Facilitator, Experience Seeker, Professional/Hobbyist and Recharger are fluid, suggesting that a visitor’s aims and circumstances shift from visit to visit. 4 The Boilerhouse Gallery staged 23 exhibitions from January 1982 to August 1986, and published 18 catalogues. 5 The guidebook to correct dressing is another gentlemanly tradition and Keers shares sartorial lore that appears in earlier publications, such as Esquire Fashion Guide for All Occasions (Birmingham 1957). During the 1980s new men’s magazines began to ‘(quite didactically on occasions) inform their readers of the significance of fine tailoring, the glamour and sexiness of suits, ties and all the accessories … and advise on the fundamental importance of personal appearance to success’ (Edwards [1997] 2009: 465). 6 A Trotskyite was a follower of Leon Trotsky, endorsing the concept of permanent international revolution; in the 1970s and 1980s, ‘crazed Trot’ was a colloquialism for a radical socialist. 7 The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York, was closed for three years, reopening in 2014 (Pogrebin 2014); Museu de les Arts Decoratives, Barcelona, reopened in 2014 (Van Lier 2015); in 2016 the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, opened a Schaudepot for the Vitra Collection, which had been stored for over two decades (Farrelly 2016); the reinvention of London’s Design Museum was a decade in the making (Design Week 2006; Dezeen 2016). 8 … when asked to describe the appearance of a V&A curator Bayley replied ‘shabby’ (2016).

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Birmingham, F. A., ed. (1957), Esquire Fashion Guide for All Occasions, New York: Harper and Brothers. Bourdieu, P. ([1984] 2010), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice, London and New York: Routledge. Breakell, S. and V. Worsley (2007), ‘Collecting the Traces: An Archivist’s Perspective’, Journal of Visual Arts Practice, 6 (3): 175–189. Available online: http://www .tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jvap.6.3.175_1?journalCode=rjvp20 (accessed on 19 April 2015). Breward, C. ([1999] 2009), ‘Fashion and the Man: From Suburb to City Street. The Spaces of Masculine Consumption, 1870–1914’, in P. McNeil and V. Karaminas (eds), The Men’s Fashion Reader, 409–428, Oxford: Berg. Breward, C. (2016), The Suit: Form, Function and Style, London: Reaktion Books. Buckley, C. (2007), Designing Modern Britain, London: Reaktion Books. Burton, A. (1981), Review of the Years 1974–1978, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: H.M.S.O. Burton, A. (1985), ‘The Image of the Curator’, in The V&A Album 4, 372–387, London: De Montfort Publishing and The Associates of the V&A. Burton, A. (1999), Vision & Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London: V&A Publications. Cicolini, A. (2005), The New English Dandy, New York: Assouline Publishing. Conran, T. and Bayley S. (1981), ‘First Step towards a British Complex Design’, Designer, January 1981. Edwards, T. ([1997] 2009), ‘Consuming Masculinities: Style, Content and Men’s Magazines’, in P. McNeil and V. Karaminas (eds), The Men’s Fashion Reader, 462–471, Oxford: Berg. Engel, A. (1981), ‘Young Bayley at the Boilerhouse’, Harpers & Queen, February 1981. Entwistle, J. (2016) ‘The Fashioned Body 15 Years On: Contemporary Fashion Thinking’, Fashion Practice, 8 (1): 15–21. Available online: http://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy .brighton.ac.uk/doi/abs/10.2752/136270401779108581 (accessed on 27 November 2016). Falk, J.H. (2009), Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Falk, J.H. and L. D. Dierking (1992), The Museum Experience, Washington, DC: Whalesback Books. Farrelly, L. (2016) ‘Project: Vitra Schaudepot, Vitra Campus/Herzog & de Meuron’, Blueprint, 347: 36. Glen, A. (1983), ‘The Advisory Council 1913–1983’, in The V&A Album 2, 8–10, London: Templegate Publishing and The Friends of the V&A. Hansard (1989), Victoria and Albert Museum HL Deb 22 March 1989 Vol.505 cc765– 810. Available online: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1989/mar/22 /victoria-and-albert-museum (accessed on 1 October 2016). Harding, L. (1987), ‘My Weekend, Stephen Bayley’, Sunday Express Magazine, 15 March. Hewison, R. (1987), The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline, London: Methuen. Hewitt, J. (1987), ‘Good Design in the Market Place: The Rise of Habitat Man’, Oxford Art Journal, 10 (2): 28–42. Available online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360445 (accessed on 23 February 2012).

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Philips, D. and G. Whannel (2013), The Trojan Horse: The Growth of Commercial Sponsorship, London: Bloomsbury. Phillips, B. (1984), Conran and the Habitat Story, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Pogrebin, R. (2014), ‘The Redesign of a Design Museum: Renovating the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’, The New York Times, 16 June. Available online: https:// www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/arts/design/renovating-the-cooper-hewitt-national -design-museum.html (accessed on 3 July 2017). Rocamora, A. (2016), ‘Pierre Bourdieu: The Field of Fashion’, in A. Rocomora and A. Smelik (eds), Thinking through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, 233–250, London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Rocomora, A. and A. Smelik (2016), ‘Thinking through Fashion: An Introduction’, in A. Rocomora and A. Smelik (eds), Thinking through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, 1–27, London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Rose, G. ([2001] 2007), Visual Methodologies; An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials, London: Sage. Sandino, L. (2012), ‘A Curatocracy: Who and What Is a V&A Curator?’ in K. Hill (ed.), Museums and Biographies: Stories, Objects, Identities, 87–99, Rochester, NY: Boydell Press. Shapira, E. (2011), ‘Adolf Loos and the Fashioning of “the Other”: Memory, Fashion, and Interiors’, Interiors, 2 (2): 213–237. Available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/20419 1211X13070211134385 (accessed on 1 October 2016). Sparke, P. (1986), An Introduction to Design and Culture in the Twentieth Century, London: Unwin Hyman. Spencer, N. (1992), ‘Menswear in the 1980s: Revolt into Conformity’, in J. Ash and E. Wilson (eds), Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader, London: Pandora Press. Strong, R. ([1997] 1998), The Roy Strong Diaries 1967–1987, London: Phoenix. Sudjic, D. (1987), ‘Jobs for the Boys’, London Daily News, 26 February. ‘Sudjic Signs up to “once in a lifetime” Design Museum job’ (2006), Design Week, 16 March. Available online: https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/16-march-2006 /sudjic-signs-up-to-once-in-a-lifetime-design-museum-job (accessed on 3 July 2017). Takeda, S. S., K. D Spilker and C. M Esguerra, eds (2016), Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015, Munich, London, New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, DelMonico Books and Prestel. Thatcher, M. (1989), ‘Speech opening Design Museum’. Available online: http://www .margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107722 (accessed on 7 July 2016). Tresidder, M. (1988), ‘Bang goes the Quango’, Sunday Telegraph, 16 October. Twemlow, A. (2013), ‘Purposes, Poetics, Publics: The Shifting Dynamics of Design Criticism in the US and UK, 1955–2007’, PhD Thesis, The Royal College of Art. Usherwood, B. (1991), ‘The Design Museum: Form Follows Funding’, Design Issues, 7 (2): 76–87. Available online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511409 (accessed on 12 February 2012). Van Lier, B. (2015), ‘Finally Barcelona has Got Its Design Museum’, What Design Can Do, 12 February. Available online: http://www.whatdesigncando.com/2015/02/11 /finally-barcelona-got-design-museum (accessed on 3 July 2017). V&A Museum Report of the Board of Trustees. 1st April 1986–31st March 1989 (1989) London: Victoria and Albert Museum. Weddell, J. (2012), ‘Room 38A and Beyond: Post-War British Design and the Circulation Department’, V&A Online Journal, 4. Available online: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content

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/journals/research-journal/issue-no.-4-summer-2012/room-38a-and-beyond-post -war-british-design-and-the-circulation-department (accessed on 1 July 2016). Weddell, J. (2016), ‘The Ethos of the Victoria and Albert Museum Circulation Department 1947–1960’, in L. Farrelly and J. Weddell (eds), Design Objects and the Museum, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Woudhuysen, J. (1983), ‘Acquired Taste’, Blueprint, October.

Archive of Art and Design AAD 6/4228 to 4374-1992 AAD 6/4231-1992, Bayley, S. (1979) Industrial Design: A proposal to create a museum of industrial design in Britain Unpublished Report.

V&A Archive AO 379, Boilerhouse and Design Museum Papers. DIR7/2/7, Directorate Department, ‘Design Museum–Butler’s Wharf–Boilerhouse Project, 1978–1987’. MA/1/C2410, Nominal File, Conran Foundation (Boilerhouse Project) Dates 1983–1986. MA/57/1/23, Policy File, Premises Alterations, Maintenance and Repairs: Boilerhouse proposed project by Terence Conran 1980–1983. Boilerhouse Press Cuttings 1–6.

Interviews Farrelly, L. ‘Interview with Stephen Bayley’, 29 June 2016. Email Conversation with Stephen Bayley, 9 September 2016.

2 FASHIONING POP: STYLISTS, FASHION WORK AND POPULAR MUSIC IMAGERY Rachel Lifter

Introducing the pop stylist In recent years, several pop stylists have become celebrities in their own right. As Lady Gaga gained widespread fame in 2009, alongside her stood stylist Nicola Formichetti, a fashion industry darling, who became recognized as the architect of the pop star’s look. Two years later, Rihanna began collaborating with fashion stylist Mel Ottenberg. The collaboration would delight popular audiences and the fashion industry alike because of the seemingly endless number of fashion-forward looks Rihanna wears in performance and on the street. Finally, in 2016, Marni Senofonte, the stylist who worked with Beyoncé on the music video ‘Formation’ (2016) and the visual album Lemonade (2016), granted interviews with a range of popular fashion publications about the sartorial aesthetic she developed with the pop star. Through individual analyses of Formichetti, Ottenberg and Senofonte, this chapter begins to explore the figure of the pop stylist: who this person is, what creative and professional knowledges s/he/they draws on within their styling work, and what the cultural impact of their work is. Two themes are explored across these analyses. First, comparison of the three reveals distinctions between the fashion stylist and the stylist for music. Over the past thirty years, fashion styling has professionalized, and the fashion stylist has become a recognized contributor to the creation of fashion at various stages of its material and symbolic production. In contrast, those people who style music constitute a largely invisible workforce, their labour obscured by a set of music industry logics that foregrounds musical acts’ personae. Second, although Formichetti, Ottenberg and Senofonte are exceptional pop stylists, analysis of their work

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also points to broader historical shifts in both the styling of pop music and the professional status of the creative people who do this type of work. As I hope this chapter shows, Formchetti and Ottenberg effectively re-code the practice of pop styling as a form of fashion work. Further, this lens provides a framework for scholars and pop cultural critics to explore Senofonte and others’ styling work as both the visualization of musical acts’ personae and as fashioned imagery produced through the mobilization of fashion knowledges.

Nicola Formichetti In its Pre-Fall 2010 issue, ‘The 30th Birthday Issue’, i-D magazine included a photo editorial featuring Lady Gaga, shot by Nick Knight. Accompanying the editorial were several interviews: with Lady Gaga, herself; with her creative director, Matt Williams; and with her stylist, Nicola Formichetti. In conversation with editor Ben Reardon, Formichetti outlined who he is, a fashion stylist, and how he contributes to the pop star’s look: by turning her into what he calls ‘a 3D magazine’ (Reardon 2010: 137). When Nicola Formichetti met and began collaborating with Lady Gaga in 2009, he had already built a career in the fashion industry as a stylist. Like many stylists, he began his career in retail, as a buyer at London’s Soho’s The Pineal Eye. As Formichetti explained to Reardon of i-D, the well-known stylists Katy England and Alister Mackie came into the store one day and asked if he wanted to do a page for Dazed & Confused (Reardon 2010: 137). He was soon given his own column – ‘Eye Spy’, wherein, he explained to Marcus Chang of The New York Times, ‘I edited and highlighted things that I liked, took pictures and styled’ (Chang 2010: np). By the time he met Lady Gaga on a photoshoot in 2009, he was that publication’s creative director, fashion director at Vogue Hommes Japan and stylist for the brands Uniqlo and Alexander McQueen, among others (Gunn 2010: np). Perhaps because of his fashion industry background, Formichetti saw his collaboration with Lady Gaga as a meeting of two worlds, saying, ‘I think if you’re a fashion stylist you do fashion and if you’re music you do music, there’s not normally a crossover’ (Reardon 2010: 137). He continued, ‘I worked with celebrities before but more for fashion shoots, because I always declined their offers. But with Gaga as soon as we met it was so exciting’ (Reardon 2010: 137). Against Formichetti’s claims, there are, in fact, stylists and designers who routinely cross the boundaries between fashion and music. By producing this distinction, however, Formichetti firmly roots himself and his contribution to Lady Gaga’s look in a tradition of fashion editorial styling, a creative practice that has professionalized over the past thirty years by formalizing the art of customization.

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According to Frank Mort, the figure of the fashion stylist emerged in the 1980s in the fashion pages of the British style press: specifically, The Face (Mort 1996: 55; see also Lynge-Jorlén 2016). He continues that The Face was founded with the goal of articulating a new type of fashion imagery. Whereas an editorial in Vogue worked as ‘a seamless advertisement for the collections of famous designers’, The Face attempted to create imagery that ‘functioned as narratives to be “cruised”’ (Mort 1996:55). Stylists emerged as the de facto authors of such narratives. According to Angela McRobbie, it was assistants to fashion editors and photographers, who helped to assemble outfits and determine ‘the overall “look” of the shoot, who emerged as the first stylists.’ In short, they ‘began to realize their own creative input into the fashion pages and the freelance potential of their work’ (McRobbie 1998: 157). ‘From this’, McRobbie continues, ‘a new creative occupation was born’ (1998). By using the term ‘occupation’ as opposed to ‘profession’, McRobbie indicates the informality of this creative job in the 1980s. Indeed, as outlined above, Formichetti describes his own entry into this type of work as a story of being ‘discovered’ or ‘scouted’ as opposed to, for example, being trained academically, as one might enter into other professions. Customization is central to the logics of fashion styling work. Ane Lynge-Jorlén (2016: 90), for example, draws a connection between the practice of fashion editorial styling and the subcultural practice of bricolage, or mixing’n’matching. The art of customization was born of necessity, as early stylists did not have access to designer garments and thus had to make fashionable imagery using vintage and customized pieces. Edward Enninful, the former I-D fashion director, fashion and style director at W magazine and current editor of British Vogue, explains about his early career: I didn’t shoot designer clothes, I often made clothes. I was known as the one who always customized the idea. I don’t know if you remember i-D at the time, but it was very much about the trendiest things that you could do. Portobello Market, Notting Hill Housing Trust – these were the hip places. It was not about Prada or Chanel. A lot of designers wouldn’t lend their clothes to i-D because it was too off-centre. (Cotton 2000: 36) On the one hand, as noted earlier, the style magazines from the 1980s attempted to produce narrative imagery as opposed to branded content, and thus customizing emerged as a key practice by which, Charlotte Cotton (2000) explains, stylists ‘imbue[d] their representation of fashion with the new and exciting notion of imaginative consumers who incorporated fashion into their own lives’ (Cotton 2000: 6). On the other hand, Enninful acknowledges that another reason designer garments were absent from the fashion editorial imagery of the early style press was that this generation of up-and-coming stylists simply could not get access to them.

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As individual stylists garnered fame and the figure of the stylist became more prominent within the fashion industry throughout the 1990s, access to designer garments was more easily attained. Melanie Ward, another early stylist, located this shift in relation to the logics of magazine publishing and advertising. Speaking about her earliest work, she reflected, ‘The stories we were producing were personal statements, reflected in music and the rave scene that had just started’ (Cotton 2000: 76). In contrast, she explained further, ‘Now I understand a lot more about the commercial structure of the design system and how magazines work. Maybe a magazine is there to present women with aspirations and dreams, but it’s also there to be a directory so people can go to a certain shop and buy a dress in their size’ (2000). Lynge-Jorlén (2016) develops further this theme of the ‘economic restrictions’ guiding contemporary styling practice. Specifically looking at high fashion editorial styling, she explains that stylists are required to integrate into their looks garments from magazines’ advertisers. These ‘economic restrictions’, she continues, demand ‘creative solutions’, such as mixing the advertiser’s piece with other garments that more directly align with the stylist’s aesthetic and vision (Lynge-Jorlén 2016: 91). Indeed, as Ward noted, even when she did gain access to in-season designer garments, she continued to mix them with ‘found’ things (Cotton 2000: 76). Thus, customization, a practice born of necessity, became the ‘calling card’ of fashion stylists, the creative practice through which they are recognized as central contributors to the production of fashion and, in particular, fashion editorial imagery. It is against this backdrop of the professionalizing of both the fashion stylist and their art of customization that one can analyse Formichetti’s contribution to Lady Gaga’s look. Within the i-D interview, Formichetti recounted the moment during the ‘Telephone’ shoot when he created Lady Gaga’s cigarette sunglasses: ‘We were just about to shoot the prison scene and we were just like, ‘Let’s put cigarettes on the sunglasses!’ I just made them on the spot; we put stickers on the glasses, then added cigarettes and started burning them’ (Reardon 2010: 137). Within her acceptance speech for the Council of Fashion Designer’s of America’s ‘Fashion Icon’ award in June 2011, Lady Gaga acknowledged this particular contribution of Formichetti to her look through an anecdote about the ensemble she was wearing on stage: together, Formichetti and Lady Gaga dyed it black, dipped it in latex and added ‘stripper’ embellishments (CFDA 2011). Indeed, throughout their four-year collaboration Formichetti fashioned the pop star into what he termed ‘a 3D magazine. She wears the clothes, is photographed by the paparazzi and those pictures appear on my blog with fashion credits, it becomes like a fashion forum and it’s instant’ (Reardon 2010: 137). As up-and-coming designer Fred Butler recounted, the appearance of her ‘telephone’ headpiece in Lady Gaga’s video of the same name ‘has given me an instant international platform.’ She continued, ‘The attention I receive is very bizarre, from Lady Gaga fans stalking me on Facebook, to people calling me asking for replica hats’ (Gunn 2010: np).

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Of course, fashion editorials are produced not only through the stylist’s skills of customization, but also through collaboration: with designers and photographers, among other fashion professionals. Again, Formichetti facilitated these connections for Lady Gaga. For example, for the release of The Fame Monster – Lady Gaga’s reissue of her debut album – in 2009, Formichetti collaborated with the French photographer (and fashion designer) Hedi Slimane to create two black-and-white album covers. He stated to i-D, ‘In one year we’ve worked with Nick Knight, who has done all the visuals for the tour and the iD shoot, Steven Klein, Terry Richardson…so many amazing people!’ (Reardon 2010: 137). Perhaps the most widely publicized of Lady Gaga’s collaborations was that with Alexander McQueen for the ‘Bad Romance’ video from The Fame Monster. In one scene of the music video, she struts across a futuristic prison cell wearing the final look from the collection, complete with McQueen’s infamous 30cm high ‘Armadillo’ shoes. Whereas ‘Lee [McQueen] and Gaga really understood each other’ (Reardon 2010: 137), Formichetti explained, other designers took longer to come around to the pop star. When Reardon of i-D noted that ‘Paparazzi’, a single released several months before ‘Bad Romance’, must have been a turning point for Lady Gaga, ‘when everyone decided Gaga was actually really, really good’, Formichetti responded, ‘But even then I had to use my name to secure her clothes. I introduced her to my world; the young designers and the high fashion designers’ (2010).

Mel Ottenberg As Kristin Anderson of vogue.com recently noted, Rihanna is ‘pop’s foremost style star […] the subject of so many fashion blogs and Instagram accounts’ (Anderson 2016: np). Freya Drohan of The Independent concurred, ‘Rihanna is the most influential clothes horse in the music industry’ (Drohan 2016: np). Since her debut single ‘Pon de Replay’ was released in 2005, the pop star has been known as much for the evolutions in her look as for her music. In 2014, moreover, she was awarded the CFDA ‘Fashion Icon’ award. ‘The difference in the last few years’, The New York Times journalist Matthew Schneier explains, ‘is Mr. [Mel] Ottenberg […] “I saw the potential there”, [Ottenberg] said. “I could take that and really do something with that”’ (Schneier 2016: np). What Ottenberg did with this collaborative opportunity was twofold. He transformed Rihanna into a ‘fashion icon’ and he established himself as an authority on fashion. Like Formichetti, Ottenberg had developed a career as a fashion stylist before embarking on (what was still at the time of writing in 2016) an ongoing collaboration with Rihanna. His ‘discovery’ story reads similarly to Formichetti’s as well: the photographer ‘Matthias Vriens asked me to style a shoot for The Face. I literally bumped him into the street and he asked, “Do you want to do a

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shoot for me?”’ (Blasberg 2015: np). Before meeting Rihanna, Ottenberg styled editorials for 10 Men, Dazed & Confused, Elle (US) and Purple magazine, among other titles (models.com 2016). In 2013 he was named fashion director at the Berlin-based 032c. It was through styling Rihanna, however, that Ottenberg exercised most fully his aesthetic vision. He had met Rihanna for an Elle shoot in 2006 (Blasberg 2015: np), but did not work with her again until her team approached him to style her and her dancers for an NBA halftime show several years later (Krentcil 2013). He explained, ‘That performance turned into the 2011 [‘Loud’] tour, and we’ve worked together ever since’ (Blasberg 2015: np). According to Ottenberg, the Melina Matsoukas-directed video for Rihanna and Calvin Harris’ 2011 hit ‘We Found Love’ was the moment he and the pop star made their ‘fashion breakthrough’ (Schneier 2016: np). Throughout the music video Rihanna is clad in ’90s-inspired looks: Doc Marten boots, tartan shirts tied around her waist, and an oversized stonewashed denim jacket, an aesthetic that tapped into the broader retro trend for nineties fashion at the turn of the 2010s. Moreover, much of Rihanna’s wardrobe for the video, Ottenberg explained, was sourced through his own personal industry connections: that is, from the closet of his boyfriend, the designer and frequent collaborator with Rihanna, Adam Selman (Schneier 2016: np). It was, perhaps, this styling that prompted Fashionista’s Dhani Mau to ask Ottenberg in 2013 if he was directing Rihanna’s look towards a ’90s aesthetic. He responded, ‘I don’t think it’s necessarily like I’m looking at the ‘90s in some really specific way […] it’s more about a vibe and less about a theme and it’s less about a costume, it’s just more about a cool feeling’ (Mau 2013: np; emphasis added). The term ‘cool feeling’ indicates the ‘embodied and expressive’ nature of, what Joanne Entwistle calls, ‘tacit aesthetic knowledge’ (Entwistle 2009: 129). She explains, the fashion industry is an ‘aesthetic market’ wherein ‘aesthetics are not something “added on” as a decorative feature once a product has been defined; they are the product/s’ (2009: 10; emphasis in original). Entwistle goes on to explore the work of model bookers and fashion buyers, asking how do these fashion professionals ‘calculate the product, a model’s look, or designer clothing range?’ (2009: 12–13). Referring specifically to fashion buyers’ fashion knowledge, Entwistle explains that these professionals ‘struggle to describe it but often use very similar embodied metaphors to describe their knowledge, all stressing the importance of “gut instinct” or “having an eye”’ (2009: 13). In other words, it is by reference to ‘embodied metaphors’ that contemporary fashion professionals, including Ottenberg, articulate their expertise. Although Ottenberg does not/is not able to articulate precisely what this ‘cool feeling’ is, he knows what it is; he intuits it. Ottenberg’s intuited fashion knowledge is made more explicit in Rihanna’s reality television show Styled to Rock, which aired on Bravo in 2013. The show focuses on ten unknown designers who battle it out in weekly design-based competitions to win the chance to dress Rihanna, a place on Ottenberg’s design

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team, and $100,000. Ottenberg served alongside model-cum-designer Erin Wasson and pop star Pharrell Williams as the contestants’ mentors and, ultimately, the judges who would determine their fates by eliminating a cast member each week.1 Central within the elimination process was ‘the pull’. ‘The pull’ is a plot device, used at the mid-point of each episode to separate the contestants into two groups: those designers who are safe from elimination and therefore whose looks will be shown to the week’s star guests, and those designers who are up for elimination because their looks did not impress Ottenberg and the other mentor-judges. ‘The pull’ also draws attention to one of the central roles played Ottenberg and the pop stylist, more generally: gatekeeper. That is, through ‘the pull’ Ottenberg mediates the young designers’ access to the star guests. As he explains to the contestants in the second episode, ‘You’ve got to be clear with your vision and your idea and you’ve got to sell it to us’ (Styled to Rock, Episode 2, 2013a; emphasis added). In other words: you have to go through me first. One of the criteria Ottenberg and the other mentors use to determine who makes ‘the pull’ is whether the contestants’ pieces are appropriately ‘fashion’ or unfortunately ‘too costume’. The mentors mobilize this distinction throughout the series. In the fourth episode, for example, Wasson explains to a contestant, ‘We all think you went too “stage”’ (Styled to Rock, Episode 4, 2013b). Similarly, in the sixth episode, Ottenberg advises a contestant, ‘Function and fashion have to merge here. This seems more like a costume’ (Styled to Rock, Episode 6, 2013c). Early on in the show, the eventual winner of the competition, Sergio, demonstrates his ability to distinguish between ‘fashion’ and ‘costume’ in a challenge for which the contestants have to create a punk-inspired red carpet look for celebrity Kelly Osborne. When explaining his look to the judges, Sergio says that he first thought about Osborne’s image and then ‘I immediately thought about early nineties Gianni Versace’. When hearing this, Ottenberg praises, ‘I love that you started with Kelly and who your client was and then you brought in “I’m a sucker for 90s Gianni Versace”’. He concluded his critique by noting to Sergio, ‘You’re saying all my things’ (Styled to Rock, Episode 2, 2013). Indeed, it seems that, unlike the other contestants, who were using the television programme to articulate their own unique aesthetic visions to a popular audience, Sergio developed a design practice that more closely resembled Ottenberg’s own styling practice: to use a pop star as a means of articulating and exercising one’s fashion knowledge.

Marni Senofonte On 23 April 2016 Beyoncé released Lemonade – her sixth solo studio and second visual album. The release sparked a popular frenzy, and professional and amateur culture critics alike took to their keyboards to discuss the possibility of Jay Z’s infidelity, as the album’s narrative implies; its visual representation of black female

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subjectivity; and the many, many outfits Beyoncé and her fellow cast members wear in the hour-long visual piece. On this final theme, Marni Senofonte, the stylist who worked with the pop star to fashion the album’s sartorial aesthetic, indulged the media, giving interviews with The New York Times, Vogue, W, Marie Claire and ASOS, among other outlets about the ‘antebellum-slash-Victorianslash-modern-day’ (Carlos 2016a: np) aesthetic she and her team ‘served up.’ With the exception of Bob Mackie, whose elaborate costumes for pop star Cher made him a household name in the 1970s, and several others, the creative professionals who labour to clothe pop stars constitute a largely invisible workforce. That is, costume designers and stylists produce a musical act’s look; however, this look is meant to integrate seamlessly into the act’s persona or identity. As Janice Miller explains, ‘It is the notion of an inherent artistic character for the musician that creates, in the popular consciousness, an embedded social value for music performers’ (J. Miller 2011: 11). She continues, ‘This shapes both how they are understood by their audiences, how they understand themselves and how, as cultural figures, they relate to a variety of facets of contemporary culture, including fashion’ (2011: 11–12). When this notion of an ‘inherent artistic character’ is undermined by acknowledging that a professional image-maker created the act’s look, the cultural value of the musical act is threatened. These logics obscure from view the creative professionals who produce musical acts’ looks and the forms of expertise they draw upon in the process. As Christian Joy, costume designer for Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, noted to me within interview, ‘you think about KISS: who made KISS’s costumes? That person’s name should totally roll off your tongue, but it doesn’t because it’s KISS, and it’s almost just like KISS came down from Hell or Heaven and just kind of came’ (Joy 2016). In contrast, Senofonte is recognized for her work – a fact that changes how Lemonade can be read and interpreted. Lemonade can be understood as both a representation of Beyoncé and black female subjectivity and as a fashioned image produced through the mobilization of Senofonte’s aesthetic knowledges. In an earlier analysis of the music video for ‘Pretty Hurts’ from Beyoncé’s first visual album, Beyoncé (2016), I show how the relatively straightforward message of the video, that ‘the ideals of feminine beauty are destructive’ (Lifter 2014: 272), is visualized paradoxically. That is, two models with albinism, Diandra Forrest and Shaun Ross, ‘whose bodies are routinely “othered” within normalizing discourses on fashion and beauty’ (2014), are cast in the music video as the gatekeepers of such normative ideals. It is only by taking into account the niche fashion knowledges mobilized by the video’s director (Melina Matsoukas) and casting director (unknown to me) that one can begin to make sense of the complex way in which the video renders its feminist message. That is, to understand this casting and its impact on the video’s meaning, one must take into account the fact that models with albinism

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were (not unproblematically) on trend within fashion at the time of the video’s release and that Matsoukas and the casting director were aware of this trend. Entwistle and Slater make a related point regarding the analysis of fashion models’ ‘looks’. They argue that a model’s ‘look’ should be understood as a cultural representation and as a ‘brand’: that is, as ‘an object of calculation, something continuously worked upon, moulded, contested, performed’ (Entwistle and Slater 2012: 17). The remainder of this section explores how and with what knowledges and resources Senofonte ‘worked upon [and] moulded’ the look of Lemonade and, from this, the image of Beyoncé and black female subjectivity, more broadly. Senofonte’s career reads differently than those of the other two stylists discussed. In her own words, she was not ‘discovered’ by an established industry professional, but rather made a name for herself early on in her career. As Norma Kamali’s assistant, she explained, she had the opportunity to style, and ‘save a US Magazine cover’ for, Salt-N-Pepa ‘by running them over a look after their publicist franticly called, because they didn’t like anything the stylist had provided!’ She continued, ‘They loved the looks that I had pulled. It made it to the cover and then rest is history!’ (Lynn 2016, np). Senofonte’s ‘history’ is not widely known, however. Until the release of Beyonce’s ‘Formation’ music video, which preceded Lemonade by two months, Senofonte’s name was not included within articles about the pop stars she styled. The fact that she created looks for Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, and Ciara, among other musicians (Lynn 2016; Nikas 2016; Petrarca 2016) went largely unnoticed by the broader public throughout most of her career. In contrast, as the preceding list indicates, the pop stars with whom she worked are highly visible within popular culture. More specifically, they are highly visible African-American hip-hop, RnB and pop artists. Although Senofonte herself is not African-American, through her styling work, she has shaped the representation of black women in popular music cultures over the past twenty years. Until 2016, the questions how and with which knowledges and resources Senofonte has done this work were unasked and thus also unanswered. In contrast, the many interviews that Senfonte granted after the release of Lemonade reveal the precise fashion knowledges and the resources/ social connections within the industry that she mobilized. According to Senofonte, the visual aesthetic of Lemonade is ‘antebellumslash-Victorian-slash-modern-day’ (Carlos 2016a, np). To create this look, Senofonte worked with a team of secondary stylists and seamstresses to assemble outfits for Beyoncé and Lemonade’s large cast of mostly AfricanAmerican women.2 The resulting looks, like those fashioned by Formichetti and Ottenberg, are pieced together from contemporary designer garments, vintage pieces and unique pieces made/customized by Senofonte and her team. For example, several looks from the Italian luxury brand Gucci are included in this body of work. The pop star wears ‘Look 8 from Gucci’s SS16 collection – a vibrant red shirt and skirt’ to sink the police cruiser for the ‘Formation’ music

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video (Remsen 2016, np) and Senofonte’s favourite look from Lemonade is when Beyoncé wears a gender-bending Gucci suit to set fire to a brothel in the music video for ‘6 Inch’ (Petrarca 2016, np). Not only did Senofonte borrow from Gucci, tapping into the label’s current gender-bending aesthetic, but she also exercised a certain level of control over the label’s image by ‘go[ing] completely old school’ (Carlos 2016b, np). That is, Senofonte received clearance from the brand’s Creative Director Alessandro Michele to bring back the label’s signature monogrammed pattern to make a series of coordinated dance costumes for a sequence in ‘Formation’ (Carlos 2016b). The look had a major impact on the brand. ‘I went into the Gucci store an hour after the video was out’, Senofonte explained, ‘They told me they were getting swamped! Everyone wants the Gucci leggings!’ (2016b). Senofonte’s power to direct the aesthetic practices of fashion designers is also made visible in the work she did for the ‘Formation’ world tour. As her assistant Eyob Yohannes described in a ‘Behind the Scenes’ video posted to Beyonce.com, they presented the visual album’s concept to designers, who had the opportunity to ‘sketch in that world’ and produce tour costumes (Beyoncé 2016). Senofonte continued, ‘Beyoncé and I went through them and decided what we liked and what we didn’t like, what we could change and then sent it back to them and they re-sketched and then we decided which pieces we wanted made’ (Beyoncé 2016). Senofonte used the wide range of fashionable garments, to which she had access, to fashion black female subjectivity. As she explained, Bey was talking about going back to these plantations [to shoot scenes for ‘Formation’ and Lemonade]. There was a question of, ‘Do we do authentic vintage or is it about wearing couture on these plantations?’ And I was like, ‘It’s about wearing couture on these plantations!’ You have 50 amazing women in there and Bey was in couture Givenchy up in the tree. It’s a juxtaposition of what historically black women on a plantation were: Here they all are in couture. (Carlos 2016a: np) Monica Miller’s discussion of the black dandy’s ‘failure’ to embody an authentically black modernism during the period of the Harlem Renaissance provides a framework through which to consider Senofonte’s use of couture garments to represent historical black female subjectivity under slavery. For Miller, ‘black dandies are creatures of invention who continually and characteristically break down limiting identity markers and propose new, more fluid categories within which to constitute themselves’ (M. Miller 2009: 11). Within the Harlem Renaissance, this reconstitution was syncretic, drawing on ‘both European and African and American origins’ – a modernist project that was neither ‘authentically’ black nor a mere imitation of white modernism (Miller 2009: 178). Indeed, as Kobena Mercer writes, ‘Diaspora practices of black stylization’ are necessarily ‘syncretic’,

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as they are not only ‘responses to the racism of the dominant culture’, but they also ‘involve acts of appropriation from that same “master” culture’ (Mercer 1994: 114–115). Miller thus continues, ‘this failure to espouse or promulgate a blackness that could be packaged as “the” or “a” New Negro aesthetic is precisely that which identifies the movement as a success’ (M. Miller 2009: 180–181). In other words, it is the dandy’s syncretic identity and his racial indeterminacy – not some claim to an ‘authentic’ (and ultimately static) blackness – that makes him a figure who can challenge ‘the racism of dominant culture’. Although she does not use the term ‘syncretic’, Senofonte’s own description of the look she created across ‘Formation’, Lemonade and the Formation World Tour evokes this same sense of mixing disparate objects and aesthetics. Again, she calls it ‘antebellum-slash-Victorian-slash-modern-day’ (Carlos 2016a: np). She explains elsewhere, ‘There was a lot of African print and gold [on Beyoncé’s inspiration boards]. Royal, regal African images’ (Nikas 2016: np). This mixing of historical and contemporary references as well as African, antebellum and Victorian aesthetics is visualized in various ways across the project. In the video for ‘Sorry’, for example, Beyoncé dances on top of a school bus, surrounded by a team of dancers, all of whom (including Beyoncé) are wearing Yorubainspired face paint applied by the Nigerian artist Laolu Senbanjo (Klein 2016: np). Whereas Senofonte and her team made ‘African bodysuits’ with Victorian sleeves for the dancers, she styled Beyoncé in ‘a men’s camouflage black-andwhite Neil Barrett suit’ (Carlos 2016a: np). The looks complement one another, and Senofonte explains, ‘It was kind of weird how everything started to look the same, like, “Oh! Is this Victorian? Yes, it is!” Every print I saw I was like, “Oh this is really African, but it’s just camouflage!”’ (2016a). By developing this syncretic sartorial aesthetic, Senfonte contributed greatly to the re-framing of black female subjectivity, for which Lemonade was popularly celebrated (see, for example, Lockett, Weatherford and Peoples 2016).

Fashioning pop? Senofonte’s almost instantaneous visibility in the wake of Lemonade is exceptional. A great number of stylists and costume designers continue to labour in the shadows of the musical acts they clothe. And yet, Senofonte’s recent visibility also seems to signal a change in this status quo. There are other indicators of this change. For example, since the founding of the image-sharing social media platform Instagram in 2010, stylists and costume designers have been able to bring attention to their work, using hashtags to link themselves to the bigger creative projects of which they are a part. The website Coveteur that was founded in 2011 ‘to explore the homes and closets of global street style stars and influencers’ has raided the closets of and thus brought attention to several music stylists, including

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June Ambrose and Lysa Cooper (Coveteur 2016). June Ambrose also hosted a reality television show, Styled By June, which aired on VH1 in 2012. Finally, founded in 2012, IMVDB, The International Music Video Database, is a database of music videos, listing the creative professionals who worked on each project, including those in the costume and wardrobe departments. Through a synthesis of my analyses of Formichetti, Ottenberg and Senofonte, I want, first, to put forward an argument as to why and how the figure of the music stylist has become more visible in recent years and, second, to hypothesize about the potential effects of this visibility on future analyses of popular music. The highly visible interventions of fashion stylists Formichetti and Ottenberg into the world of popular music created a space from which to re-frame the practice of styling musicians as a form of fashion work. Through his work with Lady Gaga, Formichetti identified himself as a fashion stylist, showing how he mobilized the same skills of customization that he used in his fashion styling work within his work with the pop star. By using Rihanna’s image to produce himself as an authority of fashion, Ottenberg demonstrated that the struggle to define aesthetic value, which is the struggle that underpins the fashion industry, extends to popular music imagery, as well. What is clear within these analyses is that the fashion stylist is recognized as a fashion professional and thus a key contributor to the symbolic and material production of fashion. By entering into the realm of pop music, Formichetti and Ottenberg are extending their skills and this status to pop styling. It is through the intertwined lenses of ‘fashion work’ and ‘fashion professionals’ that Senofonte’s and other music stylists’ creative work has become visible in recent years. Accordingly, I explored the sartorial aesthetic of Lemonade as a representation of Beyoncé’s pop persona and black female subjectivity, more broadly, and also as the product of Senofonte’s professional fashion labour. Future considerations of popular music, both academic and popular, should consider its imagery along these lines: as a form of fashion work, produced through the mobilization of fashion skills and knowledges. In doing so, such analyses will explore not only how identities are produced within popular music imagery, but also the rich world of cultural production and creative labour that underpins such visual constructions. Stylists are not alone here. Rather, underpinning the imagery of popular music is the creative labour of stylists, directors, directors of photographer, hair stylists, make-up artists and casting directors, among others. These creative professionals, their interdependence and the work that they do demand further exploration.

Notes 1 Rihanna had hosted a British version of the show the preceding year on Sky Living. The British version of Styled to Rock and featured her former stylist Lysa Cooper as

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well as British designer Henry Holland and British pop star Nicola Roberts. The grand prize for the winner of the UK version of Styled to Rock was to design a costume for Rihanna to wear during her 2012 performance at London’s Wireless Festival. 2 For information on the many stylists and seamstresses who worked on the project, see Jennings (2016).

References Anderson, K. (2016), ‘Exclusive: Rihanna’s Stylist Breaks Down All Her Stunning Anti Tour Looks’, Vogue, 17 March. Available online: vogue.com (accessed 8 June 2016). Beyoncé (2016), ‘BTS: The Formation World Tour (Fashion)’, 18 July. Available online: beyonce.com (accessed 18 July 2016). Blasberg (2015), ‘Rihanna Stylist Mel Ottenberg Breaks Down His Fashion Week’, 11 September. Available online: vanityfair.com (accessed 11 July 2016). Carlos, M. (2016a), ‘Beyoncé’s Stylist Spills the Juice on the Fashion Behind Lemonade’, 25 April. Available online: vogue.com (accessed 11 July 2016). Carlos, M. (2016b), ‘Meet the Stylist behind That Beyoncé Throwback Gucci ‘Formation’ Video Look’, Vogue, 8 February. Available online: vogue.com (accessed 11 July 2016). CFDA (2011), ‘Official Video: Lady Gaga’s Acceptance Speech at the 2011 CFDA Fashion Awards’, CFDA Youtube Channel, uploaded on 7 June. Available online: youtube.com (accessed 15 July 2016). Chang, M. (2010), ‘Meet Mr. Gaga, The Stylist Nicola Formichetti’, The New York Times, 4 January. Available online: nytimes.com (accessed 11 July 2016). Cotton, C. (2000), Imperfect Beauty: The Making of Contemporary Fashion Photographs, London: V&A Publications. Coveteur (2016), ‘About.’ Available online: coveteur.com (accessed 5 October 2016). Drohan, F. (2016), ‘How Stylist Mel Ottenberg Transformed Rihanna from Sexy Singer to Fashion Force’, The Independent, 30 June. Available online: independent.ie (accessed 11 July 2016). Entwistle, J. (2009), The Aesthetic Economy of Fashion: Markets and Values in Clothing and Modelling, Oxford and New York: Berg. Entwistle, J. and D. Slater (2012), ‘Models as Brands: Critical Thinking about Bodies and Images’, in J. Entwistle and E. Wissinger (eds), Fashioning Models: Image, Text and Industry, 15–33, London and New York: Berg. Gunn, M. (2010), ‘The London Designers Defining the Look of Lady Gaga’, Evening Standard, 29 October. Available online: standard.co.uk (accessed 11 July 2016). Jennings, R. (2016), ‘Meet the Stylists behind Beyoncé’s Lemonade’, Racked, 26 April. Available online: racked.com (accessed 2 August 2016). Joy, C. (2016), Interview with Christian Joy, 5 July. Klein (2016), ‘How Nigerian Visual Artist Laolu Senbanjo Brought His Sacred Art of The Ori to Beyoncé’s “Lemonade”’, Okay Africa, 24 April. Available online: okayafrica.com (accessed 2 August 2016). Krentcil, F. (2013), ‘Stylist Mel Ottenberg Had to Coax Rihanna into Her Tom Ford Met Ball Gown’, Elle, 25 October. Available online: elle.com (accessed 11 July 2016). Lifter, R. (2014), ‘Beyoncé: The Visual Album’, International Journal of Fashion Studies 1 (2): 271–273. Lockett, D., A. Weatherford and L. Peoples (2016), ‘Beyoncé’s Lemonade and the Undeniable Power of a Black Woman’s Vulnerability’, The Cut, April 2016. Available online: nymag.com (accessed 15 June 2016).

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Lynge-Jorlén, A. (2016), ‘Editorial Styling: Between Creative Solutions and Economic Restrictions’, Fashion Practice, 8 (1): 85–97. Lynn, J. (2016), ‘Beyoncé’s Stylist Marni Senofonte Spills the Secrets of the Formation World Tour’, ASOS, 5 May. Available online: asos.com (accessed 2 August 2016). Mau, D. (2013), ‘Rihanna’s Stylist on Riri Haters and How Kanye Brought Them Together’, Fashionista, 5 March. Available online: fashionista.com (accessed 11 July 2016). McRobbie, A. (1998), British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?, London and New York: Routledge. Mercer, K. (1994), Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, London and New York: Routledge. Miller, J. (2011), Fashion and Music, Oxford and New York: Berg. Miller, M. (2009), Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Models.com (2016), ‘Mel Ottenberg.’ Available online: models.com (accessed 4 October 2016). Mort, F. (1996), Cultures of Consumption: Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth-Century Britain, London and New York: Routledge. Nikas, J. (2016), ‘Beyoncé’s Stylist on Her Boss’s Inspiration Boards, Trust and That Yeezy Two-Piece’, The New York Times, 26 April. Available online: nytimes.com (accessed 15 July 2016). Petrarca, E. (2016), ‘Beyoncé’s Stylist on the Met Gala, Lemonade, and Her Insane Instagram’, W, 5 May. Available online: wmagazine.com (accessed 2 August 2016). Reardon, B. (2010), ‘Haus of Gaga: Nicola Formichetti’, i-D, pre-fall 2010: 137. Remsen, N. (2016), ‘Meet the Super-Stylists, the Backstage Pros Changing the Way We Dress’, Financial Times, 21 April. Available online: ft.com (accessed 2 August 2016). Schneier, M. (2016), ‘Rihanna’s Style Has a Name: Mel Ottenberg’, The New York Times, 28 May 2014. Available online: nytimes.com (accessed 11 July 2016). Styled to Rock (2013a), Episode 2 ‘Kylie Minogue’s Look of the Future’, [TV programme] Bravo, 1 November. Styled to Rock (2013b), Episode 4 ‘Miley’s Sexy Night Out’, [TV programme] Bravo, 15 November. Styled to Rock (2013c), Episode 6 ‘Lighting Up Nervo’, [TV programme] Bravo, Episode 6, 27 November.

3 THE LABOUR OF FASHION BLOGGING Agnès Rocamora

Introduction Much writing has been devoted to the words and images of fashion discourse however studies investigating the work of those agents involved in the discursive construction of fashion, including stylists, makeup artists, photographers, remains scant. The present chapter attends to this neglect by focusing on the labour of fashion bloggers. The ideas presented here are part of an ongoing project on the professionalization of fashion blogging, in which I am interested in questions including: What kind of labour is blogging? How does one become a professional blogger? How can fashion blogging help us better understand the nature of work in digital culture? Some scholars have started to address the idea of professional fashion blogging (see Duffy and Hund 2015; Luvaas 2016; Pedroni 2015; Pham 2015) and I share some of their interpretations, some of which I return to in this chapter, further elaborating on some key points while also attending to other ideas and teasing out new avenues for analysis. I do this through the lens of ‘immaterial labour’, which I briefly introduce in the first part of the chapter. This notion is useful for mapping out and interrogating fashion blogging, and in particular for looking at the forces bloggers have to negotiate to go about their practice, to legitimate as well as to invent it. Indeed, as I discuss in a second part, bloggers have encountered a barrage of criticism, to which they regularly respond on their own sites. For blogs are both a platform of expression of the bloggers’ take on fashion, but also one on which they actively participate in the discursive production of fashion blogging. In the third part I look at the strategies bloggers develop to negotiate the ideals of trust and authenticity central to the logic of blogging and to their fashioning as professional or hobbyist bloggers. I then move on to the ideas of immaterial labour as free labour and then as invented labour to elaborate on the issue of bloggers’ relation to brands and the idea of commodification. I draw on a series of semi-structured interviews I have been conducting with bloggers since 2013. Twenty-six interviews took place in 2013 and 2014. In late

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2015 I started conducting follow-up interviews and had met again with eight bloggers at the time of writing this chapter. All the bloggers were based in the UK, bar one, living in Ireland. Thirty two interviews have been face-to-face; one on Skype; one on the phone. I have met with a broad range of fashion bloggers: male; female; mainstream fashion; 40+; plus-size; vintage fashion; fashion for mums. Some were very popular, others were less well known. Some were professional or in the process of becoming professional, some were hobbyists. All the interviews have been anonymized.

Immaterial labour In this chapter, I draw on Maurizio Lazzarato’s notion of immaterial labour, a notion useful for thinking through digital labour (see Cardon and Casilli 2015; Coté and Pybus 2007; de Peuter and Dyer-Witherford 2005). Lazzarato (1996) developed this concept to point to a redefinition of work in the post-industrial economy. Immaterial labour, he argues, is a defining feature of post-Taylorist production and of the skills needed in new communications technologies. It is also a type of labour that includes: ‘the activity that produces the “cultural content” of the commodity, immaterial labour involves a series of activities that are not normally recognized as “work”; in other words, the kinds of activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and, more strategically, public opinion’ (132). ‘Immaterial workers’, Lazzarato adds ‘work in advertising, fashion, marketing, television, cybernetics, and so forth’ (143). While it might be argued that fashion as a whole, defined here as a ‘field’ (Bourdieu 1993) made up of a broad range of materials, individuals, institutions and practices, might not easily be subsumed under the category of immaterial labour, the term certainly is applicable to fashion blogging. Indeed, by virtue of participating in the production of the cultural content of fashion and in their capacity as taste makers, which the marketing term ‘influencers’, used in reference to fashion bloggers, reinforces, fashion blogging can be seen as immaterial labour. It is also a form of labour, following Lazzarato (1996: 133), whereby the split ‘between author and audience’ is transcended, an idea which the notions of prosumer or pro-user captures, and fashion blogging exemplifies (see Rocamora 2012). Immaterial labour is not bound by the walls of the factory, nor is it the preserve of a small number of privileged workers. Rather it is to be found across the whole of society. Lazzarato talks about ‘mass intellectuality’, an idea fashion blogging also captures. Indeed, although many fashion bloggers have attained a high status, often correlated to financial wealth, it is an activity that has been embraced by a wide constituency of individuals, from a variety of social backgrounds, whether as a hobby, or as a possible career. This is not to

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subscribe to ‘the idealistic cyberdrool of the digerati’ Terranova (2000: 44) warns against, and deny that hierarchies inform the fashion blogosphere. Indeed, many of its successful members, such as the bloggers behind seaofshoes.com, manrepeller.com (who also both come from economically privileged families), for instance, display the hegemonic young, thin, white body still favoured by the fashion industry. Rather, it is to recognize that the fashion blogosphere is also populated by a broad constituency of social groups, including amateur bloggers many of whom are members of the ‘long tail’ of bloggers that may, or may not want to, generate profit but nevertheless blog actively. Immaterial labour also involves the investment of the personality of workers, a call to ‘become subjects’ being ‘The new slogan of Western societies’ that serves the interest of capitalism (Lazzarato 1996: 133, 134). As Hearn notes, in the post-Taylorist era ‘we see a shift from a working self, to the self as work in the form of a self-brand with reputation as its currency’ (2010: 425). Titton (2015) and Duffy and Hund (2015) have commented on the way fashion bloggers can be seen as brands involved in self-branding. Indeed brand is a term nine of my respondents used when referring to their blog or to themselves by way of their blog. In that sense too can fashion blogging be seen as immaterial labour. Lazzarato’s definition also points towards an idea that is useful for teasing out the ambivalences and tensions involved in fashion blogging while underlining the many ways through which it is approached. In the quote cited above Lazzarato refers to immaterial labour as ‘activities that are not normally recognized as work’. This begs the question, ‘activities that are not recognized as work by whom and why?’ There is, for instance, the case when it is not recognized as work by other fashion players such as fashion journalists; the case when it is not recognized as work by the bloggers themselves; or the case when it is not recognized as work by the brands and companies that work with them. Thus, when Lazzarato notes that at the start of ‘immaterial labour’ is ‘a social labour power that is independent and able to organize both its own work and its relations with business entities’ (1996: 138), what are the implications of the lack of recognition he also talks about on immaterial labour, here blogging? That is, when it comes to fashion blogging, how do bloggers organize their relation with business entities such as fashion brands? A question I turn to later in this chapter. For now, and looking at the first instance of lack of recognition of blogging, I comment on the idea of the discursive construction of fashion blogging.

The discursive construction of fashion blogging Foucault invites us to treat discourses ‘as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (1989: 49). Discourse is performative and

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has tangible consequences. It shapes ways of seeing and doing. Objects of discourse may come into existence through processes of material production but they also come to reality through the words and images (and arguably, even, the sounds) that are attached to them and produce their values and truths (see also Rocamora 2009). In that respect the blogosphere, and the fashion blogosphere in particular, cannot be seen outside of its discursive construction. This includes the statements of bloggers during the interviews I conducted. For not only are interviews invaluable in providing accounts of experiences and feelings, they are also interactions during which respondents actively construct themselves. The discursive construction of blogging also includes the words of bloggers on their own blog as well as the discourse of media commentators and scholars, on and off-line. Indeed, the emergence and development of the blogosphere has been concurrent with the proliferation of discourses on bloggers. Many are dismissive, Lovink (2008: xxiii), for instance, referring to the ‘cynical spirit of the blogosphere’. A parallel is often made between journalism, seen as authoritative and informed and blogging, depicted as unreliable and subjective (Carlson 2015). Notwithstanding the fact that journalism itself is a fairly newly invented profession and one with unclear boundaries (Carlson 2015) blogging has faced difficulties being recognized as a legitimate occupation, not least by journalists. This is true of fashion blogging, which has been greeted with much criticism, including by established fashion journalists (Rocamora 2012; Rocamora and Bartlett 2009; see also Duffy 2013). Stephanie (2013)1 says ‘people, they don’t take you seriously’. Oscar (2014) argues ‘there is some anti-blogger feelings in the industry, in the press industry’. In July 2014, mademoisellerobot.com reads: ‘About Time we Respected Fashion Bloggers.’ In 2016 Sarah acknowledges the growing legitimation of blogging in the field of the media (see Carlson 2015: 11) but also thinks that ‘not everyone really understands what we’re doing and why we’re doing it’. Among the many articles criticizing fashion bloggers, Suzy Menkes’ (2013) ‘circus of fashion’ has become well known in the blogosphere. There, she contrasts bloggers with ‘fashion pros’ and derides them as peacocks ‘gagging’ for attention. The article went viral not least due to fashion bloggers commenting on it. Fashion bloggers not only blog about fashion, they also blog about fashion blogging. Within a single textual space – a blog – blogging is both discursive practice and object of discourse; it is both occupation in the making and occupation being made by its makers through practice and discourse on the practice itself. In that respect fashion blogging is discourse and meta-discourse, and the two tightly intertwine in the bloggers’ discursive construction, and invention, of blogging. Its performativity is internal; it is naming itself into being. Thus, Menkes’ article was in turn criticized by bloggers, allowing them to become active in the discursive construction of the subject position ‘fashion blogger’. In a post entitled ‘Blog is a Dirty Word’, manrepeller.com, for instance,

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observed that ‘reducing an entire generation of sprouting professionals (the bloggers) to the perpetual black (well, actually neon) sheep of fashion just doesn’t seem very open minded’, adding, ‘Many of us couldn’t land the jobs we wanted, so we just made our own’ (Medine 2013). In September 2016 a new fashion journalists vs. bloggers row erupted following vogue.com’s (2016) dismissal of professional fashion bloggers as ‘pathetic […] girls’ with ‘borrowed outfits’ on ‘paid-for’ appearances, to which bloggers such as Susie Lau (Twitter, 26 September 2017) responded by pointing at the equally commercial nature of the ties between brands and print fashion editors. The struggle that opposes established journalists and bloggers is typical of the struggles that, following Bourdieu’s (1993) field analysis, opposes established players and newcomers in all fields of cultural production. Here the newcomers are bloggers, established players, and traditional journalists (Pedroni 2015; Rocamora 2016). Chalaby reminds us that ‘texts are weapons that agents in a struggle employ in their discursive strategies’ (1998: 65). Posts on blogging, like the statements bloggers use during the interviews I conducted with them, are weapons they employ in the discursive construction and legitimation of fashion blogging.

Strategies of authenticity Immaterial labour is labour not recognized as work, and this includes the case when bloggers themselves do not recognize blogging as work, as an active desire to blog as a hobby, and keep it separate from their main occupation. In that respect a distinction can be made between hobbyists and pro-bloggers. However, a further distinction can be made among hobbyists along the lines of monetization. Susan (2014), for instance, states ‘[blogging] is still my hobby, I haven’t looked to make it into my career, it’s something to do for fun and the benefits I get are just benefits, they’re not earnings for me’. Juliette (2013) refers to the money she makes through her blog as a ‘bonus’. Vivien (2013) is not against monetization but ‘would never expect to be paid for’ her reviews: ‘I write about companies that have never sent me anything that have never spoken to me, but I like them, so it’s not always about getting paid or getting something for free.’ Some hobbyists are opposed to monetizing their blog, a decision they explain by mobilizing the ideas of independence, honesty and trust. Julia says ‘I want to maintain the total ability to say and do as I please without somebody thinking that somebody’s paid me to do it’ (2013). Emile (2014) ‘refuse[s] to accept money’ as it ‘puts limitations on what you can write or what you can’t write’. Blogging, he argues, ‘needs to be sincere, because if it’s not then what’s the point’, while John (2014) states that: ‘I think part of me not allowing any sort of advertising is to be true to the reasons why I did it. I didn’t do it to make money’ […] if I

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monetise it […] I don’t think people would trust it as much […] I’d like to think I treat my audience with more respect than that.’ When invoking trust and honesty, the respondents are mobilizing ideas at the heart of the logic of blogging. Indeed, the success of fashion blogs is largely premised on the related notions of honesty, truth, realness and authenticity (Duffy 2013, 2015b; Luvaas 2016; Rocamora 2011a, 2012), notions that recur in the discourse on my respondents, whether hobbyists or pro. As Monica (2014) puts it: ‘I want to write as me, like how I would speak, honestly, to my friends and how we talk, not in the style of a magazine.’ The ideal of ‘authenticity’ has underpinned capitalism for decades (Guignon 2004). Boltanski and Chiapello (1999), for instance, have discussed the way it was first mobilized in discourses against consumerism in the 1960s, but was then incorporated in, and neutralized by, capitalism through its very commodification. Bloggers have been able to tap into the ideal of authenticity, and, when monetizing their blog, have participated in its further commodification. Where the hobbyists opposed to monetization can draw on this decision to adhere to and convey the ideal of authenticity, pro-bloggers have developed strategies to reinstate this principle into their practice. There are aesthetic and linguistic strategies. The former includes posting outfit pictures that are not too glossy (see also Duffy and Hund 2015 on US bloggers). In that respect the mirrors bloggers use to take outfit selfies act as signifiers of realness and authenticity. They hark back to the early days of fashion blogging (see Rocamora 2009, 2011a,b) when the practice was not yet professionalized and photographs had an amateur aesthetic. Susie Lau and Caroline Blomst, for instance, still use mirrors to take selfies (see, e.g. their 16 April 2016 and 4 March 2016 posts). With the professionalization of blogging and the concurrent construction of fashion bloggers as brands some blogs have become as lavishly glossy as traditional magazines. However, the ideal of authenticity has not disappeared from blogs. It is re-inscribed into them by way of the Instagram feeds that frequently feature on sidebars and which readers can access through hyperlinks. There, snapshots of the more mundane life of the bloggers appear, which, although edited, still inscribe them and their blog in the ordinary and the real of everyday experiences. Linguistic strategies of authenticity and realness include the use of informal language in posts (Rocamora 2011a), as well as bloggers distancing themselves, during interviews, from the idea of commercialization. When I asked Nathalie (2013), for instance, what new skills she feels she will have to learn to consolidate her blog, she says: Probably business skills. Which is sad. Why is that sad?

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I don’t know, I have always thought of it as, you know, the doe-eyed hobby, somewhere I can escape to and something I can just feed into a couple of times a week that would just keep going, but you need strategies, you need budgets […] you need like marketing and networking goals and things and it’s just so sad. This brings to mind McRobbie’s (2011) comment on the creative workers scene in Berlin. With its art of making do it is ‘seemingly non-commercial and undercapitalised’ (17). She refers to it as ‘a novel form of neo-liberalism which comes almost with apologies. As though the guys behind the bar are saying “we don’t like to have to think or act in a commercial way. We are not in this for the money, we are doing it because we find it enjoyable”’ (19). All the bloggers I interviewed also insisted, a statement they regularly voice on their blog too, that they would never post about an item they did not like. This allows them not to be perceived as a ‘sell out’, as Duffy (2015b) also observes of American bloggers. When I ask Penny (2014) how she negotiates the balance between sponsored and non-sponsored posts, for instance, she says: ‘it’s tricky sometimes, but it’s just kind of making sure that the brands you work with are brands that you actually like and the product you wear is product you’d actually spend money on. […] it’s just kind of staying true to your readership and your blog, even if there is money involved’. Another discursive strategy involves the use of ‘disclosure’ to reveal when a post has been sponsored. Much of the criticism levelled at bloggers has involved the issue of lack of transparency with regard to gifting and monetizing. As part of the ‘contemporary credibility contests’ that informs the formation of the ‘boundaries of journalism’ (Carlson and Lewis 2015) journalists have responded to the rise of citizen-journalism and the threat it is seen as representing on their profession by invoking the ideal of transparency (Carlson 2015). Transparency is seen as that which guarantees truth and trust (Carlson 2015; Hermida 2015) and, in the process, the legitimacy and seriousness of journalism, in contrast, it is suggested, with the deceptiveness of blogging. When disclosing gifts and sponsorships, bloggers in turn mobilize the ideal of transparency, aligning their practice to journalism and hereby benefiting from the symbolic capital this alignment generates. In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority – the body in charge of regulating advertising – started approaching the topic of online advertising in 2011 and has since developed codes of conducts for bloggers and YouTubers. However, the practice of disclosure is still open to interpretation and not strictly regulated, followed and enforced. In a 2015 statement ASA’s Chief Executive noted that bloggers and vloggers say ‘they need more help knowing where the line is between advertising and editorial’, adding, ‘This is not an easy line to draw’ (ASA 2015). And it is not always drawn. In 2016, for instance, The Fashion Law (2016) pointed the finger at US blogger Aimee Song for not sufficiently

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declaring her collaboration with a brand. Commenting on the feature British Beauty blogger (2016) wrote: Song is just one of many, many breaches that happen every single day. […] The ridiculous ASA rule that as long as the brand has had no influence on the post, it doesn’t need to be declared that it has been paid for needs to be changed as a matter of urgency. This anomaly is a get out of jail free card for both brand and blogger. The lack of disclosure of payment or gifting, which unclear regulations support, muddies the distinction between blogging as an unpaid hobby and blogging as work. This is compounded by the lavish pictures bloggers often post of blogging as a glamorous life, which veils the labour that goes into the blog (see Duffy and Hund 2015 on US female bloggers, but a comment true of UK bloggers too, irrespective of gender). The thin line between blogging as work and blogging as hobby is also articulated in the discourse of my respondents. Karen (2013), for instance, defines her blogging as ‘a part-time hobby’ and ‘hobby/part-time venture’. Her use of an adjective, ‘part-time’, usually mobilized in relation to work, underscores the blurring between work and hobby blogging often involves. Rose (2014) says of her blogging while at university ‘I do see it as kind of a job almost.’ Conversely, although Bill (2015) blogs ‘almost the hours one would spend on a full-time job, including weekends’, he insists that ‘I wouldn’t see myself as a professional blogger’, although, ‘In the sense of earning money, yes, I suppose I am heading that way.’ For Oscar, full-time blogging is ‘work, work, work, all the time. […] But, I’m completely happy because once you try that one thing that you actually love doing, it does not feel like work’ (2014). In its acknowledgment of the love of blogging, a love all my respondents share, Oscar’s statement is also illustrative of the ‘romance’ of work which feeds into the neo-liberal ideology of selfgovernance and ‘passionate work’ and thereby serves the interest of capitalism (see also Duffy and Hund 2015; McRobbie 2016). When not recognizing blogging as work bloggers also support the blurring of the distinction between work and leisure which, Lazzarato (1996: 138) argues, is characteristic of immaterial labour. In this context brands have been able to capitalize on the activities of bloggers by expecting them to promote their goods as a hobby, working for free, as I know discuss.

Immaterial labour and free labour Much media attention has been paid to those bloggers who, it would appear, have become multimillionaires. If there is indeed a top tier of bloggers that can

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demand high fees in exchange for their blogging there is also a ‘long tail’ of bloggers who get little or no remuneration. In the fashion blogosphere bloggers often complain about brands expecting them to work for free, a complaint my respondents also voiced (see also Duffy 2015b). Referring to the Facebook page she shares with other bloggers, Juliette says: ‘everybody’s getting a bit frustrated basically that we can’t expect bloggers to do everything for free’ (2013). Sarah states: ‘It’s a lot of experience that I’ve built up so I should be compensated. […] They think, we’re giving you something, that’s your payment. But I’m at this point where I have so many things, stuff doesn’t mean as much to me’ (2016). Furthermore, although starting a blog is relatively cheap it is not without cost. Jane (2013) explains: editors are paid a salary […] nobody pays us a salary. And so if we work with brands, you know, we’ve got to earn some money somewhere. Most of us can’t afford to do it, because even if we have our full-time job you have to pay for your camera […] line rental, web tech guy. […] there are costs, it isn’t all just free. Boltanski and Chiapello note that ‘A theory of exploitation must show that the success and strength of some actors is in fact due, at least in part, to the intervention of others, whose activity is neither recognised nor valorised’ (1999: 444). By not being recognized or valorized blogging is not remunerated. This is part of a wider context of appropriation of users’ work for free, which various scholars have commented on, not least in relation to digital work (see Bucher and Fieseler 2016). This is also where the notion of immaterial labour meets another recurring concept in scholarship on the digital economy: ‘free labor’ (Terranova 2000; see also Coté and Pybus 2007; de Peuter and DyerWitherford 2005). Drawing upon the work of Lazzarato Terranova writes that free labour is ‘about forms of labor we do not immediately recognize as such: chat, reallife stories, mailing lists, amateur newsletters, and so on’ (2000: 38). It is ‘the moment where this knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamelessly exploited’ (37). All the bloggers I interviewed mentioned how much they enjoy blogging (see also Duffy and Hund 2015 on US bloggers). This is an enjoyment, which, digital culture scholars have argued, is seen as making up for precariousness and lack of remuneration in the job market, but in doing so also serves the interest of capitalism and the neo-liberal ideology of entrepreneurship and prosumption (Duffy 2015; Duffy and Hunt 2015; Fisher 2010; Gill and Pratt 2008; Hesmondhalgh 2010; Manzerolle 2010; McRobbie 2016). Moreover, free labour is never free. When not initially or sufficiently generated through the blog, income has to be relied on elsewhere to sustain bloggers

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through everyday life and help them buy the time that goes into blogging. Bonnie (2014) would like to blog more but lacks ‘time and money’: ‘I don’t make any money from it [the blog], I want to do it much more than I do, but I have to think actually if I spend an hour doing that, I get a lovely post out of it but I’m still worrying about making money.’ Among the bloggers I interviewed some had a full-time or part-time job, some had waited for the blog to take off to leave their full-time job, some were still at university, some could also rely on their relatives, whether partner or parents, for some financial support. Discussing one’s financial situation with a stranger (which I was to all the bloggers I interviewed) is delicate, and it was not always possible for me to ascertain to what extent my respondents may have been, or may still be, dependent on the financial support of someone else for the running of their blog. However, it is clear that in the fashion blogosphere as in most fields a privileged social background can facilitate access to the economic, symbolic and social capitals (Bourdieu 1993) needed for the development of one’s enterprise. Indeed many successful fashion blogs have been created by individuals from well-off families, witness the case of top tiers fashion blogs such as manRepeller.com, seaofshoes.com or theblondsalad.com which, being led by young, white, thin and pretty women, as mentioned earlier, also conform to the traditional canons of the fashion press (see also Duffy 2015, and Duffy and Hund 2015 on US bloggers). Betty (2013) notes: if you’re putting all your time into something you need to make a living unless, you know, you’re very lucky and have a whopping great trust fund or something. But most of us don’t. But then yeah, it’s difficult because you don’t want to end up just doing paid stuff. You cannot blog for free because you cannot afford to blog for free, but also because you might be seen as compliant with the capitalistic appropriation, and exploitation, of labour as free labour, and therefore compliant in the reproduction of the structural inequality free labour feeds off. Free labour, then following Terranova, is ‘pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamelessly exploited’ (2000: 37). However elsewhere she nuances this position when writing that ‘Free labor, is not necessarily exploited labor’ (48). It is often exploited but not necessarily so. Where, following the work of scholars such as Fuchs (2011), unremunerated digital activities such as blogging might be seen as exploited labour, unless one attributes bloggers a false consciousness hardly respectful of their sense of agency, when it is the bloggers themselves who do not wish to be remunerated can one talk about exploitation? As Hesmondhalgh (2010: 277) notes ‘There has been a tendency to bandy about the phrase “free labor” as if it describes one huge, interconnected

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aspect of inequality and injustice.’ While a living wage is crucial, he insists, wages are not necessarily the only way of rewarding one’s work, and it would be a mistake to think that people who work ‘on the basis of social contribution or deferred reward’ are ‘duped by capitalism’. Rather, he observes, it would risk naturalizing ‘capitalism’s own emphasis on commodification’ (2010, 278).

Invented labour In post-Taylorist society, Lazzarato (1996) writes, ‘it is no longer a matter of finding different ways of composing or organizing already existing job functions, but of looking for new ones’ (135). Or, more exactly, of inventing new ones, as is the case with fashion blogging, for in the process of blogging, fashion bloggers have gradually invented a new career. This often takes place in improvised ways. When I ask Jenny (2013) ‘how do you acquire the necessary skills?’ She answers: ‘You kind of just make it up as you go along’, echoing the words of Karen who is ‘learning as I go along really’ and ‘Anything that I don’t know I just tend to google’ (2013). Sarah went on a business course in 2015: ‘I’m having to become more businesslike, which is a learning curve, because initially it wasn’t a business’ (2016). In 2016 Monica says of blogging: ‘I’m still trying to work it out. It’s all so new, isn’t it? […] no-one knows how it’s going to pan out. […] I think everyone has the same problem. How do you make it work. It’s a financial thing.’ There are various options for monetization, including sponsored posts, banner ads, affiliate links, brand partnerships. However, it is not necessarily the blog itself that directly generates income but the jobs that develop out of it, or are supported by it, such as styling, writing and photography for other platforms and brands, consulting on fashion or social media. In that respect the blog acts as a sort of ‘portfolio’ bloggers ‘can get work from’ as Monica (2014) puts it of her site. Although she does not directly monetize her blog, Bonnie sees it as ‘completely interwoven’ with her online business of selling vintage clothing, especially ‘now that it’s all linked to Twitter and Facebook as well’ (2014). Similarly Lucile observes that her blog ‘has been very important for getting me paid work. So people read my blog and they would ask me to write stuff for their website’ (2014). When it comes to tariffs, bloggers have had to improvise too. Laura says: ‘this is where blogging becomes very confusing in the sense that there are all these mixed rules and it’s just a very grey area’ (2014), while Penny observes: ‘knowing your value as a blogger is so tricky when there’s no-one kind of saying, this is how much you should be charging’ (2014). For Bill (2015) ‘That’s incredibly difficult [to decide how much to charge]. I’m probably starting very low and

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seeing what… I’m quoting a figure and seeing what response I get’, and for Monica (2016) deciding how to charge is ‘still a bit vague. People still think they can get something for nothing, they do’. However, fashion bloggers can draw on a range of resources to decide how to best go about their activity and make attendant decisions. The bloggers I interviewed mentioned other bloggers themselves as well as online platforms such as forums, Facebook groups, Bloglovin, Independent Fashion Bloggers (IFB), where bloggers share tips and advice, as they also do on their own blogs. Users can find anything from information on blogging equipment, photography tutorials, tips on how to start a blog or increase traffic and followers, to advice on ‘how the heck do you figure how much to charge?’ (IFB May 2014) or ‘How to negotiate as a new blogger’ (Zanita 2016). A whole market has emerged aimed at teaching ‘how to’ blog, from magazines (e.g. Blogosphere Magazine), books, workshops to online resources such as tutorials and courses, including as developed by successful fashion bloggers themselves such as Zanita with her site Azalle. The invention of blogging can be seen as an act of ‘self-regulation’ (Kennedy 2010), where the self, here, however, is not individualized but collective. It is that of the bloggers and their community – a term my respondents regularly used to refer to their peers – who exchange tips and ideas, and in the process invent their activity. The invention of blogging has itself spurned the invention of new occupations, most notably perhaps bloggers’ agents and agencies such as Socialyte, Unsigned GRP, IMA. Similarly, fashion blogging has created in its stride new job opportunities such as blogger photographer. When I interviewed them again in 2016 three of my respondents were working closely with their own photographer. Betty (2016) describes her experience: I now pay her [her photographer] kind of a retainer to do, it’s either one day a week or two days a month where we’ll do a full day, we’ll shoot a bunch of stuff. So we might shoot an editorial, two outfits, a beauty and then a restaurant, it would be in a day, so then any projects that we’re doing within that, she’ll get 20% of my fee. The presence of on and off-line resources for blogging might make it less of an unknown venture than in its early days, but my respondents regularly expressed uncertainty about the future. When I asked Oscar ‘How sustainable is it as a business, your blog?’ he says: ‘I don’t think anyone can answer that. Nobody knows what the future is, how long this is going to last. […] for all we know, [it] could just be one big bubble that may burst at any time’ (2014). Uncertainty can come with anxiety. When I ask him about his future plans, James (2013) says: ‘I don’t know. Once again, there is the scary thing with the

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blog, you never know. You never know.’ More recently Betty (2016) tells me ‘I don’t trust to have that much longevity […] none of us know what’s going to happen with it [blogging] and I don’t know where I’m going to go with it.’ Precarity and uncertainty is endemic to creative labour (see Lazzarato 1996). In the case of blogging it is compounded by the fact that it is a newly invented occupation, which, furthermore, operates in the ever shifting and rapidly spinning sphere of the World Wide Web and social media. This invention also takes place in a context of a saturated labour market. Gaining secure remunerated positions in the fashion industry in particular can be challenging. James was not able to find a permanent job and decided to develop his blog full-time. After graduation Bonnie (2014) tried ‘to do costume things’, but ‘you’re not being paid’, so she did some office work and started working for herself ‘selling things on eBay and making quite a lot of money’ alongside blogging. Monica (2014), who also freelances for women’s magazines, was motivated to start her blog in 2008, with ‘the economy completely tanking […] the freelancer stuff, it had been so precarious I thought, you know what, I’m just going to write for myself’. The blog became the ‘portfolio’ that allowed her to gain further freelance work. It is still early days in fashion blogging time. With both the field of fashion and the internet economy changing at such a rapid pace, whether the pro-bloggers I interviewed will be able to carry on sustaining themselves through their blog and build the ‘longetivity’ Betty was referring to is uncertain. As she jokingly told me at the end of the second interview, ‘we should meet again in 10 years!’

Conclusion The fashion blogosphere is in a permanent state of becoming, with new avenues for practices and monetization being consistently invented not least because of the constant creation of new social media platforms. New institutions and professions such as blogging agencies and agents are being created and participate in the transformation of the fashion blogosphere. To better understand it and the new forms of work that are emerging in digital culture interrogating the rise and establishments of such agencies as well as the ways PR and social marketing departments approach fashion bloggers would no doubt be useful. Other researchers may want to undertake this project to contribute to a better understanding of the process of fashioning professional bloggers. Yet fashion blogging must be seen as a continuum of practices where hobbyists meet pro-bloggers and where the distinction between work and leisure is not always clear-cut. Understanding fashion blogging means understanding this continuum. There, as with much digital labour, ‘hybrid relations [..] cut across the commercial and non-commercial social networks and markets’ (Banks and

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Humphreys 2008: 402), which problematizes the relation between hobbyists and pro-bloggers, as it does the equation of all free labour with exploited labour. This also points to the usefulness of fashion blogging for understanding contemporary forms of labour, and more generally, to the importance of fashion for thinking through social, cultural and economic practices.

Participants Betty was a fashion student when I interviewed her in 2013. After graduating in 2014 she became a full-time blogger (personal style). I interviewed her again in 2016. Currently active. Bill started blogging (40+ personal style) as a hobby in 2011 during his retirement while also teaching part-time. I interviewed him in 2014 and 2015. Currently active. Bonnie was selling vintage clothes online when she started blogging in 2006 while also supporting herself through ‘office work.’ Her online vintage selling took off and she carried on blogging. She lives off selling vintage clothing. Currently active. Emile is a student and has been blogging as a hobby (fashion news, designers) since 2008. Currently active. James started blogging in 2012. When I first met him he was also teaching for financial support. When I interviewed him again in 2016 his blog (personal style) had become a Limited. Currently active. Jane started blogging in 2009 as a hobby (personal style and fashion-related news). She has a PhD in bio-chemistry and was working as a lecturer when I met her. No longer blogs. Jenny is a fashion blogger (fashion industry, fashion news) and freelance fashion journalist. She started in 2007. I interviewed her in 2013 and 2016. Currently active. John works full time in a non-fashion-related company. He started blogging (menswear) as a hobby in 2010. Last post July 2016. Julia is a personal style blogger and also freelances as a fashion journalist and stylist. She started blogging in 2001. In 2016 she stopped blogging on fashion and has been blogging on travel since. Juliette started her personal style mommy blog in 2012 while working full-time as a civil engineer. Last post November 2014. Karen started blogging on second-hand fashion as a hobby in 2008. She was working part-time in a library when we met. Currently active.

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Laura started her personal style blog in 2006, aged 16. In university she started monetizing it. After graduation, in 2011, she became a full-time blogger. Currently active. Lucile started her vintage fashion and personal style blog in 2008 while being a full-time marketing copywriter. In 2009 she became freelance marketing copywriter and social media account manager. Currently active. Monica blogs (40+ fashion) professionally alongside her freelance journalism for women’s magazines and is considering being a full-time blogger. I interviewed her in 2013 and 2016. Currently active. Nathalie started her personal style blog in 2008 while in university studying graphic design. When we met in 2013 she was working freelance in web design while becoming a pro-blogger. When I interviewed her again in 2016 her blog had become a Limited. Currently active. Oscar started blogging (product news, fashion events) in 2010 while working in a production company. He lost his job and decided to ‘make a go of my blog’ (2014) and became a full-time blogger. Currently active. Penny started her personal style blog in 2010 while in sixth form. At university and working in a fashion shop her blog took off and she became a full-time blogger in 2013. Currently active. Rose was a fashion student when I met her and had started blogging in 2012. She was ‘trying to get established’ (2014) as a blogger. Currently active. Sarah started blogging in 2008 while at university studying knitwear. She then worked for two years in a fashion company while still blogging. She’s been blogging full-time since 2015. I interviewed her again in 2016. Currently active. Stephanie is part blogger part personal shopper and started her personal style blog in 2009. She was building it up as a business when we met (2013). Currently active. Susan started her plus-size personal style fashion blog in 2010 while working full-time in a non-fashion-related company. Last post July 2016. Vivien started her plus-size fashion blog (personal style) in 2012 and was working full-time in a call-centre when I met her. Last post June 2016.

Note 1 The date mentioned after a blogger’s name refers to the year of the interview.

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References ASA (2015), ‘ASA Chief Exec’s Speech to ISBA Conference’, Available online: https:// www.asa.org.uk/news/asa-chief-execs-speech-to-isba-conference.html (accessed on 3 July 2017). Banks, J.A. and S. M. Humphreys (2008), ‘The Labour of Use Co-creation’, Convergence, 14 (4): 401–418. Boltanski, L. and E. Chiapello (1999), Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard. Bucher, E. and Fieseler, C. (2016) ‘The Flow of Digital Labor’, in New Media & Society, 1-19. Bourdieu, P. (1993), The Field of Cultural Production, Cambridge: Polity Press. Cardon, D. and A. Casili (2015), Qu’est-ce que le Digital Labor? Paris: Ina. Carlson, M. (2015), ‘Introduction: The Many Boundaries of Journalism’, in M. Carlson and S. C. Lewis (eds), Boundaries of Journalism, Routledge: Kindle edition. Carlson, M. and S. C Lewis, eds (2015), Boundaries of Journalism, Routledge: Kindle edition. Chalaby, J.K. (1998), The Invention of Journalism, New York: Palgrave. Coté, M. and J. Pybus (2007), ‘Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0’, Ephemera, 7 (1): 88–106. de Peuter, G. and N. Dyer-Witherford (2005), ‘A Playful Multitude? Mobilising and Counter-Mobilising Immaterial Game Labour’. Available online: http://five .fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-024-a-playful-multitude-mobilising-and-counter-mobilising -immaterial-game-labour/ (accessed on 12 January 2014). Duffy, B.E. (2013), Remake, Remodel, University of Illinois Press: Kindle edition. Duffy, B.E. (2015a), ‘Gendering the Labor of Social Media Production’, Feminist Media Studies, 1–4. Duffy, B.E. (2015b), ‘The Romance of Work: Gender and Aspirational Labour in the Digital Culture Industries’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 1–17. Duffy, B.E. and E. Hund (2015), ‘“Having Is All” on Social Media: Entrepreneurial Femininity and Self-Branding among Fashion Bloggers’, Social Media + Society, July–December: 1–11. The Fashion Law (2016), ‘The Dirty Advertising Practices of the Industry’s Biggest Brands, Bloggers’. Available online: http://www.thefashionlaw.com/home/aimee -song-lands-500k-beauty-deal-is-likely-violating-the-ftc-act-already (accessed 26 May 2016). Fisher, E. (2010), Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age, New York: Palgrave. Foucault, M. (1989), The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Routledge. Fuchs, C. (2011), Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies, Oxon: Routledge. Gill, R. and A. Pratt (2008), ‘In the Social Factory?: Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work’, Theory Culture and Society, 25 (1): 1–30. Guignon, C. (2004), On Being Authentic, London: Routledge. Hearn, A. (2010), ‘Structuring Feeling: Web 2.0, Online Ranking and Rating, and the Digital “reputation” Economy’, Ephemera, 10 (3/4): 421–438. Hermida, A. (2015), ‘Nothing but the Truth: Redrafting the Journalistic Boundary of Verification’, in M. Carlson and S. C. Lewis (eds), Boundaries of Journalism, London: Routledge. Hesmondhalgh, D. (2010), ‘User-generated Content, free Labour and the Cultural Industries’, Ephemera, 10 (3/4): 267–284.

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Kennedy, H. (2010), ‘The Successful Self-regulation of Web Designers’, Ephemera, 10 (3/4): 374–389. Lazzarato, M. (1996), ‘Immaterial Labor’, in P. Virno and M. Hardy (eds), Radical Thought in Italy, 132–146, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lovink, G. (2008), Zero Comments, London: Routledge. Luvaas, B. (2016), Street Style, Bloomsbury: Kindle edition. Manzerolle, V. (2010), ‘Mobilizing the Audience Commodity’, Ephemera, 10 (3/4): 455–469. McRobbie, A. (2011), ‘Key Concepts for Urban Creative Industry in the UK’, in I. Elam (ed), New Creative Economy, Swedish Arts Council. Available online: http://research .gold.ac.uk/6052/ (accessed on 10 June 2016). McRobbie, A. (2016), Be Creative, Cambridge: Polity. Medine, L. (2013), ‘Blog Is a Dirty Word’. Available online: http://www.manrepeller .com/2013/02/blog-is-a-dirtyword.html (accessed on 26 August 2016). Menkes, S. (2013), ‘The Circus of Fashion’, Available online: http://tmagazine.blogs .nytimes.com/2013/02/10/the circus-of-fashion/#more-239293 (accessed on 13 February 2013). Pedroni, M. (2015), ‘“Stumbling on the Heels of my Blog”: Career, Forms of Capital and Strategies in the (Sub)Field of Fashion Bloggging’, Fashion Theory, 19 (2): 201–220. Pham, M.T. (2015), Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet, Duke University Press: Kindle edition. Rocamora, A. (2009), Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and the Media, London: IB. Tauris. Rocamora, A. (2011a), ‘Blogs Personnels de Mode: Identité, Réalité et Sociabilité dans la Culture des Apparances’, Sociologies et Sociétés, XLIII (1): 19–44. Rocamora, A. (2011b), ‘Personal Fashion Blogs: Screens and Mirrors in Digital Selfportraits’, Fashion Theory, 15 (4): 407–424. Rocamora, A. (2012), ‘Hypertextuality and Remediation in the Fashion Media’, Journalism Practice, 6 (1): 92–106. Rocamora, A. (2016), ‘Pierre Bourdieu: The Field of Fashion’, in A. Rocamora and A. Smelik (eds), Thinking through Fashion, London: I.B. Tauris. Rocamora, A. and Bartlett, D. (2009), ‘Blogs de mode: Les nouveaux espaces du discours de mode’, Sociétés, 104 (2): 105–114. Terranova, T. (2000), ‘Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy’, Social Text, 18 (2): 33–58. Titton, M. (2015), ‘Fashionable Personae’, Fashion Theory, 19 (2): 201–220. Vogue.com (2016), ‘Ciao, Milano!’ Available online: http://www.vogue.com/13483417 /milanfashion-week spring-2017-vogue-editors-chat/ (accessed on 27 September 2016).

PART TWO

NEGOTIATING

4 FASHIONING PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN THE BRITISH ADVERTISING INDUSTRY: THE WOMEN’S ADVERTISING CLUB OF LONDON, 1923–1939 Philippa Haughton

Introduction Women are an undeniable force in modern advertising (‘A Sign of the Times’ 1923) In September 1923, nineteen women who had achieved considerable success in their careers in advertising formed the Women’s Advertising Club of London (hereafter WACL). Among the women who came to the founding dinner at the Hotel Cecil were Marion Jean Lyon, the advertising manager of Punch magazine, Jessie Reynolds, who became chairman of Samson Clark advertising agency in 1925, and Florence Sangster, company secretary of W. S. Crawford’s advertising agency. WACL was created so that executive women might come together ‘to co-operate for the purpose of mutual advancement’ (‘A Sign of the Times’ 1923). The club was born from a desire by women, in advertising agencies, in the press and in firms that advertised, to support one other in their careers, and to make women visible by emphasizing the ‘valuable work’ that they did ‘in the

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many sided business of advertising’ (‘A Sign of the Times’ 1923). WACL was small, and with membership restricted to those holding executive positions, it did not represent the average woman, or indeed employee, in advertising. However, contemporaries acknowledged that the seniority of members gave the club a ‘unique authority’ (‘Women and Advertising’ 1924). Consequently, members’ writings and activities during the interwar years offer valuable insights into how elite women understood and promoted their roles as (female) professionals in advertising, as well as shedding new light on how professional values in the advertising industry were created and evolved during the period that practitioners first started seeking professional status. While advertising in Britain has a long history (Church 2000; Nevett 1982: 3–25), the desire for professional status first emerged in the early twentieth century. During this period, advertisements took up more space in newspapers with design and artwork as part of integrated publicity campaigns. Moreover, advertising became more prominent elsewhere: on billboards, public transport and in the cinema. Advertising also became increasingly valuable: national expenditure on advertising rose from an estimated £31 million in 1920 to £57 million in 1928, to £91 million by 1938 as firms tried to influence the newfound wealth of the middle classes (Clayton 2010; Kaldor and Silverman 1948: 6; Nevett 1982: 145; Stevenson and Cook 1994). Simultaneously, numbers of agents soared to meet the advertising needs of firms. In 1915, Advertising World counted 390 agencies in the United Kingdom. By 1938, the number stood at 1,041, which included a number of American firms (‘We had Ten Advertisers then’ 1938). In this crowded, growing and largely unregulated market, claiming to be professional allowed advertising agents to set themselves apart from amateurs, and in doing so, protect their financial interests and elevate their social status. It also helped in their defence against criticism that presented advertising as an unnecessary nuisance and expense, or, more seriously, as dishonest and manipulative (see Baster 1935; Braithwaite 1928; Orwell [1934] 1988). The advertising industry defined its status as a discrete occupation in 1926, with the formation of the Advertising Association (AA). In 1927, advertising agents founded the Institute of Incorporated Practitioners in Advertising (IIPA) to protect their particular professional interests. At first glance, advertising seems incompatible with the professions, as its aim to sell goods and maximize profit is at odds with professional values of service, duty and trained expertise. However, Max Rittenburg, president of the IIPA’s Professional Purposes Committee, compared his work to that of accountants and lawyers. Like advertising, he argued, these professions worked as adjuncts to business, undertaking specialized work in service to their client (Rittenburg 1934). During the 1920s and 1930s, British advertising formulated canonical literature that described

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the knowledge necessary for practitioners to render professional service: one example, R. Simmat (1935), The Principles and Practice of Advertising, runs to almost 500 pages, and includes chapters on psychology, market research, the organization of the advertising agency, advertising appeal, overseas advertising and standards of practice, as well as commentary on the intricacies of producing advertising campaigns: copywriting, layout, media and retail. Knowledge was tested by the IIPA and AA examination schemes. However, not all ‘expertly’ produced advertising was good or moral. In the absence of external regulation, the vigilance committees of the IIPA and the AA worked to identify, penalize and occasionally prosecute, those who, through dishonest practice, brought advertising into disrepute. The concerted pursuit of professional status by advertising practitioners during these years is important, because it helps to explain why advertising, once considered intrusive, became acknowledged and accepted by advertisers, consumers and the state. Significantly, women were part of this movement seeking professionalism in advertising, and WACL was an important conduit for their efforts. The work of these women challenges the assumption that professionalism, in advertising and other occupations, was the preserve of men (Nevett 1982; Nixon 2000; Perkin 1989; Reader 1966; Schwarzkopf 2008); although their struggle to succeed in large numbers confirms the relationship between the professionals and patriarchy (Witz 1992). This chapter explores how members of WACL actively negotiated the meaning of professionalism in advertising by examining how members described female practitioners; their contribution to shaping professional values and behaviours; and their networking and socializing with colleagues, both at home and abroad, in advertising and other professional occupations. In doing so, it moves beyond scholarship relating to gender and the growth of professions, which has largely been concerned with the mechanization of labour and the concurrent influx of female workers (Anderson 1988; Zimmeck 1986). Although the relationship between work and masculinity is well established (Tosh 2005), scholars have only recently paid attention to the meaning of paidwork to women or how women viewed their occupation (Fox 2012; McCarthy 2014; Seddon 2006). Where women are acknowledged in the history of advertising, focus has been on either emphasizing female ‘pioneers’ (Tadajewski 2013), or offering accounts of how exceptional women were passively integrated into ‘the institutionalized masculinity of the business world’ (Sivulka 2008; Sutton 2009: 19). It is clear, however, that women in advertising, a sector believed to be particularly suitable for women, took a much more active role in the construction of the occupation’s professional identity. From contributing to committees that set the professional standards of the industry to living lives of executive practitioners, members constructed and promoted an image of a modern

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advertising professional that included women. The fashioning of professional identity in advertising, therefore, can only be fully understood, once the views and efforts of women are included in analysis.

Fashioning the professional advertising woman As women holding executive posts in the 1920s, members of WACL were remarkable. Successful professional women in the early twentieth century were unusual because professional identity, and the roles and behaviours associated with it, was closely related to contemporary understandings of masculinity, which emphasized the duty of men to provide for their families (McKendrick 1986; Tosh 2005). The Victorian sense of the relationship between middle class work and male vocation, self-fulfilment and status was enduring; in 1934, Rittenburg spoke of professional attributes in advertising – duty, impartiality, intellectualism, trained expertise and moral value – that were interchangeable with bourgeois masculine traits. Professionalism and masculinity in advertising were further interlinked, as the industry’s professional ideals first emerged from the network of Edwardian male dining clubs in London. These organizations, among them the Aldwych Club, the Sphinx Club and the Thirty Club, reflected the affluence of men at the top of advertising, and acted as channels of status, resources and power from which women were explicitly excluded (Field 1959). A cartoon published in Advertiser’s Weekly in 1933 suggests the extent of masculine hegemony in advertising (Figure 4.1). The caricature sought to celebrate the diversity of leading practitioners by suggesting playfully that there was no ‘typical’ face in advertising. Yet, in doing so, the artist also demonstrated that the typical advertising face was, in fact, male. Equally, since professionalism was associated with the middle class male workplace, it did not sit naturally with contemporary understandings of femininity that linked women to the home. Although women entered the workplace in greater numbers during the First World War, little work was of a professional nature and jobs were temporary. The Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act (1919), together with the widespread adoption of marriage bars, meant that hopes for the transformation of job opportunities for women were frustrated. Following the First World War, the majority of women returned to the domestic sphere as housewives and mothers, conforming to gender ideologies that stressed the centrality of marriage, maternity and domesticity. Yet, amid apparent conservatism, attitudes were changing. With the vote for women won, civic and professional women’s organizations focused on promoting appropriate modes of citizenship for women (Beaumont 2000; McCarthy 2008).

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Figure 4.1 ‘What is the typical Advertising Face?’ (1933) Advertisers’ Weekly, 21 December: 406.

Historians have pointed to the emergence of new representations of femininity (Bingham 2004), new forms of leisure and youth cultures that gave rise to new aspirations among women, and new understanding of female modernity (Light

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1991). And, in the words of Alison Light, ‘even if a new commercial culture of ‘homemaking’ was conservative in assuming this to be a female sphere, it nevertheless put woman and the home, and a whole panoply of connected issues, at the centre of national life’ (1991: 10). In a workplace that privileged male success, senior advertising women used the intimate relationship between women and the home, which was increasingly central to national life, to further their careers. Following the foundation of WACL in September 1923, the advertising trade press gave executive women a platform. The articles published show women, who were expert communicators, seeking to build on the position they had already achieved, and to normalize the presence of women – and executive women – within advertising. In an interview with Advertiser’s Weekly Lady Rhondda, ‘probably the foremost business woman in Great Britain’ suggested that advertisers ‘have come to realize that they appeal chiefly to women whose needs and tastes should be best understood by women. And so today women are well to the fore in every department and branch of the advertising world’ (‘Women and Advertising’ 1924). Lyon, the newly appointed president of WACL, also claimed that ‘the presence of women as executives in our leading agencies is now a commonplace’ (Lyon 1924). Significantly, she suggested leading women had achieved their position quietly and naturally, because of their intrinsic importance to advertising: ‘No battles or revolutions have been necessary’, she wrote. ‘Our triumph has been due to the fact that in advertising women have found a calling for which they are admirably equipped, and which in its turn depends for its success very largely on them’ (1924). By emphasizing sexual difference in their presentation of women in advertising, Lyon and Rhondda drew on the social maternalist strand of Victorian feminist thought that stressed women’s innate differences from men, in order to demonstrate their particular social contribution (Michaelsen 2005: 163). Tosh (2005: 337) suggests that men also used polarized theories of sexual difference, but in order to strengthen their status, as the material improvements and political and legal gains made by women eroded relative masculine privilege in the public sphere. Thus, the invocation of sexual difference continued to be an important rhetorical device for accessing the public realm during the 1920s and 1930s. When women described new gender – and professional – roles for themselves, it is unsurprising that they did so in opposition to dominant male norms. In advertising, the idea of female practitioners’ ability to provide a woman’s point of view became a central justification for women’s careers. For instance, Ethel Wood, a member of WACL and later a women’s rights activist, argued that a woman, simply by virtue of her gender had ‘sound…intuitive, almost unconscious knowledge of the working of her own sex’ (Wood 1926: 121). This was seen an advantage when appealing to ‘whims’ of the female consumer (Dill Scott [1908] 1922). Moreover, since it was commonly believed that the female consumer did 80 per cent of shopping, writers argued that women had greater

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knowledge of both the products being sold and the psychology of shopping than men (Page 1927: 14; Wood 1926: 120). The feminine attributes denoted by the woman’s point of view assured female practitioners of their innate expertise and worth to advertising (although as women with careers, these women were far from the average housewife), yet also reassured men that women’s role was distinct from theirs. In this construction, the presence of professional women within advertising did not present a direct challenge to advertising’s masculinity. The extent of the woman’s point of view as an explanation for the employment of women in advertising is seen in an article published in Advertising World. In ‘The Inevitable Eve’ PDQ argued that: all this guff about ‘the feminine appeal’, ‘the woman’s viewpoint’ has given women in the advertising business a predominance which they have neither earned nor deserved. Perhaps we hear so much about the ‘women’s viewpoint’ because it is the only qualification they can claim which men haven’t got. (PDQ 1934) The piece expressed frustration at the prevalence of the woman’s point of view as a blanket justification for women’s alleged expertise in the industry. It suggested that some men felt uncomfortable, even threatened, by the gains that women had made in advertising in a relatively short space of time. The examples that PDQ used are also arranged to infer that women themselves were not necessarily at ease in the environment that they had come to inhabit, and that they did not always comprehend the male rules that governed professional behaviour in advertising. PDQ claimed that women did not understand the male behaviour that shaped professionalism in advertising, or how to relate, as equals, to their male colleagues. For instance, PDQ observed that the ‘innate feminine jealously’ of a female executive head ‘prevents her getting the best out of the women workers under her; towards men she has to adopt an attitude of stern disapproval of the sex in general. She never dare be ‘matey’ or treat them as equals’ (PDQ 1934). This indicates how the concept of ‘expertise’ itself was stylized, performative and gendered. While men had ready-made occupational stereotypes to fit into, PDQ’s essay suggests that women sometimes struggled to act as experts of similar status. Operating in perpetual tension with the difference emphasized by the woman’s point of view was the notion that women in advertising should be regarded by themselves and their male colleagues as equal to male practitioners. Addressing those aspiring to a career in advertising, Wood remarked, ‘having said so much about sex in advertising, in my opinion the more it is forgotten and folks judged by the quality and effectiveness of their work and not by their gender, the better’ (Wood 1926: 121). Equally, Sangster was clear that, in theory, ‘once the professional outlook is attained, the sex factor is irrelevant’ (Sangster 1936: 210).

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Sangster presented professionalism, with the objective manner and expertise that it denoted, as subsuming differences in gender. These remarks indicate how contested gender was in defining individual careers; ultimately, these women sought to be recognized by their professional achievements. By making executive women and their work in advertising more visible, WACL played a significant role in allowing women’s ‘professional outlook’ and subsequent successes to be acknowledged by their male peers. WACL was founded and operated in the context of these evolving gender relations.

WACL at the 1924 International Advertising Convention The 1924 International Advertising Convention in London was an important catalyst for the foundation of WACL. From 13 July to 17 July 1924, over 3,000 delegates assembled at the Empire Exhibition at Wembley to discuss ‘Truth in Advertising’. Among them were 300 American advertising women, to whom WACL acted as hosts. The 1924 convention was a crucial moment for the fashioning of professionalism in British advertising. Sessions enabled British and American practitioners to talk about all aspects of the theory and practice of advertising: panels ran on the markets of the British Empire, art in advertising, business forecasting by research, advertising agency service, and the application of industrial design to commercial products (‘Official Programme’ 1924). Collaboration between different national advertising industries continued at the closing ceremony when delegates adopted an ‘Advertising Creed’ of international ideals of professional practice. Although entirely symbolic, the creed signalled a commitment to (and provided a model for) professionalism in advertising. It also underlined the importance of international, and in particular transatlantic, relations to the development of professional identity in British advertising. Women’s presence at this important event was not only acknowledged, but celebrated. Lord Leverhulme observed that ‘every year a greater number of ladies were entering the profession of advertising’, and quipped that he ‘could not imagine a more vitalizing and vivifying element to be introduced into advertising than the inauguration and skill of women. (Loud applause)’ (‘Some straight talking’ 1924). As convention delegates, women could attend all general and departmental sessions, as well as participate in the entertainment and excursions that accompanied the convention’s formal program. The convention program itself included a session organized by the Federation of Women’s Advertising Clubs of the World (the American-based organization representing women’s advertising clubs). Female practitioners used the session to speak as professionals about advertising and their position within it (‘Official

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Programme’ 1924). Advertising women were not alone in using conventions and exhibitions as a platform for their interests. Clendinning points to the work of the International Council of Women at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, where the advertising convention gathered, to demonstrate how ‘organized womanhood’ used world fairs ‘to celebrate the expansion of the women’s sphere outside the home’ (Clendinning 2010: 114). The women’s session, and the luncheon which preceded it, was attended by over 400 advertising women (as opposed to delegates’ wives) (‘Women in Advertising’ 1924). Additionally, both Advertising World and Advertiser’s Weekly gave coverage to Lyon’s presidential welcome. The speech also received attention from the Daily Telegraph and The Times, suggesting broader interest in the figure of the professional woman. Lyon framed her speech in the transatlantic context, which chimed with the wider spirit of the convention: advertising’s contribution to international prosperity and peace. Drawing comparisons between working conditions in the two nations, Lyon emphasized the challenge posed by ‘tradition’, which women in the British advertising industry had fought, and were fighting, to overcome: ‘it is certainly true that we are hedged in by traditions… well-nigh impossible to break down’, she said. ‘For women, it has been a very uphill fight for recognition calling into play her finest qualities and greatest abilities. But’, she concluded hopefully and speaking to the industry at large, ‘I am proud to say that recognition has come at last’ (‘English Business Women Welcome American Sisters’ 1924). This was a different narrative to the one of effortless integration that Lyon had constructed for the trade press in the run up to the convention. Here, speaking to an audience of international women, she invited delegates to place their gender before their nationality in order to reflect on their collective struggle that could culminate in collective triumph. Lyon also acknowledged that, outside of the industry, little was known of the professional women in advertising. She recognized the ‘high positions of great responsibility’ held by British executive women, but noted that some of the most able women were also the most retiring (1924). However, in their position ‘behind the throne’, she said, advertising women were ‘a force to be reckoned with’ (1924). Lyon’s depiction of women as quiet enablers of male endeavour fitted into the masculine narrative of professionalism that placed women largely in supportive, administrative roles. Yet there was a subtle challenge, because these women undertook work of similar status to their male peers. Ultimately, Lyon suggested that women could achieve considerable power and career success by working within received masculine professional norms and playing to feminine attributes. Despite the wide coverage of Lyon’s welcome, the press ignored speeches made by women in the session itself, which denied female advertising practitioners the opportunity to speak to a wider (male) audience. Moreover, although the minutes of WACL (‘Monthly Dinner Meetings’: 12 March 1924) show

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that members made a variety of proposals for talks to contribute to the general and departmental sessions of the convention, the only women who featured as speakers beyond the women’s session were H. C. Squires, who participated in a round-table discussion about advertising clubs, and Nora Vincent Paul, who spoke on the ‘Place of an Insurance Journal in an Advertising Programme’. This suggests that while it was acceptable for women to speak about women’s experience in the industry, it was harder for them to take a leading role in general debates as advertising professionals with views beyond their gender. This being the case, WACL became a significant place for the fashioning of professional identities for women in advertising during the interwar years because the all-female membership eliminated gender as a point of difference, and enabled women to act primarily as professionals. Their behaviour, ideas and priorities offer fresh insight into how professional cultures in advertising developed.

Fashioning professionalism in advertising Following the 1924 Convention, WACL settled into a routine of dinners, committee meetings, and events, which shaped and reinforced the emerging professional culture of the advertising industry. Dinners, a club pamphlet explained, were ‘part of the club’s activities immediately visible to the outside world’ (‘The First Fifty Years’ 1973). They were a performance; an occasion where women could be seen and be recognized as professionals. Men working in advertising had been meeting over drinks and dinner at London’s high-end hotels since the turn of the twentieth century, when the first advertising clubs were founded (Field 1959). Mirroring their male peers, WACL’s monthly dinners were held in the opulent Trocadero on Piccadilly, a high-class restaurant that epitomized Edwardian dining and gentility. The convivial atmosphere of dinners gave women, who were scattered across the industry, the opportunity to meet and get to know one another; Lyon noted at the first meeting that many women had to be introduced to each other (‘A Sign of the Times’ 1923). Members were encouraged to bring guests, and occasionally men were invited to attend. This allowed women to socialize with their male colleagues, and reflected the relaxation of etiquette following the First World War that permitted greater mixing between the sexes within certain boundaries (McCarthy 2008: 532). Professionals were expected to be generous hosts and to entertain colleagues and associates: these activities were central to creating the connections and cultural capital on which professionalism rested (Laird 1998). With women excluded from membership of male societies, WACL’s monthly dinners were an important place for women to extend and maintain their social and professional networks.

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Like other professional societies, part of the ritual of WACL’s monthly dinner was an address by a ‘high calibre’ speaker. These invitations provided members with the opportunity to meet influential people, as well as bring the club and its work to their attention. Describing the dinner meetings, Sangster wrote: you might hear debates on Russia carried on by two experts of European reputation; you might hear Frank Hedges giving us the truth about the coal situation; you might hear Miss Margery Fry on Prison Reform, or you might assist at an animated discussion on the ethics of Advertising itself. (Sangster 1927: 523) Speakers were drawn from across science, politics, the arts and industry. On 7 October 1930, the Club welcomed Ernst Walls, managing director of Lever Brothers, who spoke about ‘Advertising in Hard Times’. Meanwhile, on 9 February 1932, members were addressed by Lord Leverhulme on the need for return to industrial stability (‘Monthly Dinner Meetings’). Speakers talked about pressing topical issues and provided members with the type of general information and opinion that they needed to assimilate in order to sustain claims to equality with male colleagues (Michaelsen 2005: 164). Similar to the Thirty Club, WACL issued short reports of dinners and their speakers to the trade press, meaning that although attendance at the dinners was by invitation only, the social activities of the club were known to a much wider audience. Dinners were the public side of WACL, but the club did much more to develop professionalism in advertising than host extravagant meals. Specialized knowledge is recognized by scholars as an important signifier of professionalism (Larson 1977; Witz 1992), and one of the founding aims of WACL was to ‘further the study of advertising in its several branches’ (‘A Sign of the Times’ 1923). Club minutes do not record specific research or study sessions; the club’s efforts tended to introduce audiences to existing knowledge, rather than create new knowledge. With expertise that spanned the industry, members were well placed to facilitate knowledge exchange: Sangster was a director of W. S. Crawford’s advertising agency; Lyon was publicity manager at Punch Magazine; Anne Meerloo was founder of her own agency. The club regularly organized a ‘women’s session’ at the AA’s annual convention, which heightened women’s visibility in the industry. The topic of the female consumer was enduringly popular, but members also spoke on subjects other than their gender. At the 1926 convention, Eleanor Comerford gave a paper entitled ‘100% Press Representation’, while Wood spoke on the advertising of public services. (‘Monthly Dinner Meetings’ 16 April 1926). Members sought out new audiences too. In 1932, Maude Woodyard, a managing director at Saward Baker, addressed the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries on advertising as a career for young women. By introducing young women to some of the specialized knowledge involved in advertising, Woodyard

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acted as a professional role model with potential to raise aspiration and increase the number of women who chose advertising as a field of work and study. Through their association with WACL some executive women were welcomed onto committees that made decisions concerning the identity of the industry as a whole. For instance, Lyon, as president of the club, sat on the executive committee of the 1924 International Convention. When the AA was formed in 1926 to supersede the organizing committee, the president of WACL was given an automatic place on the association’s executive. Significantly, this meant that women had a voice on the committee that set the parameters of the industry’s professional identity and the direction of its development (although it was not until 1962 that a woman, Olive Hirst, was elected to the council of the IIPA) (‘The First Fifty Years’ 1973). During the interwar years, members of WACL had a constant presence on the council of the National Advertising Benevolent Society, meaning that women directed the way that the industry cared for its vulnerable and retired members. Club members E. M. Dougall and Bee Fielding served as chair on the council in 1934 and 1938, respectively (‘The First Fifty Years’ 1973: 9). More significant still, women had input into the setting and maintenance of the industry’s professional standards. Wood chaired the AA’s Vigilance Committee in 1927, which dealt with complaints about conduct in advertising, while Woodyard and Dorothy Cornforth sat on the AA’s Education Committee, which determined the requisite knowledge for starting a career in advertising. Thus, members helped to create system that defined and certified professional expertise. In the absence of detailed minutes, it is difficult to know exactly what women contributed to these committees, or indeed whether their contributions were listened to or acted upon; although as chair, they would have had decisionmaking powers. Nevertheless, the presence of senior women on the organizing committees of the industry during this period of professional creation is important as it indicates that, in some instances, the definition of ‘professional’ was opened out to include women. While WACL was significant in enhancing the authority of its members within the context of the British advertising industry, it also gave them a means of engaging with other business and professional women at both a national and international level. Advertising was (and is) a global phenomenon, and therefore, the industry had considerable international scope. Being seen to cultivate international connections and to have knowledge of foreign, and specifically American, markets and business practice was an important part of being an advertising professional in the early decades of the twentieth century (Haughton 2015: 201–233). Having hosted female delegates at the 1924 convention, WACL established itself as the first calling-point for international women visiting London on business during the 1920s and 1930s. This meant that the club integrated into the international community of advertising women, which, when global markets were emerging again following the First World War, further enhanced

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the status of the club and its members. WACL held dinners in honour of notable foreign guests to Great Britain, including, on 26 May 1930, Mrs Valentine, ‘a wellknown journalist’ who was also a member of the League of Advertising Women of Germany (‘Monthly Dinner Meetings’). Similarly, in September 1937, minutes note that the club gave a lunch for the director and two officers of the Advertising Federation of America. Cornforth and Fielding also entertained Jadwiga Suchadolska, a representative of the Polish Propaganda and Government Travel department (‘Executive Committee Minutes’). By offering hospitality to these women, WACL benefitted from the expertise of foreign women, while also creating international connections, raising the profile of the club, and legitimizing women in business. As the Thirty Club corresponded with the ‘Poor Richard Club’, an exclusive all-male advertising club in Philadelphia, WACL corresponded regularly with its ‘sister’ organizations in the United States. Wood and Sangster undertook to ‘maintain contact with The Federation of Women’s Clubs and with the women’s representative of the AACW’, following their initial introduction at the 1924 convention (‘Monthly Dinner Meetings’ 16 November 1925). On 6 December 1926, a minute noted that the responsibility of keeping up with American correspondence would be undertaken by the President and Vice-President (1925). This correspondence was seen as a particular achievement of the Club: commemorative literature highlighted that the Club had ‘maintained contact with overseas women’s clubs of similar status, in particular those in America’ (‘The First Fifty Years’ 1973: 9). As the 1924 convention demonstrated, advertising women in the United States had a longer tradition of organization, and arguably members of WACL looked to their American counterparts for inspiration of ways in which to enhance their status. Communication by letter was reinforced by visits to the United States. Although these trips were at the expense of members’ firms rather than WACL, members used the opportunity to meet American advertising women and enjoy hospitality from their respective clubs. Accordingly, departures and returns were recorded in the club minutes. Trips aided the development of existing transatlantic networks. Beatrice Ward, for example, reported that during a visit to the United States she had ‘seen Miss Curtis (Mrs. Harold Smith) who had sent cordial greetings to the Club’ (‘Monthly Dinner Meetings’ 4 October 1926). Members of WACL also used trips to create new networks and to cement international relationships: on one occasion, club money was allotted to the president, Eunice Kidd, before a visit ‘in order that she might entertain advertising women in America’ (‘Executive Committee Minutes’ 21 February 1939). The trips provided women with the opportunity to see American advertising first hand and to appreciate the social and economic context in which it was operating. Given the interest of the British advertising industry in American methods, it was important for those in leading positions to understand these nuances.

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Travellers also had opportunity to witness American professional culture. Visits to the United States, then, enabled advertising women on their return to speak with authority about market conditions and techniques with which they had direct experience (‘Mainly Personal’ 1936). Such authority further enhanced their professional standing because it suggested expertise beyond the realm of gender and the female consumer. At home, advertising women were well represented in British professional life. This indicates that other professional women recognized advertising women as being of a similar status to them. Of the eight executive officers elected at the first AGM of the British Federation of Business and Professional Women, founded in 1934 to promote the social and economic interests of women working in business or the professions, five were leading members of the advertising industry and members of WACL: Sangster, Beatrice Ward, E. M. Dougall, Wood and Comerford (‘The First AGM’ 1934). Dame Caroline Haslett, the chair, was an engineer, while other members worked in law and teaching. Similarly, advertising women were represented in membership of the exclusive Women’s Provisional Club, which, based on the model of the all-male Rotary Club, strove to bring business and professional women of high standing together in order to ‘encourage and foster the ideal of service as the basis of all worthy enterprise’ (‘Women’s Provisional Club Constitution’ 1952). By 1938, Lyon, Rhondda, Ella Ward, Wood and Woodyard were all members, suggesting the concentration of achievement of women in the advertising industry and its associated branches, in comparison to other occupations (‘WPC Bulletin’ 1938). While the woman’s point of view partly accounted for the higher volume of women working in advertising, it was their expressed professionalism and manner that made women eligible for membership of civic-oriented organizations, and the associated social capital that membership offered. By joining these associations, advertising women acted as informal ambassadors of the advertising industry, while also reaping the personal professional benefits of knowledge and prestige that came from belonging to such networks.

Conclusion By the end of the 1930s, WACL was established both in the British advertising club scene and in the international network of women’s clubs. As a result of women’s institutionalization through WACL, executive women in advertising were a sustained presence at the top of the industry, rather than being limited to individual ‘special cases’ and personalities, as was the case in the design profession (Seddon 2006: 442). The club also gave women a voice on the executive council of the AA and other organizations, meaning that women helped to determine how professionalism in advertising was formed, codified,

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taught and regulated. Members’ influence in shaping the institutional structures of the profession should not be over-stated, however. Executive women were a minority, and professional culture – reflecting the social norms of the 1920s and 1930s – continued to privilege male success. Moreover, WACL was concerned with supporting the professional authority of women who had already achieved elite positions. It did not instigate any formal change to alter the structural mechanisms that prevented women from being appointed to executive posts. The enduring legacy of WACL is subtler, but nonetheless significant. The careers of members of WACL demonstrate that women were intimately involved in the construction of particular professional identities in advertising in its early years. By living lives of independent professionals in the 1920s and 1930s, members fashioned and projected an image of a modern professional advertising practitioner that included women. This modern practitioner was well versed in the new knowledge and techniques of advertising expertise, and was involved with and well connected within the social and professional life of the industry. Through their exceptional careers, members of WACL exemplified professionalism and began the slow process of normalizing the presence of female professionals in advertising. Women’s presence in current histories of the profession is harder to identify. By focusing exclusively on the structural and institutional developments of advertising (Nevett 1982; Nixon 2000; Schwarzkopf 2008), historians have allowed myths about the relationship between masculinity and professionalism in advertising to remain unchallenged. As a result, they are left with a narrow and somewhat traditional understanding of professionalism and professional success, which is more fixed in theory than in practice. The careers of members of WACL suggest that professional identity is richer and more nuanced than this. These women demonstrate that women also adopted and enacted professional identity and strove to be recognized by colleagues and clients as professionals. Professionalism in advertising, then, was the outcome of negotiation and, at times, antagonism between the sexes. In 1923, Advertiser’s Weekly declared that ‘women are an undeniable force in modern advertising’. By 1939, they continued to make their force felt.

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Orwell, G. ([1934] 1988), Keep the Aspidistra Flying, London: Penguin. Page, E. (1927), Careers for Girls, London: G. Allen & Unwin. PDQ (1934), ‘The Inevitable Eve’, Advertising World, August: 464. Perkin, H. (1989), The Rise of Professional Society, London: Routledge. Reader, W.J. (1966), Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth-Century England, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Rittenburg, M. (1934), ‘Address by Chairman of PPC’, History of Advertising Trust Archive (HAT), IPA/16/1/A/3, 14 July. Robinson, J. ([1933] 1969), The Economics of Imperfect Competition, London: Palgrave. Sangster, F. (1927), ‘The Woman’s Point of View’, Advertising World, February: 523. Sangster, F. (1936), ‘Advertising’, in M. Cole (ed.), The Road to Success, 197–211, London: Methuen. Schwarzkopf, S. (2008), ‘Respectable Persuaders: The Advertising Industry and British Society, 1900–1939’, Ph.D. thesis, University of London. Scott, W. ([1908] 1921), The Psychology of Advertising in Theory and Practice, Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. Seddon, J. (2006), ‘Mentioned, but Denied Significance: Women Designers and the ‘Professionalism’ of Design in Britain c. 1920–51’, Gender and History, 12 (2): 427–447. Simmat, R. (1935), The Principles and Practice of Advertising, London: Pitman & Sons. Sivulka, J. (2008), Ad Women: How They Impact What We Need, Want and Buy, New York: Prometheus Books. ‘Some Straight-talking at National Advertiser’s Dinner’ (1924), Advertiser’s Weekly, 18 July. Stevenson, J. and C. Cook (1994), Britain in the Depression: Society and Politics, 1929–1939, London: Longman. Sutton, D.H. (2009), Globalising Ideal Beauty, New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Tadajewski, M., ed. (2013), ‘Remembering Female Contributors to Marketing Theory, Thought and Practice’, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 5 (3): 260–272. Tosh, J. (2005) ‘Masculinities in an Industrializing Society: Britain, 1800–1914’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2): 330–342. ‘We had Ten Advertisers then’ (1938), Advertiser’s Weekly, 28 April: 116. Witz, A. (1992), Professions and Patriarchy, London: Routledge. ‘Women and Advertising’ (1924), Advertiser’s Weekly, 18 January: 75. ‘Women in Advertising’ (1924), Daily Telegraph, 14 July: 75. ‘Women’s Part in the Convention’ (1924), Advertising World, August, 452. ‘Women’s Provisional Club Constitution’ (1952), The Women’s Library (TWL), 5/WPV/1/1. Wood, E. (1926) ‘Advertising as a Career for a Woman’, in Modern advertising, London: Pitman & Sons. Woodyard, E. (1932), Careers for Women in Advertising, London: Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries. ‘WPC Bulletin’ (1938), The Women’s Library (TWL), 5/WPV/8/1, December. Zimmeck, M. (1986), ‘Jobs for Girls: The Expansion of Clerical Work for Women, 1850–1914’, in A. John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities: Women’s Employment in England 1800–1918, 153–177, Oxford: Oxford University.

5 SATIRICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BAUHAUS ARCHITECT IN SIMPLICISSIMUS MAGAZINE Isabel Rousset

Introduction The modern architect’s professional status occupied a contentious and unstable position within the social and political context of Germany in the late 1920s. The Bauhaus school had served as a paradigm of architectural modernism in Germany in the inter-war years of the Weimar Republic, but it always stood on shaky ground, as a socialist-leaning institution operating amid public fears over the spread of communism and the looming threat of National Socialism. Nevertheless, the school acted as a powerful stage for the image, identity, and representation of the architectural profession. In this chapter, the fashioning of the modernist Bauhaus architect is explored in the context of the heated political climate of late-Weimar Germany. The chapter’s principle focus is on the form and style of satirical critique in the Munich-based publication Simplicissimus, where the Bauhaus architect was caricatured and represented both visually and textually in the form of parody. This caricature mocked the politics of the Bauhaus and the trends of the New Objectivity (a label designating a vogue visual style that characterized typical Bauhaus clients). These representations blurred the line between perceptive cultural critiques of the paradoxes of modern architectural culture and ideological attacks against socialist cultural institutions in general, shifting to the latter as National Socialism eventually forced the Bauhaus to shut down in 1932.

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Writing in 1997, cultural theorist Stuart Hall defined representation as ‘a process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture’ (Hall 1997: 15). Hall claimed that representational codes are not fixed in the material world but are constantly changing based on the meanings society ascribes to them (1997: 25). Keeping Hall’s understanding of representation in mind, this chapter argues that the Bauhaus architect was a representational construct whereby the signs and symbols of Bauhaus culture and the New Objectivity in general became embodied in a distinct professional persona or ‘type’. In this sense, satirical representations of the Bauhaus architect in Simplicissimus did more than simply reflect pre-established ideas of professional identity in the light-hearted manner associated with satirical text but fashioned professional identity in ways that were crucial in forming the public’s perceptions of the school.

Architects: Image and Representation Upon taking leadership of the Bauhaus school in 1919 (then called the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts) architect Walter Gropius released the school’s manifesto in which he impelled architects to radically reconsider their role in society: Architects, sculptors, painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a ‘profession.’ There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. […] Let us then create a new guild of craftsmen without class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist! (Gropius 1971: 49) Written on the back of a woodcut by Lyonel Feininger titled the ‘Cathedral of Socialism’, the manifesto set out to self-consciously reject the traditional image of the architect and his elevated social status, instead favouring the identity of the anonymous craftsman to represent the modernist ideals of contemporary architecture and design.1 From The Fountainhead’s protagonist Howard Roark to ‘starchitect’ Rem Koolhaas, the traditional image of the twentieth-century architect can be summarized as the image of the individual creative (male) genius, an intellectually cultivated persona whose labour is defined by a higher calling. Jeffrey Schnapp describes the public image of the architect as a demiurge-like figure, whose individual status conceals the collaborative, anonymous and often mundane work that makes up the majority of labour within the architectural profession (Schnapp 2008: 7). Historically, this image first emerged in the nineteenth century from the École des Beaux-Arts in France, where the manufacturing of a more

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cultivated persona helped to distinguish architects from technicians, builders and, increasingly, engineers, who were perceived to be a threat to the status of the architectural profession. After many American students studied at the École, this image of the architect was exported to the United States, where the goal for architectural schools, as stated by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), was to produce ‘gentlemen of general culture with special architectural ability’ (cited in Draper 1986: 217). In late nineteenth-century Germany too, architects were beginning to seek professional status, as labourers from lower trade schools began competing with architects trained at the more elite polytechnic schools (Technische Hochschulen). While German schools aligned more with engineering than the École des Beaux-Arts (which aligned more with the fine arts) the architects graduating from these institutions were said to have understood themselves as having a unique spiritual and cultural understanding of the industrial age that set them apart from speculative builders, reflecting their interest in achieving a gentlemanly status akin to that sought by American architects (Clark 1990: 151). Throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the visual representation of the architect, in both the United States and Europe, reinforced this idealized image. The architect was regularly depicted as formally dressed (usually in a coat and/or bowtie) and accessorized with glasses and tools including a drawing triangle and compass, to identify him as an expert and ‘gentleman of general culture’. The Austrian architect Adolf Loos, who lectured and published throughout Europe in the early twentieth century on the topic of men’s clothing, style and behaviour, helped further popularize this representation of the architect (Loos [1998] 1998). While recent scholarship has challenged this dominant image by considering the woman architect and her marginalization within the architectural profession (Stratigakos 2001; Troiani 2012), this traditional, masculine image of the architect persists – as evidenced by the all-male opening panel at the 2016 Venice Biennale (Mark 2016). The image of the German architect, particularly as it emerged in the modern era, can be traced to the Deutscher Werkbund. Founded by the architect Hermann Muthesius in 1907, the Werkbund was a state-sponsored association of architects, industrialists and politicians that sought to improve design quality in order to raise the standard of German exports. Previously, architects working in both official and private capacities largely conformed to an out-of-touch academicism. The Werkbund gave architects an opportunity to take the lead in developing a radically new modern design aesthetic. The Werkbund brought all matters of design – from buildings to chairs to teaspoons – under the aegis of the architect, thus inflating his professional role and public image. In Space, Time and Architecture (1959), Sigfried Giedion argued: ‘the Werkbund witnessed a complete change in the status of the architect’ (1962: 477), who now played a central role in ‘forming the spirit of his times’ (1962: 447). There

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were two competing architects who reached a heightened status in this regard: Muthesius, and the Belgian architect Henry Van de Velde. An intense debate between Muthesius and Van de Velde was sparked at the congress of the 1914 Werkbund Cologne Exhibition. In his keynote speech at the exhibition, Muthesius promoted the values of standardized mass production, which he believed would serve not only domestic but international demand for German products. In a heated response addressed to the congress, Van de Velde proceeded to refute all of Muthesius’ points, arguing for the value of individual artistic freedom and for the creative license of the architect (1971: 30). This general uncertainty over the role of the modern architect was still felt after the establishment of the Bauhaus. In his book The Image of the Architect (1983), Andrew Saint documents various architect types throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the hero, the genius, the professional, the gentleman and the entrepreneur. Only in his chapter on the Bauhaus does a more complicated image of the architect emerge. Here, Saint argues that the conflict over professional identity at the Bauhaus was one of competing ideologies between Bauhaus masters Walter Gropius, who despite his initial call for anonymous architects, ultimately embodied the traditional image of the architect once he immigrated to the United States, and Hannes Meyer, whose socialist convictions meant that he continued to deny the elevated role of the architect. Thus, there was never a consensus within the Bauhaus of what a Bauhaus architect might look like – or whether such an architect should exist at all. However, what Saint’s analysis of professional self-representation did not reveal was the way in which the Bauhaus architect, whether such a professional existed or not, had already become an established and easily identifiable representational construct within the satirical media.

The Bauhaus Architect Five years after the Cologne exhibition, Gropius issued his Bauhaus manifesto. Gropius himself had previously been a member of the Werkbund and had aligned with Van de Velde at Cologne in defence of the architect’s creative license (Makiuika 2005: 276). However, after the First World War, he purported to reject the idea of the architect’s creative autonomy when it came to meeting the demands of mass production. During the pre-war years, industrial design, traditionally the domain of the craftsman, came under the purview of the Werkbund architect. For Gropius, the post-war era called for a reversal, in which the architect would simply be an elevated craftsman. Furthermore, he argued that the architectural profession should no longer be represented through the figure of an individual; collective spiritual elevation through collaborative, anonymous work would bring about the revolution that he wished to see. However, there

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were, as Saint argues, contradictions in Gropius’ own thinking about how architects might redefine their professional status. Saint argues that despite his socially progressive ideas, Gropius’ ‘liberal, catholic temperament’ allowed other strands of more conservative thought to emerge, including a ‘lingering fondness for the old concept of architecture as a mistress art, controlled and created by supereminent individuals and presiding over the lesser arts’ (Saint 1983:188). Moreover, Gropius’ desire to preserve these supereminent individuals, as Ray argues, was overladen with patriarchal values and conservative gender attitudes (Ray 2001). Arguably, the school never succeeded in achieving its original goal to fully assimilate the practice of architects into mechanized modes of production. As architectural and design historian Robin Schuldenfrei argues, the school ultimately designed for an elite clientele in such a way that restored the aura of the objects they produced (Schuldenfrei 2009). Indeed, Bauhaus objects, despite claims of their mass reproducibility, nonetheless remained centred on an authenticity akin to what Walter Benjamin defined in 1936 as an artwork’s aura (Benjamin [1936] 2008). Bauhaus instructors themselves feared that the development of a specific Bauhaus style and selling it to a niche, highbrow market would distract them from their social agenda (Kállai [1930] 1969: 162). By end of the 1920s, it seemed that these fears had been realized. The editor of the Bauhaus magazine, Ernst Kállai, lamented in 1930: Today everybody knows about it. Houses with lots of glass and shining metal: Bauhaus style [Bauhausstil]. The same is true of home hygiene without home atmosphere: Bauhaus style. Tubular steel armchair frames: Bauhaus style. Lamp with nickel-coated body and a disk of opaque glass as lampshade: Bauhaus style. Wallpaper patterned in cubes: Bauhaus style. No painting on the wall: Bauhaus style. Incomprehensible painting on the wall: Bauhaus style. Printing with sans-serif letters and bold rules: Bauhaus style. everything written in small letters: bauhaus style. EVERYTHING EXPRESSED IN BIG CAPITALS: BAUHAUS STYLE. ([1930] 1969: 161) By the late 1920s, the Bauhaus Style had been constructed by popular media as one branch belonging to the phenomenon of the New Objectivity. The New Objectivity was an aesthetic term related to the sobering effects of the First World War. As Janet Ward states, the movement was primarily concerned with surface culture and was not just exclusive to architecture but pervaded all areas of culture and was characterized by a ‘constructivist-realist focus’ which replaced ‘expressionism’s rough, religious warmth with smooth, logical coolness’ (Ward 2001: 9). This straightforward aesthetic could be found anywhere from a white facade to a woman’s haircut to a shop sign and was thus firmly embedded within popular culture. Its infiltration into diverse areas of cultural life made it, as Ward

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claims, ‘one of European modernism’s best-known visual codes’ (2001: 9). In addition to functioning as a visual phenomenon, the New Objectivity also had established social codes that formed a common lifestyle. A person described as sachlich (objective) not only conformed to dress and grooming codes (for sachlich women this meant masculine dress and bobbed hair) but also lived in an apartment with Bauhaus furniture and was characterized by a cold and detached sensibility. Being absorbed into a stylistic fad was precisely what the Bauhaus school had initially set out to avoid. Kállai had already observed the cooption of the Bauhaus label by architects who caught onto the New Objectivity trend: ‘the snob would like something new. Very well. There are enough architects making the Bauhaus style into a new decorative attraction’ (1969: 162). How, then, did this contradiction play out in terms of professional identity? As objects produced in the Bauhaus workshop began to sell to the elite left wing portion of society who identified with the New Objectivity, they did so not only through the functionalist aesthetic, but additionally through the sense of prestige that their producer represented. This can be understood in relation to what Karl Marx, in the first volume of Capital, defined as the process of commodity fetishization. Put simply, Marx defined commodity fetishism as occurring when social relationships become represented in the exchange value of commodities, obscuring their real use value (1976: 164). In the context of the Bauhaus, the aura of objects was heightened in relation to the elevated cultural status of those that produced them. Indeed, the Bauhaus was seen as a leading avant-garde institution whose masters and students were held in high esteem. Later, Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van de Rohe, for instance, commanded great professional prestige from his private architectural practice in this market. As Bauhaus historian Magdelina Droste notes, Bauhaus masters Marcel Brauer and Herbert Beyer both had a will to display their individual professional identities by exploiting their connection to the school, whilst rejecting the fundamental Bauhaus ethos of anonymous craftsmanship (Droste 2009). Droste employs Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus to understand this process. Bourdieu defines habitus as a series of codes created within a social structure, which become the embedded qualities, tastes and dispositions of a particular social class (1977). The habitus in which the Bauhaus object circulated was the New Objectivity, which maintained, indeed monopolized, social wealth in a class of elite consumers and elite producers.

Simplicissimus magazine This contradiction at the heart of the Bauhaus project was satirized in the pages of Simplicissimus magazine. German publisher Albert Langen and

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German illustrator Thomas Theodor Heine, who both mingled in Munich’s avant-garde circles in the late-nineteenth century, founded Simplicissimus magazine in 1895. Originally pushing the boundaries of typography and graphics in the pre-war era, employing illustrators such as Heine and Bruno Paul heavily influenced by the Art Nouveau style, the magazine gradually took on a more conservative slant after the First World War and assumed a conservative middle-class readership (Allen 1984: 209). While circulation figures for Simplicissimus reached 86,000 in 1908 (Allen 1984: 3), the popularity of the magazine declined in the post-war period as it turned into a platform for discontent with the New Objectivity trends and the social and sexual freedoms it represented (Allen 1984: 209). Simplicissimus especially viewed this trend as a sign of cultural bolshevism. Cultural bolshevism described anything considered ‘degenerate’, from modern architecture to modern music. Jewish Bolshevism was further used to distinguish particularly left-wing bourgeois trends (Miller Lane 1968: 166). Simplicissimus sought to designate the presence of novel cultural trends that were seen to undermine traditional German society. In particular, Simplicissimus used the Bauhaus architect as a symbol for a range of tendencies they considered characteristic of cultural bolshevism, including the proletarianization of worker’s housing, the disintegration of traditional domestic life, and changing women’s roles. The mocking of the New Objectivity at large was characteristic of a number of satirical publications of the era including the Munich-based journal Jugend, the Berlin-based magazines Kladderadatsch and Ulk, and later the Nazi humour magazine Die Brenessel (Eisen 2016). Oftentimes, within these publications, the only visual code necessary to indicate that the cartoon was mocking the New Objectivity and its cultural bolshevism was the presence of one of Bauhaus instructor Marcel Brauer’s steel chairs (Eisen 2016: 215). Indeed, exploiting these visual cues gave magazines such as Simplicissimus a powerful agency in shaping public attitudes. As historian Ann Taylor Allen argues, the readership of magazines like Simplicisisimus ‘often attributed to them a much more active role in the formation and spread of new attitudes, images, and stereotypes’ (1984: 5). By steering these social concerns, Simplicissimus played a role in shifting public perceptions and fashioning the professional status of the Bauhaus architect. The meaning of satire, here, then takes on a more vital role than the light-hearted nature of the cartoons might suggest. The magazine’s depiction of the Bauhaus architect as a recurrent type was used to play on and exacerbate deeply held fears about the spread of cultural bolshevism. The Bauhaus school was opened to controversy from 1926 to 1928 when the Dessau municipality commissioned the school to build a workers’ estate, which Gropius used as an opportunity to demonstrate how Bauhaus principles could be brought to the rationalization of housing production on a mass scale. The estate, characterized by white walls and flat roofs, quickly came under attack

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from the press, who claimed that the homogeneity of the houses represented a loss of individuality. The popular Hamburger Anzeiger, for example, noted that while it was possible for the Bauhaus masters to decorate their villas according to their personal style, it was unfair to push such a style onto workers who would not have time and the means to personalize their homes. The author noted on the master’s dwellings: ‘with its Russian furniture Kandinsky has decorated his house entirely differently from Gropius, whose house is a technical marvel’ and asked: ‘is this spiritual system of building and the teaching system that it embodies all that suitable for the building of estates?’ (Natonek 1926: 1). As this review in the Hamburger Anzeiger shows, the popular media was familiar with how individual Bauhaus masters decorated their own dwellings, as private realms became very public showpieces for certain Bauhaus personas. The controversy surrounding the workers’ estates was further exacerbated as Hannes Meyer took the role of Bauhaus director following Gropius’ departure. Meyer, who had deeply socialist sympathies, was quick to dispel the remains of any autonomy that may have existed under Gropius. He saw building as purely aligned with functionalist principles and practical considerations and actively fought against the formalism of the Bauhaus seen in the New Objectivity, declaring in 1930 that he ‘fought against the Bauhaus Style’ as director of the Bauhaus (Meyer [1930] 1969: 164). Meyer finished the estates and came under further public scrutiny; not only were the estate houses considered unhomely, but the homogeneous and alien character of the white-wall and flat-roof style was read as a sign of cultural bolshevism and Jewishness. In the midst of this controversy, Simplicissimus published a cartoon by the illustrator Heine in August 1927 depicting a brutish prisoner sitting on an ornate lounge, tied to the wall of an elaborately decorated prison cell (Figure 5.1). The caption reads: ‘The new Bauhaus style removes everything that distinguishes a home from a prison. In the interest of a suitable punishment, it is now required that the prison should be furnished with ornament’ (Heine 1927: 250). The connection between the apartment-cell and the proletarianization of the working class family had long been established in German society; especially in Berlin, where tenements were likened to soldiers’ barracks. Likewise, the idea of the home had long been considered an expression of the individuality of the owner and a kernel around which authentic German family life could develop (Rousset 2017). While it appeared as a light-hearted satire on the workers’ estates the cartoon certainly played on the real anxieties associated with the loss of traditional family life through prefabricated mass housing. Most of all, however, it revealed the architects’ socialist agenda as a façade concealing the reality that Bauhaus objects appealed foremost to bourgeois consumers and not to the working class, pointing to the modern paradox of the architectural profession. In later editions, Simplicissimus remained intent on exposing cultural decadence behind the façade of the New Objectivity, which can be seen in

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Figure 5.1 Thomas Theodor Heine, Simplicissimus (1927), 8 August: 250 © Thomas Theodor Heine/VG Bild-Kunst. Licensed by Viscopy, 2016.

a special issue of the magazine in 1928 entitled ‘How Do You Live?’ While continuing to take aim at the Bauhaus style, the issue also targeted a larger habitus that characterized individuals who identified with the New Objectivity movement. The issue started with a fictional story of a Simplicissimus journalist who visits a number of prominent German personalities and asks them the question: ‘How do you live?’ One such personality was the stage theatre director Erwin Piscator, a left wing radical and client of Gropius who had founded The Proletarian Theatre in Berlin during the 1920s. In a fictional response to the journalist, Piscator replied as follows: ‘in Bauhaus furniture […] you have to admit that no proletarian home could be uncomfortable’. Remarking upon a steel

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chair Piscator states: ‘this is not a chair in the common sense, but merely a human-body holder made of steel tubes and belts – just as I am merely a holder of my ideas’ (Köster 1928: 94). Behind this light-hearted mockery of the pretention of the culture of the New Objectivity lay a genuine concern over the lack of spiritual dimension that characterized architects’ personas within the Bauhaus. The special issue attempted to expose the paradoxes of an increasingly glamourized profession, as it turned to look inside a fictional architect’s home in a satirical piece entitled New Objectivity by the journalist going by the initials H.S. The journalist visits the fictional architect Benno Schwartz, the ‘pioneer of the modern apartment’, whose own house the journalist describes as ‘a symphony of steel, glass, light, functionality and hygiene’ that one usually finds in the ‘pictures in the illustrated magazines’ (H.S 1928: 102). As the two sit down and converse on elastic steel chairs, Benno Schwartz soon becomes restless and excuses himself. After an hour, the narrator goes in search of the architect, to encounter the following scene: There was another room. A proper room from yesteryear: windows with curtains and drapery, a red plush sofa with curved armrests, a vertiko which housed an unbelievable amount of knickknacks, an armchair, an embroidered doily, cushions, carpets, hide rugs, goldfish bowl – in short, a perfectly fine room. And in the chair – Benno Schwartz. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘I see that the master gets inspiration from constructing a museum of counterexample, so that there will be contrast’ – ‘Blah!’ said Benno ‘this is my living room. Everyone has to have a room in their house where they can feel comfortable’. (H.S 1928: 102) While this satire repeats the familiar joke of the uninhabitability (Unbewohnbarkeit) of the Bauhaus interior, it also, perhaps inadvertently, highlights the paradoxes of the modern architect’s path to professionalization. During this period, the illustrated magazine was becoming a new medium through which the modern architect could fashion his creative practice, blurring boundaries between professional and personal identities and personas (Colomina 1994). The figure of Benno Schwartz was likely intended to satirize the figure of Gropius, whose villa had been deemed a technical marvel by the press. In this way, the satirical piece exposed the failures and contradictions of the Bauhaus vision. Much like how the masters’ villas were constructed in the press, Benno Schwartz’ villa served as a mockery of the intellectual rationale behind the Bauhaus. The satirical piece sought to expose the superficiality of an elite bourgeois culture to which the architect now belonged, disconnected from the original utopian vision of the Bauhaus in which the architect was an anonymous craftsman concerned with giving artistic expression to the ‘spirit of the times’. In a further satirization of the uninhabitability of the Bauhaus interior, the special issue featured a cartoon by Heine (Figure 5.2), depicting a couple standing outside

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Figure 5.2 Thomas Theodor Heine, ‘Kleine Bilder’ (1928), Simplicissimus, 21 May: 103 © Thomas Theodor Heine/VG Bild-Kunst. Licensed by Viscopy, 2016.

a characteristic Bauhaus-style villa. The caption read: ‘My husband employed the first architect of modern nests to design a concrete nest for our songbirds, but the stupid animals prefer to hatch in their self-built kitsch’ (Heine 1928: 103). The masculinization of the woman and feminization of the man are conspicuous elements that allude to the cultural decadence of the new left-wing elite. They represent new social and sexual freedoms that were perceived to threaten traditional German family life. With their cold and detached demeanours they embody typically sachlich sensibilities. While the fictional architect is physically absent, he is far from anonymous; his conspicuous presence is embodied in the objects themselves. Like the presence of a steel chair or a white cube house, the Bauhaus architect was a figure interchangeable with other visual cues that signified a common habitus of the New Objectivity, a habitus that extended beyond the realm of labour to define modes of leisure, behaviour and sensibility. Heine repeated similar conventions in a later cartoon entitled ‘Objectivity!’ (Figure 5.3). The caption read: ‘Consistent with the struggle against ornament, a Dessau architect has cut off his ears and the ears of his family’ (Heine 1928: 303). The cartoon depicts a traumatized family as their ears were taken away on a servant’s plate. Whilst playing on the theme of the modern architect’s tirade against ornament – a theme popularized by Adolf Loos’s announcement that ‘ornament is crime’ (Loos [1929] 1998) – the cartoon also contains a number of elements that engage with the paradox of the architect’s professionalization (Loos [1929] 1998). Like the satire on Benno Schwartz, the cartoon brings the architect’s public persona into conflict with his private life. The site of the unfolding family drama is most likely the family house, although it resembles the coldness of a drafting room. The architect’s professional persona has overtaken his private life with damaging consequences. The cool and detached expressions that characterize the New Objectivity sensibility are replaced here with traumatized children and

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Figure 5.3 Thomas Theodor Heine, ‘Sachlichkeit!’ (1928), Simplicissimus, 10 September: 303 © Thomas Theodor Heine/VG Bild-Kunst. Licensed by Viscopy, 2016.

a screaming baby. Like all the other satirical representations of the Bauhaus architect in Simplicissimus, this cartoon sought to do more than express dislike for the modern design aesthetic that the Bauhaus school embodied – it sought to destabilize the Bauhaus architect’s professional status by associating him with the decadence of the New Objectivity. By the end of the decade, Simplicissimus continued to focus on the paradoxes of the architect’s professional identity as part of their wider critique of the leftwing politics of both modern architecture and the New Objectivity. In a 1929 cartoon entitled ‘The Architect’ (1929: 171), the caricaturist Marcel Frischmann constructed a scene much like that displayed in Heine’s bird’s nest cartoon, featuring two figures standing in front of a Bauhaus style villa – this time the

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architect and his client. The caption reads: ‘Just don’t plant anything around the house, Mr Meyer – nature lags behind, it has not yet grasped my style’ (1929: 191). Again, the satire takes aim at the pretention of the two figures in the foreground. The architect is represented in his typical bowtie and the client, in his fur coat, repeats the familiar dress of the sachlich male as depicted in the bird’s nest cartoon. Another cartoon by Marcel Frischmann appeared in a 1931 edition of Simplicissimus entitled ‘Sense of Style’, also featured an architect depicted outside a Bauhaus style villa with his client, this time, a woman. The architect wears typical architect’s clothing in a bowtie and spotted jacket. His woman client also looks much like the woman in the bird’s nest cartoon, in typically sachlich style with short hair and a masculine style coat. The caption reads: ‘Say, Mr Architect, where should my husband sleep?’ to which the architect replies: ‘If the shadow distribution of the bed does not blend organically within the room – in a hammock beside the window’ (1931: 166). By identifying the new sachlich woman as the client, the cartoon plays with anxieties associated with the increasing visibility of women within the New Objectivity, as women’s fashions became increasingly conspicuous and, likewise, their personalities bolder than the typical German Hausfraus (housewives) of the previous generation. As in the bird’s nest cartoon, the cartoon underlines anxieties felt towards the destruction of the traditional German family. The conjugal bed, the most private space in the traditional German family home, here becomes subservient to higher aesthetic ideals of the modern architect. By placing both the architect and client in the foreground, both these cartoons served to reveal the hidden social relations and class values embodied within the New Objectivity. The cartoon satirizes the stereotypes of the New Objectivity – the pretentions of the sachlich women, the destruction of family life, and foremost, the architect as individual creative genius. More than being mere representations of creative professionals, these cartoons formed powerful constructs that were themselves fashioned and helped to further alienate the Bauhaus school from the public.

Conclusion A direct and snide attack on Hannes Meyer’s leadership came in a 1930 edition of Simplicissimus, in which a writer operating under the name Katatöskr warned Meyer in a poem to ‘keep out of foolish politics’ if he wanted to keep his position at the school. Not long after the poem was published, Meyer was indeed forced to resign and Mies van der Rohe took his place, introducing a more autonomous formalist approach to arts instruction. However, as fears over the spread of cultural bolshevism reached its height as the Nazi Party came to power, the city of Dessau was forced to close the Bauhaus in 1931. The school survived for a

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short period in an abandoned telephone factory in Berlin before it was shut down permanently in 1932. A 1932 edition of the more conservative satirical publication Kladderdatsch celebrated the final closure of the Bauhaus in a sarcastic poem that captured the general moods of the public towards the Bauhaus’ demise: ‘Good Luck on your trip // power to your establishment elsewhere // in Moscow, for example, // you’ll have sympathizers there’ (Stoffel 1932: 555). Within the short period of the Bauhaus’ existence, the school incited hostile reactions from the press, which as historian Barbara Miller-Lane notes, were directed at Bauhaus politics more than they were directed at the aesthetic concerns of the school: ‘Behind the accusations which were made against the new architecture in Weimar there lay a vaguer yet more disquieting sentiment: the fear that iconoclasm in the arts must extent its effects to broader realms of the cultural and social order, disturbing, in the end, all established traditions’ (1968: 86). It was precisely this disquieting sentiment that pervaded Simplicissimus’ caricatures of the Bauhaus architect in the late Weimar period. Behind mockeries of the Bauhaus architect’s professional persona – i.e. his lifestyle, dress and choice of clientele – lay genuine concerns that, despite its relative obscurity, the style of the New Objectivity, which the Bauhaus architect represented, would slowly advance upon established traditions – an advance that only something as extreme as National Socialism could mitigate. It is difficult to criticize Simplicissimus as being complicit in Nationalist Socialism’s triumph over the Bauhaus. Their caricatures, for the most part, served as accurate reflections on the paradoxes on the Bauhaus – paradoxes which Bauhaus members like Kállai and Meyer recognized themselves. Indeed, Simplicissimus’ brand of satire would have appeared as poignant self-criticism had the magazine not shed its left-wing base in the post-First World War period. Given the precariousness of the Bauhaus institution due to constant media attacks, we must question whether Simplicissimus’ satire was as harmless as it may seem. Contemporary creative professions seem constantly defined by a will to self-represent and to be defined within a market niche, in the case of the Bauhaus, such a conspicuous representation perhaps facilitated the school’s rapid decline. This chapter has argued for the centrality of professional identity as a point of contention between progressive cultural institutions like the Bauhaus and the more conservative popular press. In the context of the satirical magazine, personas or caricatures of architects as creative professionals became articulations of cultural difference, which appeared as light-hearted parody but often contained an underlying element of suspicion and fear over the perceived threat of cultural bolshevism. In Simplicissimus, satirical representations of the Bauhaus architect indeed functioned to reveal the paradoxes within the Bauhaus concerning the architect’s professional role. In this regard, the representations bring us closer to understanding some of the failures and contradictions of the

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Bauhaus project in general. Yet, stopping our analysis at this reading would be to ignore the agency of the satirical publication and its ability to shape public attitudes. In Simplicissimus, satirical representations of the Bauhaus architect functioned not merely to reflect society but were themselves fashioned, and can be read as artefacts which display the wider cultural and political fault lines of a particular moment in this transitional period of German social history. Thus, the Bauhaus architect was a construct; but a powerful one, deeply inscribed within moral debates and social disputes concerning critical issues of gender, class, race and national identity.

Note 1 The usage of the masculine pronoun throughout indicates that, despite there being female practitioners of the Bauhaus and female architects in Germany, the traditional image of the architect, and the image that prevailed at the Bauhaus, was that of the male architect. This formed part of the satirical construct of the Bauhaus architect in Simplicissimus – although these constructs did little to actually challenge the gender norms of the Bauhaus.

References Allen, A.T. (1984), Satire and Society in Wilhelmine Germany: Kladderadatsch and Simplicissimus, 1890–1914, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Benjamin, W. (2008), ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’, in M. W. Jennings and B. Doherty (eds), The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, V. (1990), ‘The Struggle for Existence: The Professionalization of German Architects’, in G. Cocks and K. H. Jarausch (eds), German Professions, 1800–1950, 143–160, New York: Oxford University Press. Colomina, B. (1994), Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Cambridge, MA: The MIT press. Draper, J. (1986), ‘The Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Architectural Profession in the United States: The Case of John Galen Howard’, in S. Kostof (ed.), The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession, 209–237, New York: Oxford University Press. Droste, M. (2009), ‘The Bauhaus Object between Authorship and Anonymity’, in J. Saletnik and R. Schuldenfrei (eds), Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism, 205–225, London: Routledge. Eisen, M (2016), ‘Stahlrohrmöbel in der deutschen Karikatur zwischen 1928–1934’, in R. Fischer and T. Wolf (eds), Modern wohnen: Möbeldesign und Wohnkultur der Moderne, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag.

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Frischmann, M. (1929), ‘Der Architekt’, Simplicissimus, 1 July: 171. Frischmann, M. (1931), Stilgefühl, Simplicissimus, 6 July: 166. Giedion, S. (1959), Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gropius, G. ([1919] 1971), ‘Programme of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar’, in U. Conrads (ed.), Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, trans. M. Bullock, 49–53, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hall, S. (1997), ‘The Work of Representation’, in S. Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London: Sage Publications. Heine, T. (1927), ‘Simpl-Woche: Zeiterfordernisse’, Simplicissimus, 8 August: 250. Heine, T. (1928), ‘Kleine Bilder’, Simplicissimus, 21 May: 103. Heine, T. (1928), ‘Sachlichkeit’, Simplicissimus, 10 September: 303. H.S. ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’, (1928), Simplicissimus, 21 May: 102. Kállai, E. (1969), ‘Ten Years of Bauhaus’, in J. Stein (ed.), Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Köster, ‘Wie leben Sie?’ (1928), Simplicissimus, 21 May: 94. Loos, A. ([1998] 1998), ‘Men’s Fashion’, in A. Loos and A. Opel (eds), Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays, Riverside, CA: Adiadne Press. Loos, A. ([1929] 1998), ‘Ornament and Crime’, in A. Loos and A. Opel (eds), Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays, Riverside, CA: Adiadne Press. Makiuika, J. (2005), Before the Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics, and the German State, 1890–1920, New York: Cambridge University Press. Mark, L. (2016), ‘Venice Biennale Criticized for All-Male Opening Panel’, The Architects’ Journal, 31 May. Available online: https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/venicebiennale-criticised-for-all-male-opening-panel/10006981.article (accessed on 20 October 2016). Marx, K., E. Mandel, and B. Fowkes (1976), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1, London: Penguin. Meyer, H. (1969), ‘“My Expulsion from the Bauhaus”: An Open Letter to Lord Mayor Hesse of Dessau’, in J. Stein (ed.), Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Miller Lane, B. (1968), Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918–1945, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Natonek, H. (1926), ‘Das problematische Glashaus’, Hamburger Anzeiger, 6 December: 1. Rousset, I. (2017), ‘The Berlin Room’, The Journal of Architecture, 22 (7): 1202-1229 Ray, K.R. (2001), ‘Bauhaus Hausfraus: Gender formation in Design Education’, Journal of Architectural Education, 55 (2): 73–80. Saint, A. (1983), The Image of the Architect, New Haven: Yale University Press. Schnapp, J.T. (2008), ‘The Face of the Modern Architect’, Grey Room, 33: 6–25. Schuldenfrei, R. (2009), ‘The Irreproducibility of the Bauhaus Object’, in J. Saletnik and R. Schuldenfrei (eds), Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism, Oxon, London: Routledge. Stoffel. ‘Abbruch’ (1932), (Das anhaltische Ministerium beabsichtigt, das Bauhaus Dessau zu schliessen)’, Kladderadatsch, 28 August: 555. Stratigakos, D. (2001), ‘Architects in Skirts: The Public Image of Women Architects in Wilhelmine Germany’, Journal of Architectural Education, 55 (2): 90–100. Troiani, I. (2012), ‘Zaha: An Image of “The Woman Architect”’, Architectural Theory Review, 17 (2–3): 346–364.

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Van de Velde, H. ([1914] 1971), ‘Werkbund Thesis and Antithesis’, in U. Conrads (ed.), Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, trans. M. Bullock, 28–31, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ward, J. (2001), Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany, Berkeley: University of California Press.

6 THE SELF AS AN ART-WORK: PERFORMATIVE SELFREPRESENTATION IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF LEONOR FINI Andrea Kollnitz

Introduction In 1975, the Italian Surrealist painter Leonor Fini (1907–1996) published the book Le Livre de Leonor Fini. The large volume combines photographs of the artist with prints of her artworks and texts written by herself. It presents a selfconscious visual and textual manifestation of her artistic beliefs and might be seen as a self-portrait that expresses Fini’s personal identity while promoting her artist’s identity in public. As she states in the first part of the book: When I was a child, I hated to be photographed. I ran away. […] By and by I became more interested in having a face: a confirmation of my existence. From mirrors I went on to photographs. Since then I’ve always been photographed: in costume, disguised, in daily life. But I don’t like snapshots, nothing is more false than trying to capture the ‘natural’. The ‘pose’ is revealing, and I’m curious and amused to see my multiplicity – which I am well aware of – confirmed by those images. People tell me: ‘You should have been an actress.’ No – I am only interested in the inevitable theatricality of life. (Fini 1975: 32) This recollection introduces Leonor Fini’s lifelong awareness of her own image and emphasizes four key notions in her artistic self-fashioning that contributed to her creating, performing and promoting herself as a unique artist

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with a conspicuous appearance: First, her fascination with her own face, its expressions and its manifestation of herself and her multifaceted personality. Second, her obsession with seeing herself in mirrors and being photographed as practices closely related in their reflection of her ‘self’. Third, her belief in consciously staged and posed self-representations as more true, authentic and legitimate than casually conceived snapshots. And finally, the pleasure and curiosity she felt when dressing up in costumes and disguising to perform the role of herself – not enacting prescribed and externally constructed roles, like an actress, but rather embracing and playing out what she calls her own multiplicity, while claiming theatricality to be an inevitable and inherent characteristic of life. A theatrical life that she was keen on publicly displaying and performing as a part of her professional self-construction as an artist. Fini’s practices of self-performance will be the focus of this chapter which opens up new perspectives on artistic self-fashioning through costume and dress in connection with photographic self-representation. Born in 1907 in Argentina, growing up in Northern Italy and later living mainly in Paris, Leonor Fini gained an international reputation as a skilled portraitist and Surrealist artist while also working as a costume designer in close alignment to the fashion world. Simultaneously she became a much-photographed icon of beauty, famous for her numerous costumed, theatrically styled and spectacular public appearances (see Webb 2009). Fini’s work and life can be seen as permeated by practices of role-playing and self-performance, explored through experimentation with dress, fashion, costumes and masks. These creative practices and the multiplicity of personas staged by Fini were represented and documented in an abundance of photographic portraits.1 They range from intimate shots taken by friends to Surrealist artistic experiments, from images conceived in the professional studios of fashion and society photographers to the press photographs taken at costume balls and on numerous other occasions. Fini was photographed by a wide variety of well-known photographers, including Man Ray, Henri CartierBresson, Erwin Blumenfeld, Lee Miller, Dora Maar, Horst P. Horst, George PlattLynes, Cecil Beaton and Peter Rose Pulham. Leonor Fini may be understood as an artist who consciously made her life and personal appearance an artwork. Her case raises questions about fashion, costume and self-styling as creative expression, social provocation and transgression and as part of an overall artistically charged lifestyle where the creation of artworks is fused with and extended towards the creation of a visually constructed image of the artist and her personal identity. Claiming an affinity of Fini’s self-representative strategies with social and aesthetic ideologies that emerged during the sixteenth century, as well as to modern and postmodern strategies of artistic self-promotion, this discussion sheds light on the importance of personal appearance as part of an artistic persona and artistic professional identity. Finally, it considers how Fini’s practices were

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intrinsic for her personal strategies of female empowerment within the male dominated art world of the early to mid-twentieth century.

Fashioning the (woman) artist As I argue, Leonor Fini’s artistic self-creation through dress and photographic depictions is in line with practices conducted during the Renaissance or more specific in Mannerism. Mannerism was Fini’s strongest source of inspiration in her painting as well as in her view of her own artist’s role (Webb 2009: 16). A later development of Renaissance art, it implies a period of conscious self-fashioning whereby the artist conceived him/herself, his/her looks, manners and life-style as an expansion of his/her artwork. The predominantly male renaissance artist was highly aware of and consciously engaged in the creation of a publicly visible persona (Cornell 2000; Sousloff 1997; Woods-Marsden 1998: 13–17). Fashionable and refined appearance and/or ‘dressing-up’ thus became a substantial part of the artists’ self-display in self-portraits, Albrecht Dürer being one early well-known example. Fini’s practices are furthermore in line with modernist strategies constructing the avant-garde artist. During the nineteenth century, the public persona of the artist can be seen to grow in significance and move beyond its display in selfportraiture, not least in the conscious self-distinction of the bohemian outsider on the urban bourgeois stage of late nineteenth-century Paris and other metropolises. The early-twentieth-century art world celebrated the so-called originality and autonomy of the avant-garde artist through not only exhibiting revolutionary artistic styles but also through a focus on the artist’s figure and persona in terms of looks and fashionable appearance (Wilson 2009: 28–49). Modernist artists expressed and staged their artistic beliefs in their own apparel and by designing garments as part of their ambition to let life and art fuse in the notion of the total artwork or Gesamtkunstwerk. They gained visibility through photographic images as well as their showing-off in conspicuous outfits in public spaces (Kollnitz 2014: 55–59). Fashion became an important part of creative production within movements such as Futurism, Simultanism and Constructivism and the Surrealist movement in particular celebrated fashion for its fetishist connotations associated with ideals of beauty and the form of the female body. Fashion and costume permeated Surrealist artistic practices also as playful and imaginative objects in role-plays and extravagant public performances where conspicuous sartorial styles contributed to artistic self-promotion. Thus Salvador Dalí who proclaimed the studio of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli to be at the centre of Parisian Surrealist activities, worked collaboratively with her fashion house, while devotedly promoting his own personal signature look, using characteristic apparel and an iconic moustache.

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Yet, Surrealism was a largely male-dominated movement and the role of its female representatives in connection with their visual appearance was far from uncomplicated. Fini and other female artists associated with Surrealism struggled with the conservative, objectifying views still held by their male artist partners (Chadwick 85: 7). As Whitney Chadwick states, female artists related to Surrealism were reluctant to identify with the movement itself given that it was dominated by André Breton’s theoretical and objectifying approach to women as either femmes-enfants or femmes fatales (Chadwick 1985: 33). Both of these notions deny or weaken the female artist’s subjectivity and agency in order to use and adore her as mainly an object of desire and artistic inspiration. Elizabeth Wilson also points out that female bohemians ‘were redefined in essentially traditional terms – as erotic beings; for the male bohemian, women were more likely to represent the ‘Other’, a mysterious country to be explored […] Their beauty, while it lasted, was to be celebrated in works of art created by men […]’ (Wilson 2009: 98). Thus, even though artists such as Leonora Carrington, Meret Oppenheim and Leonor Fini were in sexual relationships with male Surrealists and were celebrated for their consciously staged beauty, they chose to keep some distance from the movement in an emancipatory gesture towards autonomy as women and as women artists. Not least Fini openly claimed her independence from the Surrealist movement in her refusal to participate in what she saw as a male-dominated collective, while at the same time celebrating her personal appearance as part of a demonstratively autonomous lifestyle. Striving to be foremost an artist, she rejected traditional female expectations such as marriage and children which made her an unusually independent woman, especially during the gender-conservative period of the 1940s and 1950s and in Catholic Italy and France. Fini’s outsider position combined with her celebrated appearance and visibility in international media has, arguably, contributed to her somewhat diminished visibility in art-historical research. As international media discourse on Fini shows, her personal looks often tended to attract more interest than her artworks thereby overshadowing the important interactivity between her artworks and personal appearances.2 Placed in this historical context Fini’s self-fashioning practices may be interpreted as combining Renaissance and Mannerist strategies of consciously creating the artist’s visual and public persona as an artwork, with the imaginative Surrealist uses of fashion and costume as a way of transformation and experimentation with personal identity and practices of spectacular and provocative public performances not far from todays’ self-performative celebrity culture. The creation of her personal and public persona, the fashioning of her personal and professional identities, must be seen as strongly interconnected in a conscious attempt to transgress artistic genres as well as fixed identities and roles not least based on gender hierarchies within the art world. Following the argument above, my analysis discusses Fini’s self-representative practices

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Figure 6.1 Fini, Leonor (1975) avec la collaboration de José Alvarez, Le Livre de Leonor Fini, Paris: Editions Mermoud-Clairefontaine Vilo Paris, page 33. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini.

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within a theoretical framework that draws upon Renaissance self-fashioning as well as gender performativity, thus shedding light on her strategies of claiming space and promoting herself as a female artist while experimenting with her selfexpression.

The creativity of dressing-up Thousands of photographic images from the 1930s to the 1980s show Fini in a range of different, often spectacular attires framing her face with its serious, rarely smiling expression and large dark eyes with a self-assured sometimes almost threatening gaze. An image that summarizes this multifaceted self-imagination is the illustration placed next to Fini’s initially quoted statement in Le Livre de Leonor Fini that presents a collage of numerous facial portraits showing Fini in different apparels, styles and roles, from nineteenth-century ladies to animals and sorceresses (Figure 6.1). I will first consider Fini’s pictorial stagings in light of her textual self-declarations. While providing a basic theoretical understanding of Fini’s self-imagination in relation to her artistic identity, they also represent a consciously formulated part of her public self-promotion as a transgressive and powerful woman artist that refuses to follow the rules and fit into fixed roles. One of the main expressions Fini is known for is her embrace of all kinds of animal characteristics, visually as well as psychologically. Creating feather headdresses and costumes, feline masks, with horns and animal skulls from the early 1940s onward, she continually transformed herself into owls, lions, unicorns, but most of all into feline cat-like creatures, cats being the animal that she admired the most as being essentially beautiful, but also utterly independent (Fini 1975: 88–97). Such a combination of beauty with powerful integrity is visualized in an iconic picture by André Ostier that shows Fini wearing a lion mask for the Bal de la Violette in 1948 (Figure 6.2). Apart from her public appearances in costumes which were mostly designed by herself but also by such star designers as Elsa Schiaparelli and Simonetta, what established Fini as an icon and celebrity in the international press, were the beautiful portrait-photographs taken in order to introduce the costumed and meticulously styled artist to the public, in the international media and also in her own personal collection of visual memories. Pictures as the portrait of Fini in lion costume were conceived as isolated fashion portraits, not taken in the ballroom where the crowd would have distracted from the extravagance of Fini’s unique appearance. Emerging from the mesmerizing photograph by André Ostier there is a sense of danger, as well as a more seductive appeal. With her head slightly tilted backwards, looking at the spectator from a three quarter profile position, her eyes appear soft and seductive, partly covered and, yet, emphasized by the velvety mask with its wide almond-shaped catlike eye-openings, Fini performs a

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Figure 6.2 André Ostier, Leonor Fini wearing a costume for the Bal de Violette, Paris 1948. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini.

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powerful animal as well as a wish to enchant. Her wish to attract and to fascinate is reinforced by the softness of her lips, moulded through the chiaroscuro of the photographic composition and the viewer is further seduced by her naked shoulders and arms that are surrounded by a transparent tulle veil. Her open hands with outspread fingers cover her chest and thereby emphasize its beautiful shape. Explaining her fascination for animals, Fini writes: I have always thought that the human attributes are quite reduced, quite limited. I have envied beasts their hard claws, their resounding hooves, their sparkling phosphorescent shells, their thick coats, especially their horns. Horns, which allow such pretty movements of the head: they give strange allure, dignity, exaltation, aggressiveness if necessary […] (Fini 1975: 44) Fini’s attraction to animal-features seems thus connected to their beauty as well as to their power and ‘aggressiveness’ – providing protection ‘if necessary’. Her taking the shape of an animal may be interpreted as an act of aesthetic rebellion. According to Fini’s childhood friends, her wish to dress up and wear costumes was early on linked to acts of rebellion against all kinds of authority (Webb 2009: 15) and rebellion through dress was to become one of Leonor Fini’s strategies in building her public artistic persona as opposed to prevailing rules of society and in the art world. She further states: To dress up gives me the feeling of another dimension, another species and space. One can feel like a giant, dive into the underworld, become an animal, until one feels invulnerable and timeless, a part of forgotten rituals. (Fini 1975: 41) Costume and dress in Fini’s life and artistic production thus offer shelter, and lead into transgression and alternative space, a space free from the impact of the outside world, a space of becoming. According to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari ‘becoming animal’ leads to a ‘nomadic mode of existence’ where one is ‘inaccessible to any form of definition’ achieving the freedom of ‘non-identity’ (Bruns 2007:703). Likewise dressing up as an animal serves Fini’s liberation from constricted roles. As another important aspect of dressing up Fini emphasizes the following: To put on a costume, to dress up is an act of creativity. […] It means inventing oneself, changing, making apparent the mutability and multiplicity which one can feel inside. It is one or several representations of oneself, it is a creative expression in the raw. […] The act of dressing up is multiple narcissism as you enter other images and still become your own show, but even more fascinating, because while entering a sort of trance you still know that you

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are yourself underneath. These states also provoke a flamboyant isolation, but at the same time a state of non-life, because you sometimes feel that you forget the world that surrounds you. It is a proud ecstasy which some might call negative and repellent. (Fini 1975: 41) The quotation shows that except opening up a way into freedom, transgression and non-life (or what Deleuze and Guattari call non-identity) (cited in Bruns 2007: 703), becoming something else is also strongly connected to Fini’s urge for allembracing creativity. She formulates artistic creation and self-creation as being part of the same process; in this way artistic creativity is directly connected to forms of visual self-invention. Fini creates herself as an image, first in terms of her costume and styling, then in terms of a skilfully staged photograph to be shown to the world. Recalling the artistic beliefs and life-styles of Renaissance artists she sees her own body and the image of herself as a natural expansion of her artworks. Both of them are to express her innermost personality while at the same time making a strong impression on the outside world (Woods-Marsden 1998). As will be exemplified below, there are numerous examples of costumes depicted in Fini’s paintings that actually existed and were used in her real-life performances and photographic representations. Fini’s notion of a total creativity merging life and art in her own body is further strongly connected with her awareness of being seen and striving to gain strong visibility as an artist and personality which is confirmed by the following significant declaration: I have always loved – and lived – my own theatre… To dress up, to crossdress, is an act of creativity… The opportunity of dressing up was the only reason why I went to costume balls at the time when they were at their peak just after the war. The real excitement for me was preparing my costume. I used to arrive late, about midnight, lightheaded with joy at being a royal owl, a large grey lion, the queen of the underworld. I only looked in mirrors (there were always plenty, fortunately, in those large houses) and after an hour or two, having gazed long enough at my reflection, I would say to my friends: ‘Enough, let’s go.’ (Webb 2009: 121) The artist pronounces her own theatricality as a creative practice, fusing life and art. Her description of her own costuming practice can be compared to an artist’s description of the creative process. As discussed earlier this discourse emerges during the Renaissance, a cultural period where art and fashion were closely collaborating in their performance and empowerment of the self-conscious individual. According to Christopher Breward, one of the principal aspects of sixteenth-century fashion is its rhetoric of power and rich symbolism performing

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status and displaying a chosen and constructed version of self-identity. Thus the Renaissance writer Baldassare Castiglione describes the Italian courtier’s awareness of his own appearance: [The courtier] is always aware of an audience, admiring, criticizing and judging him; and he is expected to fashion himself like a work of art, arranging his good qualities to maximum effect, as skilful painters ‘with a shadow make the lights of high places to appear’. (Castiglione cited in Breward 1995: 62f) Castiglione’s work, together with works on mannerism, was among the favourite readings of Leonor Fini (Archive, Overstreet). Marked and underlined passages in the book La Peinture Maniériste. Idés et calendes (1964) by Jacques Bousquet show how Fini embraced the notion of the mannerist artist as a creator not only using a mannerist painterly style, but styling himself through exquisite manners and fashions. What Castiglione describes as the proper behaviour and fashioning of a courtier and aristocrat is used even by the self-aware artist (Woods-Marsden 1998: 17). As Bousquet writes in a sentence, highlighted by Fini, by creating himself as a ‘gentleman’, that is an aristocrat, in a perfect visual appearance, the artist raises himself into a half-god’s position (Bousquet 1964: 68). Accordingly, Leonor Fini can be said to have created an artwork of herself each time she attended a ball. An artwork whose purpose it was to be seen, that is, skilfully created, arranged and performed in order to dazzle the spectator: an expression of creativity, beyond a purely theatrical ambition to play a convincing role. This accomplished artwork of the costumed self emerges from a creative manifestation focusing on and expressing the self, while at the same time transgressing and expanding it: an action, well prepared and consciously finished, when the attention of the audience is about to fade away and the narcissistic pleasure of enjoying the mirror reflection decreases. Consequentially the act of dressing up that permeated Fini’s life and is visible in practically every area of her artistic production must be seen as a key element in her artistic practice.3 It shows the connection between artistic self-fashioning as on one hand contributing to an expressive Gesamtkunstwerk and on the other creating and promoting the artist and her professional identity in the eyes of the audience. Leonor Fini’s self-creation in artistic terms may be seen as closely linked to her performative self-distinction in social contexts recurringly documented in photographic representations.

Staging the ‘outstanding’ woman artist In her book Gender Trouble Judith Butler claims that ‘gender proves to be performance – that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense,

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gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed’ (Butler 1990: 25). Furthermore, in her critique of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories on the social use of language Judith Butler asks the question: ‘If the performative must compel collective recognition in order to work, must it compel only those kinds of recognition that are already institutionalized, or can it also compel a critical perspective on existing institutions?’ (Butler 1998: 123). As I claim, Leonor Fini’s performances and her preening of her own and others bodies in her life and art, act performatively in raising a critical resistance to gender hierarchies in the art world. Fini’s declaration that she was not interested in being an actress but only in the ‘inevitable theatricality of life’ is confirmed by Overstreet who experienced that Fini was keen on setting her own rules and directing her own drama.4 The roles she played, the costumes she wore as well as the photographs of her mises-enscène, were imagined and selected by herself. Fini’s autonomous self-creating and self-promoting process thus spans from the creation of her costume and role to its public performance and consciously staged depiction in photographs. As quoted earlier, when dressed up Fini at times reached a state of ‘flamboyant isolation’ and ‘proud ecstasy’ that made her forget the world around her. Confirming such an experience, her biographers describe Fini’s arriving at costume balls and parties dressed up in overwhelming creations, but not participating in the mingling and social aspects of the party (Webb 2009: 121). Instead she gave herself over to a short performance and left without having danced, had anything to drink and eat or indulged in any of the festivities. What did such a performance mean in this social context? Fini was, from early on, a most popular and spectacular guest at the great masked balls hosted by the French and Italian aristocracy – an important social arena bringing together members of the aristocracy, the art and intellectual world as well as that of film and fashion (Webb 2009).5 Her popularity was strongly connected to her spectacular appearance that seemed to combine the roles of an original bohemian woman artist and a great beauty in exquisitely made and stunning costumes. She wanted to be, and was often perceived as, the visual climax at those balls. Having attended sixteen costume balls between 1946 and 1953, always eagerly reported in fashion and gossip magazines, she told an interviewer in 1982: With costumes and masks I feel I become an extension of myself. I really enjoy it, and that is why I used to go to the balls. Sometimes my costumes were so extravagant that people stood aside to let me pass. I rather appreciated that… No one else really knew how to dress up. I think I had quite an influence on the rich crowd associated with those balls… But I never wanted to dance with anyone. That seemed stupid. When anyone asked me to dance, I would think, poor fool! (Webb 2009: 127)

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What Fini expresses here may be seen as a consequence of the earlier described state of flamboyant isolation; a state of self-empowerment. Focusing on the perspective of her mesmerized spectators, Fini reveals herself as wishing to brandish herself in costumes that constantly aroused great attention and wonder. Yet her ‘showing off’ is not the performance of a traditionally feminine and soft creature waiting to be courted but rather of an impressive, powerful being that wants to terrify and impress rather than please. While obviously enjoying the effect and ‘influence’ she had on her audience Fini, through her enactments, also manifested and distinguished herself as ‘the (Surrealist) artist’ in the fashionable ‘crowd’ of French aristocrats, upper class and glamorous celebrities from the fashion- and film world. By using her visually spectacular appearance as a form of cultural capital, she succeeded in gaining not only closeness, but even superiority in relation to the world of economic capital and the less artistically charged entertainment industry. In this she followed the role of the nineteenthcentury avant-garde artist, as according to art historian Peter Cornell ‘The bohemian performs on the stage of the bourgeoisie’ (Cornell 2000: 29). Fini thus provided the exact artist’s role that ‘the rich crowd’ expected and admired. She thereby secured her public visibility as well as their commissions and continuous interest that were of great importance for her economic survival as an artist. The personas Fini embodied at masked balls were not only animal-like creatures such as lions and owls, but also powerful female mythological characters such as Persephone, Goddess of the Underworld, at the Bal des Rois et des Reines in Paris 1949 or the more or less androgynous character of Pierrot at the Bal de la Lune sur Mer in Paris in 1951 (Faucigny-Lucinge 1986; Webb 2009). A figure combining notions of sublime power and androgyny is the angel Fini performed at the Bal des Masques et Dominos aux XVIIIs siècle in the Palazzo Labia in Venice, hosted by Carlos da Beistegui, on 3 September 1951. Dressed up as a black angel, or what reporters called an ‘Angel of Death’, Fini was demonstratively standing apart from the other guests who were dressed in bright eighteenth-century rococo-costumes (Faucigny-Lucinge 1986: 84–93). Her costume consisted of a pleated black dress, leaving the shoulders free, a long wig made of black feathers and black vertical wings. As with most of her costumes, it was designed entirely by herself. The wig she wore is of utmost significance as it shows in many photographs and scenarios during the 1940s and 1950s. It was an obviously beloved accessory that Fini took with her wherever she went and even depicted in her paintings: In The Little Guardian Sphinx from 1943/44, one of the many sphinxes Fini painted, the subject is wearing a black mane of hair with the same characteristics as the wig. The portrait of the Italian count Manolo Barromeo from 1944 shows him dressed in what resembles early seventeenth-century fashion in shiny draped fabrics combined with a leopard fur and wearing her feather wig (Figure 6.3). Leonor Fini’s black featherwig, or its pictorial counterpart, is symbolically used in different genres of her work, from

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paintings to performances, where it sometimes clearly appears as a wig and at others appears to look like natural hair. In all these uses, regardless of the wearer’s gender or species, the wig enhances representations of distinction, status and power. It thus becomes a gender neutral instrument of empowerment for the artist herself and the figures she paints while at the same time showing the transgression between genres and artistic practices, and the extension of her

Figure 6.3 Leonor Fini, Portrait of Manolo Borromeo, oil on canvas, 1944. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini.

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personal life into artistic production that makes Fini’s use of sartorial objects to such a central characteristic in her artistic practice. A photograph of Leonor Fini as the Angel of Death, taken by André Ostier, who was one the main photographers of Fini in costumes (taking at least forty photographs of her at this ball), shows her sitting in a gondola, gazing upwards, placed between her male companions, Stanislao Lepri and Sforzino Sforza, and the gondolier (Figure 6.4). Her two friends are dressed in white eighteenth-century court attire with animalistic details and masks painted on their faces, designed and styled by Fini. Though being part of an ensemble, Fini clearly distances herself from her surroundings, not only through the contrast of black against white costumes but also through her strongly self-aware pose and gaze. She is seated but at the same time seems to rise towards the spectator thanks to her upright posture and upward positioned symmetrical face with its serious mouth and widely open dark eyes. The black feathers on her head and black wings emphasize her pale countenance with its well-defined features, its expression of dramatic sincerity and also her naked shoulder, which adds a notion of sexual seductiveness to the sinister and gender-neutral figure of the angel. Recalling her own words on the effects of dressing up, the world around her here seems to have disappeared as she is absorbed by the camera’s gaze. Fini’s habits and practices in the context of costume balls confirm her description of a voluntarily isolated state achieved through dressing up: her performance is that of a soloist, a superior, self-conscious and powerful, even god-like being that wants to stand out and forces people to stand aside and watch her in awe. Such a deliberately and literally outstanding position, securing Fini’s distinction and iconic status, is clearly depicted in Ostier’s photograph and in many of the photographs taken at costume balls that show her accompanied by most of the time male companions. In these she always takes a central, pole position, not only through her fantastic costume, but also through her focused gaze, which demonstrates a total connection with the camera lens. Apart from obvious notions of narcissism in the pleasure she experienced when being the object of admiring and fascinated stares she simultaneously enjoyed dominating her surroundings with her own compelling gaze. Fini’s wish to dominate and claim her position through both costumes, fixed looks and poses – as narrated and visualized throughout her whole artistic production and self-representation – may be related to aspects of self-fashioning as a direct path to deliberate professional identity construction and individual resistance bending societal structures, such as those practiced during the Renaissance. As literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt claims ‘in the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable artful process’ (Greenblatt 1980 [2005]: 2). Public identities were shaped crafting ‘a distinctive personality, a characteristic address to the world, a consistent mode of receiving and behaving’ (Greenblatt 1980 [2005]: 2). Going

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Figure 6.4 André Ostier, photograph of Leonor Fini, Sforzino Sforza and Stanislao Lepri, Palazzo Labia, Venice 1951. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini.

beyond the artistic aspects of Renaissance self-fashioning we may thus focus on the notion of a public professional identity and persona versus a private one, a dialectic that already has been shown as an important aspect of Fini’s art production and professional identity.

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Thinking in terms of self-fashioning strategies as discussed by Erving Goffman, Fini’s self-performances and meticulously constructed front and self-styling not only require a suitable costume, but they need a proper stage, with adequate props, co-actors and an audience acting according to the rules she sets. This brings us to an important aspect of (social) control in Fini’s theatrical practices, an aspect that Fini might have been striving for most of all. As Goffman writes it is in an individual’s interests to […] control the conduct of others, especially in their responsive treatment of him. This control is achieved largely by influencing the definition of the situation which the others come to formulate, and he can influence this definition by expressing himself in such a way as to give them the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan. (Goffman 1959: 6) Following Goffman’s emphasis on the individual’s need of controlling impressions, Leonor Fini can be interpreted as being constantly aware of the impression she was making on others and passionately curious if not to say anxious about how she influenced others with her looks, gazes and performances. Consciously fashioning a public persona as a strong artistic and fascinating personality versus a more relaxed and natural private one was of great importance for her and according to Overstreet she completely changed and morphed into another state and persona as soon as a camera was directed toward her (Overstreet, interview 2016). Likewise, an immediate shift of personality, through conscious performance in body and facial expressions, was enacted in more game-like daily life scenarios. Thus, it was Fini’s custom to receive unknown visitors such as journalists, usually male, to her apartment and studio when she was dressed in awe-inspiring gowns, displaying her most terrifying look and sinister gaze in order to intimidate her visitors. This persona of a powerful and dominant woman with menacing behaviour was abandoned immediately after the visitor’s leaving and according to Overstreet she afterwards often laughingly enjoyed the notion of having scared them to death (Overstreet, interview 2016). These anecdotal narratives help to explain how public and private interact in Fini’s dressing up practices. Yet, they have also contributed to the myth of Fini as an original and fascinating or even weird and mad woman/artist whose theatrical way of life sometimes was described in harshly defaming ways, thereby rendering her qualities as an artist irrelevant (Webb 2009: 178–180). Fini’s deliberate enactment of power through her appearance, costume and manners can be examined in relation to Greenblatt’s notion of self-fashioning, as an establishment of social power and status in a tension between personal and external authority ‘as an individual struggles, consciously or unconsciously, to accept or reject all or part of their prescribed position within a social paradigm’ (Delbrugge 2015: 2). While Fini does not need to strengthen her position in a

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struggle between classes, she might be interpreted as fighting a struggle against predominant and conventional gender paradigms and claiming her position and self-identity in a male-dominated art world. Here she performs the role of a superior and powerful woman, independent and dominating, combining strategies of beauty and seduction with the liberated and limitless aspect of gender bending creatures, such as mythical characters, sorceresses and animals – as can be seen in the photographs that Fini chose to precede her words on costumes as a change of dimension and an extension of territory in Le Livre de Leonor Fini: Eddie Brofferio’s photographs staging her in wide empowering cloaks and primitivist head dress on the rocks of Corsica in 1965 (Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5 Eddie Brofferio, Leonor Fini, Nonza, Corsica c. 1965. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini.

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Conclusion A final example for Fini’s visual power performance is the portrait photograph by the fashion photographer Horst P. Horst (Figure 6.6). The black and white photograph from 1946, showing Leonor Fini in her studio performs several important aspects. A first strong, immediate impression originates in Fini’s shining and dramatic black feather creation, a favourite gown she designed herself, connoting an owl or black bird that would be lifeless without the pale and beautiful face emerging from it (Figure 6.6). Finely sculpted, as if chiselled in marble, and made-up, Fini looks at the viewer with a calm and proud, sincere and almost haughty expression, her chin slightly uplifted, her mouth closed without so much as a hint of a smile. As already pointed out, in her more professionally conceived pictures, as well as in most of her private ones, Fini never smiles. This is based on her conviction that a blank facial expression leads to greater beauty and harmonious symmetry while it also blocks notions of a female object trying to please (Overstreet 2015). But the sincere, self-assured gaze of her large black eyes that haunt most of Fini’s self-presentations must also be considered as connected to the long art-historical tradition of artists directing strong-willed, self-conscious gazes at the beholder in self-portraits. Fini’s being inspired by Renaissance art can be observed not only in her Surrealist paintings and many commissioned portraits, or in her use of selffashioning strategies, but, as I claim, also in her literal poses, gestures and facial expressions in photographic portraits. It is in this way that the photograph by Horst is a combination of both modern and historical notions. As timeless as the feather costume is Fini’s face with its proud, self-conscious expression, whose centralized position is repeated and confirmed through a drawing on the wall behind which depicts an antique male God’s head with sinister face, framed by a massive beard and wild curls. In all its visual allure and emphasis on Fini’s beauty, while at the same time almost totally disguising her body, this image might be seen as a fashion photograph staged as a powerful portrait, strongly influenced by Fini’s own ideas of what she wanted to look like. Notions of femininity and seductiveness are combined with notions of power, control and intimidation. Like in many of her paintings, power and feminine beauty appear far from contradictory, but merge in empowering the subject on several levels. This investigation of practices, processes, objects and thoughts in Leonor Fini’s creative production has shown that she uses, activates and performs costume, dress and self-stylization as instruments and symbols of power in shaping her personal and professional identity as an artist. She does so in her costumed and masked performances and in the images she let be taken of her by the most distinguished and advanced fashion/photographers of the time as well as in her paintings. Her manifold artistic practices are empowering not only

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Figure 6.6 Horst P. Horst, Leonor Fini in her studio, Paris 1946. © Richard Overstreet, Estate of Leonor Fini.

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in their fashioning of specifically powerful roles but also in that they transgress genres and spaces and stress multiple identities. They show how an overall creative and self-expressive approach that deliberately constructs, plays with and enjoys personal beauty, sartorial disguise and transformation leads to an extended concept of the artwork and an expanded notion of creative labour including an aesthetic construction of the self. Furthermore, Fini’s self-fashioning practices demonstrate the important interaction between private and public practices of self-representation when it comes to creating a distinctive artistic identity and professional uniqueness. In all of her identities Leonor Fini performed a transgressive and free individual beyond definitions and in confirmation of her own multiplicity. Fashioning herself as a powerful subject and beautiful object simultaneously, she crossed conventional gender boundaries in claiming a territory of her own. Her artistic self-fashioning practices finally highlight the importance of the artist’s body as an expansion of artistic creation as well as a public image.

Notes 1 This insight is based on a collection of press clippings and my ongoing research in the Leonor Fini Archives in Paris under the direction of Richard Overstreet. I would like to express my deep gratitude for the thorough and generous support he has given during the research work in the archives. 2 This study draws upon the archival source material of Leonor Fini’s photographic collection, stored at the Leonor Fini Archives in Paris under the direction of Richard Overstreet. 3 The connections between Leonor Fini’s designs for theatre costumes and her personal costumes as embodiments of identity have been discussed by Rachael Grew (2016) in her article ‘Feathers, Flowers, and Flux: Artifice in the Costumes of Leonor Fini’. 4 The artist and art historian Richard Overstreet was a close friend of Leonor Fini for almost thirty years and also one of her principal photographers during the latter part of her life He is now the director of the Leonor Fini Archives in Paris and has been an important source of oral history through the interviews I have conducted with him during my archival visits 2014–2016. Though coming from personal memories, Overstreet’s information on Leonor Fini is of great value as it provides detailed insight into her daily practices and also is based on a thorough knowledge about the whole collection of materials in the archive that he has established. 5 Fini’s popularity and presence in the post-World War Paris social scene made up of aristocrats, the rich, artists and writers (known as le tout Paris) is clearly shown in the comprehensive collection of press clippings stored in the Leonor Fini archives that show many depictions of Fini at balls and other social events as well as describe her fascinating appearance.

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References Bousquet, J. (1964), La Peinture Maniériste. Idés et calendes, Neuchâtel: Editions Ides et Calendes. Breward, C. (1995), The Culture of Fashion, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bruns, G.L. (2007), ‘Becoming-Animal (Some Simple Ways)’, New Literary History, 38 (4): 703–720. Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble, New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1998), ‘Performativity’s Social Magic’, in R. Shusterman (ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader, 113–128, Oxford: Blackwell. Chadwick, W. (1985), Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, London: Thames & Hudson. Cornell, P. (2000), ‘Rollhäfte. Konstnärsrollen i fokus’, in C. Widenheim and E. Rudberg (eds), Utopi och verklighet. Svensk modernism 1900–1960, Stockholm: Moderna Museet. Delbrugge, L., ed. (2015) Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, Brill: Leiden/Boston. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1988), The Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: The Athlone Press. Faucigny-Lucinge, J. L. de (1986), Fêtes memorables, bals costumés 1922–1972, Paris: Herscher. Fini, L. (1975), ‘avec la collaboration de José Alvarez’, in Le Livre de Leonor Fini, Paris: Editions Mermoud-Clairefontaine Vilo Paris. Goffman, E. (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, London: Penguin Books. Greenblatt, S. ([1980] 2005), Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Grew, Rachael (2016), ‘Feathers, Flowers, and Flux: Artifice in the Costumes of Leonor Fini’, in P. Allmer (ed.), Intersections: Women Artists/Surrealism/Modernism, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kollnitz, A. (2014), ‘“Se på mig!” Mode som uttryck och strategi i Isaac Grünewalds och Sigrid Hjerténs måleri och själviscensättning’, in A. Kollnitz and L. Wallenberg (eds), Modernism och mode, Stockholm: Carlssons. Overstreet, Richard, Interviewed by Andrea Kollnitz in June 2015 and December 2016, Paris. Sousloff, C.M. (1997), The Absolute Artist: The Historiography of a Concept, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Webb, P. (2009), Sphinx: The Life and Art of Leonor Fini, New York: The Vendome Press. Wilson, E. (2009), Bohemians: The Glamourous Outcasts, London/New York: I.B.Tauris. Woods-Marsden, J. (1998), Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction od Identity and the Social Status of the Artist, New Haven/London: Yale University Press.

PART THREE

MAKING

7 DESIGNER UNKNOWN: DOCUMENTING THE MANNEQUIN MAKER June Rowe

Introduction The professional mannequin maker emerges from the historical figure of the artist sculptor who worked as a designer and modeller at mannequin manufactories in the early twentieth century. Within the modern industry of mannequin manufacture the word maker is often replaced with designer, indicating the aesthetic and commercial prestige of the bespoke display mannequin as both a craft and fashion product. Though the terms mannequin maker and mannequin designer can be used interchangeably, the notion of the maker refers to the artisanal roots of the workshop production of the earliest mannequin producers. It can include an array of art and craft specialists involved in the stages of production towards creating the finished mannequin. Ultimately, the title mannequin maker encompasses the principal creative in the process of designing the mannequin, whereas in contemporary usage, the mannequin designer refers to the professionalized role of the creative director within a mannequin company. From its beginnings, it is a role that has aligned with various commercial and creative progressions that have taken place within the fashion industry, developing in parallel with significant periods of expansion in the display and promotion of clothing. Yet, the mannequin designer is a role that has received limited attention in fashion and design histories. There are, however, studies which address the development of the fashion display mannequin throughout the twentieth century. Such studies address histories concerning the innovations of early twentieth-century European mannequin houses and the reputations and influence of individual sculptor-artists who worked with them (Parrot 1982), to more contemporary insights into pivotal mannequin makers from the 1930s to

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the 1980s, particularly in America (Marcus 1978; Schneider 1995). Histories of the mannequin maker also take the form of company biographies, published within accounts of the brand and family business foregrounding the aesthetic and cultural contributions of their manufacturing history (Bauzano 2012). Rarely, though, is the singular contribution of the mannequin designer discussed. Their professional identity has never been examined in any depth. This chapter traces an alternative history of the designer by focusing on the representation of their work, practice and professional identities. It explores the complexities of how an individual artisan becomes an established mannequin designer throughout the early twentieth century. The chapter introduces the history of this identity, discussing how the mannequin designer is described, and therefore constructed, in the image and text of news reportage that contributed to the growing spectacle of fashion. Focusing on the careers of Cora Scovil in the United States from 1920 to 1939 and Adel Rootstein in Britain from 1959 to 1989, this analysis looks particularly at shifts in how the female mannequin designer was represented and, importantly, how they fashioned themselves in relation to their creative work. The analysis of these representations develops a material culture approach to the study of production and display of the fashion mannequin. Drawing upon archival and inter-textual research and historical sources, this chapter questions how mannequin makers were mediated as creative professionals and how this contributed to the fashioning of a particular professional role. In this context, the concept of fashioning relates to the social and professional mediation between the designer and the cultural conditions of their practice drawing on discourses of the designer’s role as a mediator of culture (Press and Cooper 2003), the process of professionalization within design practices (Lees-Maffei 2008) and gendered attitudes within design professionalization (Armstrong 2016; Seddon 2000). The chapter addresses aspects of self-image and representation within the professionalization of the mannequin design industry. The professionalization of mannequin design corresponds to its commercial growth through the twentieth century, which required increased levels of specialization in artisanal and industrial processes to produce the finished form of the mannequin. These developments from craft-based manufacturing to industrial mass production altered the role of the mannequin designer extending the designer’s representations from one of the studio-based artist and artisan producer to that of a ‘modern designer for industry’ (Sparke 1983: 7). The representation of the mannequin designer is examined in discourses on the gendered position of female designers within design practices (Buckley 1986) and the shifts in the construction of professional identities in an expanding commercial field of design (Armstrong 2016). These representations illustrate shifts in the ‘relationship between culture and image’ (Breward 1998: 302) in the design process and the fashioning of the female mannequin designer, thereby informing a fundamental but overlooked narrative in the cultural production of fashion.

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In these instances, the significance of the careers of these female mannequin designers stems from their abilities to shape their material working practices in response to the social and cultural conditions of the period and location in which they were situated, thereby creating their identities as professionals who make ‘their own definition of what it is to be a designer’ (Press and Cooper 2003: 6). Arguably, the reputations of Scovil and Rootstein emerge from their design innovations that subsequently promoted new forms and practices in mannequin design. The subsequent fashioning of these reputations corresponds to professional shifts in design practices that took place from the 1920s to the 1980s and specifically illustrate the changes in status of the role of the mannequin designer from its origins in the work of the figurative artist/sculptor to the professional designer in visual display.

The mannequin artist/sculptor In the early twentieth century, the role of the mannequin maker emerges from the work of European artists and sculptors who developed expertise as wax modellers and makers of figurative forms. The technical and aesthetic developments in the mannequin form of this period represent the first stages in the specialization of the mannequin designer’s role. As a result of experimentation and innovation with materials and manufacturing processes early designers such as Pierre Imans, a Dutch artist, developed a reputation not unlike that of a couturier, creating a design signature and identity as a ‘mannequinist’ (Parrot 1982: 44). The artist’s signature, applied to the finished form of the mannequin, marked an ‘authorial source’ not dissimilar to that of the couture label (Troy 2003: 26). At this time, the persona of the artist signified a professional identity for the couturier separate to that of the craftsman and manufacturer (Troy 2003: 28). The professional identity of the mannequin maker preceded the use of the term designer and was likewise aligned with that of the artist in the early twentieth century. This stimulated a cultural interest in the artistry of mannequins that developed with the exhibition of mannequin forms in the fashion pavilions at International Expositions. Identified with an increasingly popular fashion context the design of the mannequin figures mirrored the public cultural taste for contemporaneous art movements with the desire for fashionable detail (Ganeva 2008; Gronberg 1997; Parrot 1982). The representations of the work of mannequin makers in exposition catalogues and photographic features in Vogue raised the visibility of the mannequin maker’s role emphasizing its association with fine art. In the 1920s, the first generation of makers and manufacturers organized specialized workshop manufacturing of mannequins in response to the pace of mass production giving ‘remarkable momentum to its industrialisation’ (Parrot 1982: 44). The period of the late 1920s and early 1930s described as the height

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of ‘The artists’ infatuation with the mannequin’ (1982: 111) represented a phase of collaboration between mannequin manufacturers and the fashion industry, with both couturiers and magazines. Such collaborations are cited as early as 1927 between Vogue and the manufacturer Siégel (1982: 99). After the European ascendancy of the sculptor/artist as mannequin manufacturer, commercial and pragmatic shifts in retail and display began to eclipse the role of the mannequin maker. The influence of home-grown American manufacturers of the display mannequin from the late 1920s emerged as part of a new design culture that placed emphasis upon the specialization of skills in window display. At this point, the role of the mannequin maker as the signature artist is displaced first by the trade of the window trimmer and then the professional role of the visual merchandiser. It is a history that parallels the expansion in commercial retail, the public interest in consumption and the display of fashion situating the mannequin maker as the professional designer of the display figure in a new chain of production.

The mannequin designer The American mannequin manufacturer Lester Gaba (1907–1987) claimed to be the ‘first real designer of mannequins’ based on his decision to create mannequins representative of the features and gestures of American youth and the invention of the base rod link to the leg rather than providing support to the mannequin figure through the soles of the feet (Parrot 1982: 140). Notwithstanding the legacy of the European manufacturers Gaba’s claim may be viewed as descriptive of a new type of mannequin designer adept at advertising a fashionable brand. No longer tied to the imagery of the wax-work form and its material limitations the mannequin designer became a specialist in the visual commerce of display combining professional roles in manufacture with fashion merchandising. Gaba for example, was both a sculptor and display designer in retail. The notion of design as a structured profession is historically situated with the establishment of design associations from the early part of the twentieth century. The earliest societies, formed in Europe, promoted design activities in craft and applied arts and the professional bodies that followed focused on questions of defining design practice and a professional status for designers (Armstrong 2016). In America design consultancies formed in the 1920s in response to ‘consumer demand for durables’ and were established by individuals primarily from backgrounds of illustrative arts, theatre and window display (Press and Cooper 2003:162). From a British perspective the word ‘Designer’ was not widely used in Britain in the 1930s (Armstrong 2016: 161) and it was not until 1951 that ‘design had achieved the status of the profession’ (Seddon 2000: 427). As debates centred on professionalization in design practices gained pace

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post the Second World War, the concept of the professional designer became a subject of scholarly discourse. One specific text, What Is a Designer, emphasized questions on design practice as a ‘socially negotiated discipline’ (Potter 1980: 7). Interpretations of design professionalism pre-occupied design organizations and revealed the tensions that existed between the values of professional and commercial practice (Armstrong 2016). The narrative of design professionalization addresses complex issues as to how design is both conceived and defined. These issues interrogated by design and cultural historians address questions of professional status and training for the variety of design practices that exist, and examine the objectives of organizations in establishing criteria to articulate a professional design body. Further complications exist with the variety of terms for design professionals from the commercial artist to the industrial designer and design consultant. Fundamental to this narrative is the status of the professional female designer and the gendered perspectives that exist in relation to women’s contribution in design practices, diminishing both the visibility and cultural value of women designers. Examples of women’s professional participation in design are most often presented within cultural codes of design defined by models of patriarchy (Buckley 1986) and relegated to traditionally gendered activities considered ‘socially acceptable’ occupations for women in areas of art and design and largely promoted along the lines of femininity (Seddon 2000: 430). In the complex history of design professionalization and institutional strategies that sought to form a coherent professional body, the mannequin designer remains a somewhat obscure figure. Not unlike the figure of the ‘Interior Designer’ (Lees-Maffei 2008) the role of the display director and industrial designer in retail developed into distinct professions. As Lees-Maffei points out in her own study of interior design the process of professionalization ‘moved the practice and product of interior design beyond its amateur origins’ (Lees-Maffei 2008: 1). In a similar vein the practice of visual display gained a professional identity and within this the mannequin designer became part of a wider professionalization in the fashion industry whereby the window dresser often progressed to become the creative director of a mannequin manufacturer, moving from the applied arts to the design of visual concepts for retail brands.

Locating the signature of the mannequin designer The complexity of the mannequin designer’s role reflects the complexity in the making of the artefact that is, the number of stages, technicians and artisans involved in producing the form and style of the mannequin, an observation that

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was developed into a topical article in New York Magazine in 1969. The magazine feature raises the question as to how the signature of the mannequin maker can be distinguished when the object is a result of a series of design processes: The making of a mannequin is a uniquely collective project. No one creator could sign a mannequin. The final product has to pass through too many hands. Naturally, the store presidents, display directors and mannequin company designers play the most significant role in mannequin making. They create the type of ‘personality’ desired. But one cannot absolutely control the artisans – the sculptors, who mould and put together the features, and after them the make-up artists. And a little farther back are the ‘influencers’ – the photographers, models, fashion celebrities and even the apparel manufacturers. (Rosenthaal and Sokol 1969) The feature raises pertinent questions on the status of the mannequin designer and the collective nature of the production of the mannequin in relation to the roles of other creative professionals such as the display designer. The article in New York Magazine was written at a time when the American department store was an influential commercial force in fashion and the reputations of display directors of the most prestigious New York department stores commanded individual attention. The specialization in display and the enhanced role of the display director as an auteur of visual merchandising was an outcome of the competition to sell to the post war consumer. The mannequin was seen as a powerful tool in fashion display in American retail representing aspirational role models for the consumer (Schneider 1995). In this context the article focuses on the social typography of mannequins in New York department stores as exemplars of the social milieu, status and attitudes of the store’s customers. The text brings into the domain of popular culture a discussion of the mannequin as a barometer of social change in feminine representation and fashionable aspiration for the consumer (Rosenthal and Sokol 1969). There is little investigation however, into the mannequin designer’s role, which is subsumed to that of the expertise of the display director in styling the mannequins. The display director is compared with the producer of an atelier, signifying the professional and creative authority of the visual merchandiser in seeking to resolve the production aspects of staging and displaying the fashion mannequin (Rosenthal and Sokol 1969). The profession of the mannequin designer remains not only anonymous but is only presented in relation to other design practices, suggesting the mannequin designer’s signature may be erased in the complex commercial processes of fashion merchandising or appear only as an adjunct occupation. Though ‘Models of your Mind’ appeared in 1969, there had already been female mannequin designers who had established a studio practice, achieved commercial success and created products associated with a distinctive signature. The text represents

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only partially the mannequin designer and the significant influence and authorship of female professionals within display design and fashion merchandising in the period.

Fashioning the female mannequin designer Representations of the design practice of Cora Scovil and Adel Rootstein illustrate a fashioning of the female mannequin designer at different stages within the commercial and technical developments in professional display. Contemporaneous reports from trade journals and features within popular news and magazine publications indicate the cumulative professional prestige of each designer to both mannequin production and fashion display. The media representations of Cora Scovil emerge within the expanding professionalization of the American display industry in the 1920s and are related to the wider public fascination with the American department store of the period. Scovil’s designs are initially presented for their novelty value as techniques in display but include significant transitions in design from two-dimensional to threedimensional figures. By the 1930s, Scovil’s practice had developed from studiobased production to the factory manufacture and export of mannequins. The innovations in mannequin design and marketing attributed to the Londonbased designer Adel Rootstein form the background to the representations of Rootstein from the 1960s. These representations situate her ability as a designer and entrepreneur to generate an international brand identity for the Rootstein Company in its designs for the production of realistic mannequins. A variety of trade and magazine publications from 1960 to 1980 feature Adel Rootstein as a trend maker in fashion and successful business woman, demonstrating a level of professional engagement with the fashion industry and popular media not previously associated with a female mannequin designer.

Cora Scovil: The raw materials of the female mannequin designer Though credited with key innovations in mannequin design, the professional life of Cora Scovil appears only in episodes within fashion scholarship. Such texts indicate the impact of Scovil’s work and its most celebrated aspects, which include the patch work display posters adopted by American department stores in the 1920s and from the 1930s her production of plaster mannequins based on the likenesses of popular Hollywood actresses (Marcus 1978; Schwartz 1996).

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The materiality of Scovil’s work is the essence of her design: experiments with textiles and new composites to produce life-like and convincing effects. There is no cogent narrative in fashion history of how Scovil came to participate as an artisan producer of bespoke display figures and what informed her working methods, but she was a producer of a distinct vernacular for American display and its developing fashion audience at a key time in its history. The fragments of her professional identity and working practices which exist in journals and newspapers were often highly gendered representations of the female artisan in terms of both the status of the work and of Scovil’s domestic status. The display of merchandise, known as window trimming, developed in America in response to the expansion in urbanization and retail businesses from the late 1800s. In 1898 ‘The National Association of Window Trimmers of America’ was established as the first display industry body for ‘the low-paying and otherwise disparaged craft’ (Marcus 1978: 16). These early developments, including the establishment of training schools for window trimmers and trade publications for retail display represented how ‘knowledge was at least becoming more refined and more systemized at this time’ (Marcus 1978: 17). In the ‘American Store Window’ Leonard Marcus draws attention to the lack of confidence expressed in window trimming as a recognizable profession by store managers and the discord in contemporaneous accounts as to whether display functioned as an art or science. Notwithstanding the debates as to how to define the trade and its status, display developed as a competitive design process. By 1914 ‘The international Association of Display Men’ was formed. Firmly gendered as a male occupation and linked by the 1920s to the role of the industrial designer the male display professional was viewed as a specialist communicator of a new form of American media, window display, which came to be considered ‘as apt a concern of modern design as were the products in the window and the buildings themselves’ (Marcus 1978: 21). The prestige afforded the male display professional grew in the expansive commercial economy of American retail and became equated with the required skills of salesmanship and the influence of industrial designers who became display directors, such as Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes. Cora Scovil’s work in display emerges from a different strand, initially an unplanned and experimental approach of the skilled amateur. In response to a request to produce theatrical posters for a local production in Pittsburgh, Scovil used fabric cut outs on muslin to make a lifelike representation of the lead actor. In 1925 Scovil was in full production of her textile-based posters for department store displays from a studio apartment in New York and by 1936 had applied for a patent, with the designer Lilian Greneker, for their invention of a new plastic composite mannequin. Having trained in art, Scovil’s progress into making for display and the representations of Scovil’s subsequent success in newspaper reports echo Jill Seddon’s discussion of the British perspective

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on the professional recognition of women in design as a position undermined by a legacy associated with amateur participation (Seddon 2000: 428). The aspect of, if not devaluing the female designer but questioning their status, is represented in part in early media reports on Scovil. In the expanding commercial environment of American design in the 1920s in retail and the manufacture and distribution of ready to wear clothing, representations of Scovil’s design work can be examined in terms of the ‘wider notions of lifestyle, class and Americanness’ (Arnold 2009: 3). In her book The American Look Rebecca Arnold (2009) identifies the emergence of a fresh independent aesthetic for the American consumer in sportswear and the promotion of an American identity in fashion stimulated by economic changes in the 1930s. As Arnold describes, New York department stores became a setting to promote the work of American designers and were part of the wider context of ‘women’s increasing professionalization within fashion’ (Arnold 2009: 9) Scovil’s representations can be read in the frame of these social and economic dynamics and as part of the flourishing in American design of an identity that was progressive, business minded and flexible. As Arnold states: ‘The relationship between business sense, design and dissemination of fashion information is crucial to understanding the dynamics of American fashion’ (Arnold 2009: 9).

Early representations of the female mannequin designer: 1921 to 1937 Representations of Scovil’s display work in the 1920s suggest a difficulty in how to position the designer’s practice professionally but the potential of her reputation is illustrated. One of the earliest reports of Scovil’s design work, the patchwork fashion poster, appears in the magazine Popular Science in September 1921. The niche entry in a popular publication of the period includes a photograph of Scovil with her ‘posters that wear real clothes’ cited as ‘the latest startling development in New York’s Fifth Avenue shops’ (Popular Science 1921). One of the few images of Scovil to be found, the designer is shown sewing buttons on a pair of golfing knickerbockers on a full size representation of an ideal of American fashionability: the modern sporting female, suggestive of the template discussed by Arnold (2009). ‘These posters were made by Mrs Scovil of Pittsburgh’ the reader is told, ‘who invented them’ (Popular Science 1921). Scovil’s famed patch posters were also featured in April 1921 in The New York Times. The report’s headline declared: ‘Earns $400 a week sewing on patches’ followed by further sub headings: ‘Woman creator of newest things in posters made first ones to amuse her friends. Now fad on Fifth Avenue. They show real clothes on a feminine figure that seems almost alive’ (The New York Times 1921).

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The paper juxtaposes Scovil’s signature work, the patch poster as the newest fad to stand out within ‘the street of conventions’, Fifth Avenue, describing how when the sight of crowds gather in front of shop windows ‘usually where some kind of women’s apparel is sold, it is safe to guess that there is a patch poster exhibited’ (The New York Times 1921). The discussion of Scovil in the report as an amateur, ‘who had dabbled in a little art’ (The New York Times 1921) is suggestive of the marginalization of women in design as discussed by Seddon (2000) whereby the designer’s output is evaluated through gendered associations with female occupations considered to be domestic, home-made and amateur and which positioned women socially as consumers and not as producers (Seddon 2000). At the same time the report acknowledges the patch poster as ‘an interesting feature of modern advertising’ in women’s wear and highlights the addition of Scovil’s name on her posters next to ‘patent pending’ (The New York Times 1921). Scovil’s posters were commercially and aesthetically astute designs and strategically placed as part of the display apparatus of city department stores. In contrast, four years later Scovil’s posters and her techniques as a maker were noted In The Brooklyn Daily Eagle with the headline ‘Cora Scovil Uses Cloth Instead of Paint for Her Patch Posters’ describing Scovil as an artist who devised the scheme when lacking proper materials to make theatrical posters (Entz 1925:87). The reader is informed that Scovil developed the idea to the extent that ‘she cuts up real shoes and stockings to sew on muslin backs’ (1925: 87), thereby representing Scovil as inventive and astute in her methods by adapting her use of media in the growing commercial sphere of fashion display. The fulllength feature on the life and work of Scovil, published in March 1925, indicates the potential interest for a wide readership. The text by Adele Entz covers a multitude of detail on the early successes of Scovil’s patch posters and their particular impact on the shoppers of Fifth Avenue, prior to the innovations in mannequin design that were to come. Scovil as a subject is described as ‘young and eager and thoroughly likable’ (1925: 87). Presented as an atelier producer Scovil is described in her New York studio apartment as dressed in personally designed pyjama-like clothing with a group of assistants sewing by hand ‘every little scrap of material that goes to make up the complete posters’ (1925: 87). The biography of Scovil’s life is pieced together: studying art in Chicago, painting war posters (purposefully placed in the context of her marriage to a colonel) and her transition to theatrical and display posters. The reader is assured at intervals of Scovil’s agreeableness and capabilities as the designer describes her process of creating life-like figures from cloth and her approach to Horne’s department store in Pittsburgh with a life size poster of the popular film actress of the period, Jane Cowl, in a wedding dress with ‘real materials on silk’ (1925: 87). The potential for Scovil’s designs is emphasized in Entz’s copy with the reader informed that the advertising manager and the window display manager

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at Horne’s had ‘foresight and realised the possibilities in this field of advertising’ and preceded to order posters of bathing suits from Scovil (1925: 87). Scovil’s working methods are also described with the designer explaining the reduction in her production time as she proceeded to meet incoming orders. From the entrée into the Pittsburgh department store ‘Ambition’ Entz states ‘brought Mrs Scovil to New York’ to present her ideas to the Franklin Simon Company, a leading department store (1925: 87). The uniqueness of Scovil’s posters was in the use of real garments on life-like figures with Scovil commenting that it is: ‘The fact that everything, including the buttons on the shoes, is real impresses people more than the workmanship or resemblance to the model’ (1925: 87). At a later point the reader is assured that ‘Mrs Scovil is very fond of children and loves playing with them’ and leads into a narrative of Scovil’s patch posters of children and the inclusion of the cook’s child as one of the subjects situating Scovil in a domestic and family sphere (1925: 87). At the other end of the scale the reader learns of ‘several society girls’ who posed for Franklin Simon advertisements and then posed for Scovil’s patch posters, their reactions described by Entz as ‘delighted with their unbleached muslin prototypes’ (1925: 87). The text ends on a positive statement positioning the female designer as no less accomplished than an artist and as successful as any professional in their field: ‘Now, instead of being a mediocre artist, Mrs Scovil has achieved an enviable position, first in her chosen field. And who will say that there is less art or talent in sewing posters than in painting them?’ (1925: 87). Fifteen years later Scovil’s innovations are noted in a Life article in 1937, ‘Model on Fifth Avenue’, which featured a dress dummy on its cover ‘peering out at New York crowds from a Saks-Fifth Avenue window’ (Life 1937). The mannequin, named Grace, is also photographed behind the scenes, unclothed with its body parts being assembled and with lipstick applied and nails painted. The reader is told of Grace’s distinguishing features, her weight, accessories and gown but the point of the narrative is to inform the reader of the transition in New York’s high end dress shops to the use of mannequin forms with heads, a departure from the traditional practice of using headless forms which would not detract interest from the clothes displayed. Scovil, described as ‘a keen young designer’ is credited with the invention of a lighter plaster composition from which it is described ‘she made slim, well-moulded forms and topped them with heads resembling fashion editors’ (Life 1937). The reader learns that these mannequins, created by Scovil, became the first mannequins with heads to be displayed in Bonwit Teller on 37th Street, breaking with the convention of the ‘57th Street tradition’ in Manhattan of the use of headless forms. However in Life we learn that ‘Grace’, who has the honour of being the first model with a head to look out from a 5th Avenue window, was created not by Scovil but by Lester Gaba. Originally a soap sculptor, Gaba quickly established a reputation for himself as a mannequin manufacturer and gained popular attention as the

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creator of Cynthia, a mannequin Gaba presented both as companion and socialite at numerous media events. There is no image of Scovil or her plaster mannequins in the edition of Life and the inclusion of Gaba’s model as the lead figure for the feature article already presupposes the role of the male mannequin maker as the fore runner of the new generation of designers. This situation was not firmly challenged until the 1960s through the emergence in Britain of a female mannequin designer.

Adel Rootstein: Raising the profile of the mannequin designer The design practice and commercial strategies of Adel Rootstein exemplify two important aspects in the professionalization and representation of the mannequin designer. These included establishing an independent brand identity for the designer’s company and a reputation for innovation in mannequin design that marked a ‘watershed event’ (Schneider 1995: 75). Adel Rootstein was founded in 1959 specializing in the production of realistic, bespoke mannequins. The work of Adel Rootstein as a mannequin designer began as a cottage industry in producing props for display. Arriving in London from South Africa in 1951 as a window dresser, Rootstein eventually worked for Aquascutum in display but the first working base for her own company was a kitchen in a flat in Earl’s Court from which she manufactured wigs for mannequins. The business developed in scale and production techniques from a kitchenbased enterprise to a localized factory-based site, which combined creative, manufacturing and marketing operations with artisanal studios and showroom. The manufacturing methods involved a number of creative departments and skilled processes beginning with the designer’s concept worked in collaboration with the fine art expertise of the sculptor. It may be argued that the distinct changes in British cultural life of the post-war period supported the working practices of Adel Rootstein and presented the designer with both the opportunity and purpose to interact with the fashion industry and its media in ways that raised the professional profile of the mannequin designer. The representation of Adel Rootstein in both trade and fashion media emphasizes questions about the changing status of the mannequin maker and the elisions between the mannequin designer, the sculptor and the display director. The coverage of the designer over a period of thirty years provides examples of the global agency attained by the company, its use of branding and the growth in exports of its mannequin collections. From the outset the company aligned itself with the fashion industry in its publicity and production methods producing mannequin collections to correspond with the fashion industry

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calendar. The significance of the position gained by Rootstein in a relatively short period, compared with competitors, was due to the initiatives of the company in modernizing design and production methods and strategies in publicity. Rootstein specialized in producing the anatomically sculpted form of a live model as the prototype for the finished mannequin, which led to a fundamental shift in the appearance of the mannequin figure and altered perceptions of how mannequins were expected to look. It is these aspects that consolidated Rootstein’s professional reputation and are focused on in contemporaneous reports from the 1970s and 1980s. In Life magazine in May 1970 Rootstein is photographed in her London studio, fluffing up a wig for a mannequin in her spring collection (Figure 7.1). The early image of Rootstein in her professional workspace with a signature mannequin came to be a repeated motif in interviews with the designer. The article, ‘Faces for the Best Places’, narrates Rootstein’s career from that of a trainee window dresser in Johannesburg to becoming creative director of fifty-nine employees and producing one million dollars of business a year (Life 1970). The feature focuses on a particular 1970s collection with the model Jenny Runacre as the star of the collection ‘of fibre glass mannequins made by Britain’s Adel Rootstein, whose mass produced sculptures of real people presently peer from hundreds

Figure 7.1 ‘Adel Rootstein in her London Studio,’ Life, 15 May 1970, photo by Terence Spencer. Courtesy of Cara Spencer, Terence Spencer Photo Archive © http://www. terencespencerphotoarchive.net.

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of store windows in more than 40 countries’ (1970). The interview with Rootstein was a timely feature that detailed the commercial success of the company in 1970. Rootstein’s ‘thesis’ the reader is informed is that: ‘the girls in the windows ought to look like the girls buying the clothes’ (Rootstein quoted in Life 1970). Rootstein’s commercial strength is summarized as her ability to ‘foretell what would happen’ illustrated by the appearance of mannequins in ‘hundreds of store windows’ in over forty countries with 6,000 mannequins produced in a year in different versions: ‘not the standard Cute Little Nobody with bobbed nose and banal smile but a tall, angular, strong-boned, pointy-nosed, frowning, almost alive Jenny Runacre’ (1970). The reputation of the company and Rootstein’s success as a designer and business woman appeared in popular publications such as the Mail on Sunday magazine in 1983, a point at which Rootstein had produced mannequins of Elaine Paige and Joan Collins who form a centrepiece to the article ‘High Street Hall of Fame’ (Meysey-Thompson 1983). The company photographs of Collins were taken by David Bailey, indicating the attention given to maintaining the fashion prestige of the mannequins. In the feature Adel Rootstein is described as ‘the doyenne of the display world; the diminutive but dynamic creator of the mannequins which decorate the shop windows of the world’ (Meysey-Thompson 1983: 14). Rootstein’s success is associated with the designer’s ability to design the life-like and the company’s unique use of modelling mannequins on real people. The text provides insights into the impact of its global operations and market success. A pivotal point in the feature is the disclosure that a trade which used to be based primarily on imports is now ‘80 percent export and hardly anywhere remains to be conquered’ (Meysey-Thompson 1983: 16). A further text situates Rootstein as an innovator ‘credited with having brought mannequins into the modern age by modelling them on real people’ (Alden 1986: 16). The feature article ‘Making Dummies of the Stars’ appeared in Fashion Weekly in August 1986 and isolates the process in the company to examine its success and how the reputation of the Adel Rootstein brand was achieved. It is one of the few contemporaneous texts to indicate the influence of the company and provides a first-hand account of how the designer quantified the factors which drove the success of the company. Rootstein’s summary of her business and design practice situates the mannequin as both ‘a directional product’ and a tool to ‘create visual excitement, an image, something which will make their store different from the others’ (Rootstein quoted in Alden 1986: 16). The reader is given insight into the success of the company cited as a result of the teamwork between Rootstein and the sculptor John Taylor, the company’s creative team and the ‘financial and organisational abilities’ of Rootstein’s husband, the industrial designer Rick Hopkins (1986: 16). In the text, Rootstein pays tribute to the company’s ability to create a product ‘that does what it is supposed to … it sells clothes; it doesn’t just decorate’ (Rootstein quoted in Alden 1986: 16).

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Figure 7.2 Adel Rootstein with bespoke fashion display mannequins, 1989, photo by Terry Smith © http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/license/50419586.

The text offers a snapshot of the company referring to Rootstein as a guru of the mannequin business and indicates the extent of the company’s commercial success ‘with a product that has invaded the windows of almost every great store around the world’ (1986: 16).

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It can be argued that Rootstein’s representations illustrate a conscious selffashioning of the designer in a decade when ‘design became consumed by the media’ (Press and Cooper 2003: 163) (Figure 7.2). Likewise, within the period Rootstein’s representations and mannequin designs may suggest the fashioning of a gendered signature for the designer (Grosz 1995) framing a feminist theme in their mediation of ‘textual representations of women’ (Grosz 1995: 12).

Conclusion Contemporaneous sources in design and fashion history fail to pinpoint exactly the role and function of the mannequin designer. It is a profession often buried in a multiplicity of terms from tailor to artisan maker to artist sculptor and sculptor designer. Though the origin of mannequin making lay in the work of the tailor and couturier, the role of the first generation mannequin designer can be interpreted as similar to that of the industrial designer. The gendering of the nascent profession begins with its industrialization in workshop production with the dominance of the male sculptor as designer and manufacturer. As a product of fine and applied art, the design of the mannequin was attributed historically to the artistic signature of the principal sculptor of the European producers. Conversely, the creative work of female mannequin designers is associated in its early stages with artisan crafts, the hand-made and production on a domestic scale. Though experimentation in the home to produce prototypes may have facilitated a professional transition, Scovil and Rootstein developed their individual agency as practitioners establishing new manufacturing processes in the design of mannequins. Arguably, the reputations of Scovil and Rootstein emerge from their design innovations and their contributions to the cultural production of fashion. Furthermore the fashioning of these reputations represents the professional shift from 1920 to 1990 in defining and recognizing a design practice which exemplifies the combined facets of a designer as ‘craft-maker, cultural intermediary and opportunistic entrepreneur’ (Press and Cooper 2003: 7) and contributes to a wider understanding of fashion and the role of the mannequin designer.

Acknowledgments With special thanks to Jane Holt, previously archivist at London College of Fashion, Professor Eileen Hogan and Michael Southgate for their support with access to the Rootstein Archive. Additional thanks to Cara Spencer, info@ terencespencerphotoarchive.net.

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References Anon. ‘Faces for the Best Places’, Life, 68 (18): 76-79. Available online: https://books. google.co.uk/books?id=mlUEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA76&dq=Adel%20Rootstein &pg=PA76#v=onepage&q=Adel%20Rootstein&f=false (accessed 12 March 2015). Anon. ‘Model on Fifth Avenue’, Life, 3 (2): 32-33. Available online: https://books.google. co.uk/books?id=w0UEAAAAMBAJ (Accessed 12 March 2015). Anon. ‘Earns $400 a week sewing on patches’, New York Times. Available online: http://article.archive.nytimes.com/1921/04/24/112678750. pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJBT N455PTTBQQNRQ&Expires=1477437328&Signatu re=xk%2FCb2DxTAQJ%2F5Aozzjhrs1 Hvo0%3D (accessed 26 March 2015). Anon. ‘Shop-Window Posters Wear Real Clothes’, Popular Science, 99 (3): 50. Available online: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bSoDAAAAMBAJ (accessed 26 March 2015). Anon. ‘Adele Rootstein; Adele Rootstein [Misc.]’. Available online: https://www. gettyimages.co.uk/photos/adel-rootstein?page=2 (accessed 23 January 2017). Alden, T. (1986), ‘Making Dummies of the Stars’, Fashion Weekly, 16. Rootstein Archive [Uncatalogued] London College of Fashion Special Collections. Armstrong, L. (2016), ‘Steering a Course between Professionalism and Commercialism: The Society of Industrial Artists and the Code of Conduct for the Professional Designer 1945–1975’, Journal of Design History, 29 (2): 161–179. Arnold, R. (2009), The American Look: Fashion, Sportswear and the Image of Women in 1930s and 1940s New York, London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Bauzano, G., ed. (2012), Mannequins Bonaveri: A History of Creativity, Fashion and Art, Milan: Skira Editore S.p.A. Breward, C. (1998), ‘Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress’, Fashion Theory, 2 (4): 301–313. Buckley, C. (1986), ‘Made in Patriarchy: Toward a Feminist Analysis of Women and Design’, Design Issues, 3 (2): 3–14. Entz, A. (1925), ‘Cora Scovil Uses Cloth instead of Paint for Her Patch Posters’, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 87. Available online: http://bklyn.newspapers.com /image/59890313 (accessed on 26 March 2015). Ganeva, M. (2008), Women in Weimar Fashion: Discourses and Displays in German Culture, 1918–1933, New York: Camden House. Gronberg, T. (1997), ‘Beware Beautiful Women: The 1920s Shop Window Mannequin and a Physiognomy of Effacement’, Art History, 20 (3): 375–396. Grosz, E. (1995), Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies, New York and London: Routledge Lees-Maffei, G. (2008), ‘Introduction: Professionalisation as a Focus in Interior Design History’, Journal of Design History, 21 (1): 1–18. Marcus, L.S. (1978), The American Store Window, London: The Architectural Press Ltd. Meysey-Thompson, S. (1983), ‘High Street Hall of Fame’, You: Mail on Sunday Magazine, 14–18. Rootstein Archive [Uncatalogued] London College of Fashion Special Collections Parrot, N. (1982), Mannequins, London: Academy Editions. Potter, N. (1980), What Is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages, London: Hyphen Press.

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Press, M. and R. Cooper (2003), The Design Experience, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Rosenthaal, R. and J. Sokol (1969), ‘Models of Your Mind’, New York Magazine, 2 (21): 36–39. Available online: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eN0CAAAAMBAJ (accessed on 25 March 2015). Schneider, S.K. (1995) Vital Mummies: Performance Design for the Show Window Mannequin, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Schwartz, H. (1996), The Culture of the Copy, New York: Zone Books. Seddon, J. (2000), ‘Mentioned, but Denied Significance: Women Designers and the “Professionalisation” of Design in Britain c. 1920–1951’, Gender & History, 12: 426–447. Sparke, P. (1983), Consultant Design: The History and Practice of the Designer in Industry, Pembridge Press. Troy, N. (2003), Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

8 FASHIONING THE CONTEMPORARY ARTIST: THE SPATIAL BIOGRAPHY OF SUE TOMPKINS Caroline Stevenson

Introduction In the expanded field of contemporary art production, ‘artists tend to perform not just one or two, but sometimes a multiplicity of selves’ (Helguera 2012: 51). In this reflexive position, artists’ identities can be seen as complex negotiations between the localized social and creative landscapes in which they live and work, and the wider, international art world, both of which confer different forms of legitimation on the objects they produce. In the marketized field of contemporary art production, it is no longer solely the domain of artists and critics to determine meaning and value around artworks. Rather the contemporary art world is comprised of a new range of competing agents, including dealers, collectors and curators who equally determine the legitimacy of one artist over another. Set within this context, artists’ biographies have become a marker of identity and value, as well as contested sites of mythology and self-mediation between artists themselves and the formal institutions of art. Colin Eisler writes that in the nineteenth century, artists were glorified as national treasures and anecdotal recordings of their lives were shared in popular media as ‘society wanted and needed its artists to be seen and heard’ (1987: 75). Through the twentieth century, public interest in artists’ biographies diminished in favour of objective readings of artworks. Isabelle Graw (2009) argues that artists’ identities have always been understood in the context of celebrity culture, but that since the 1990s, the commercialization of art has produced a renewed interest in artists’ lives and personas, depicted through

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their self-presentation in the fashion media, on television and in various art journals. At the same time, artists’ biographies have received little scholarly attention due to the journalistic and anecdotal nature of life writing over the analysis of the objects they produce. This chapter explores the complex connections between contemporary artists’ lives and the artworks they make. First, I present an analysis of the current landscape of contemporary art production. Against this backdrop, I then map the biography of Glasgow-based contemporary artist Sue Tompkins. Tompkins, a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, is part of a close and tight-knit art scene that emerged in the city in the 1990s and 2000s. Along with other artists in the Glasgow scene, she is associated with a re-emergence of conceptual and dematerialized art in Glasgow, reflective of the economically deprived, yet highly collaborative and cross disciplinary creative environment in which they continue live and work. As a product and producer of this environment, Tompkins has amassed an international cult following; she is formally represented by two major contemporary art galleries in Glasgow and New York and exhibits her work and performs all over the world. In what follows, I demonstrate that Tompkins’ working practices reveal complex connections to social scenes and geographies, which can be traced through the objects she produces. In doing so, I offer an understanding of the fashioning of contemporary artistic personas through the concept of spatialized biographies; identities formed in relation to geographical places and discursive sites of creative practice.1

The field of contemporary art production Pierre Bourdieu (1993) argues that the art world is an autonomous social universe that functions through its own field of cultural production. According to Bourdieu, fields are sites of struggle where agents compete for access to certain positions and resources, which vary according to the social arena where the struggle is taking place. This means that each field is determined by its own individual logic, or in Bourdieu’s words: A field may be defined as a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions. These positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions. (Bourdieu 1993: 97)

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The field of contemporary art is composed of a tight, international network of institutions like galleries and art fairs, as well as a network of artists, dealers, curators, gallerists and critics. It has its own rules and rituals, which, as Pablo Helguera points out, are ‘surprisingly consistent’ (2012: 7) in their patterns of social exchange and its conventions. He further points out that through the recent proliferation of the art market, these dynamics have been ‘exacerbated by the growth of the art world into a professionalized arena…that is managed by a network of tastemakers, in both academic and commercial areas of art’ (2012: 7). These market dynamics and social conventions are clearly visible in the standard seasons of art exhibitions in commercial galleries and museums, prizes, art fairs and even in much art criticism (Thornton 2008). This is not entirely unified, however, as the field of contemporary art is also determined by struggles between those agents and institutions who are competing to define the discourses that can legitimately be understood as ‘contemporary art’ as well as the types of capital that are valid in the field. This renders the field dynamic and fluid, rather than a fixed entity. In varying ways, these recent market dynamics have also shaped production at a grassroots level, particularly in the last twenty-five years. The boundaries between sites, practices and agents in the field have increasingly been blurred (Hebert and Karlsen 2013) so that it is no longer possible to speak of an alternative art scene or a duality between art and commerce. Examples of this would be the visibility of artists’ studios as factories perhaps typified by the Young British Artists working directly in the context of arts’ commercialism, as well as the transformation of artist-run spaces into highly professionalized commercial galleries. According to Bourdieu (1993), the Modern art world of the nineteenth century contrasted with this contemporary scene, fundamentally separating art and artistic production from economic interests, and from the circulation of commodities for profit. Bourdieu argues that the sacred space of art inverted the logic of the market, producing a ‘field of restricted production’ with a general feeling of suspicion towards any artist who openly strived for economic success; an accepted ‘refusal of the commercial’ (Bourdieu 1993: 75). However, in the twenty-first century, the proliferation of the market has changed art’s relationship with commerce. This is particularly true of cities such as London or New York, where there are many commercial markets for art and the ‘boundary separating “art” from the “market” has also moved into the very subjects and their ways of life’ (Graw 2012: 193). So, rather than the two being definitively separate, both the market and artists’ practices are, a ‘unity in contradiction’ (2012: 185). All this is not to say that the separation between art and commerce has been totally eradicated, however. As Graw states, ‘the art world is a social universe held together by the belief that the object at its centre is far removed from the market’

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(2012: 183). Indeed, the art market relies on a belief in arts’ autonomy in order to confer economic value on artworks that have no intrinsic value themselves (Bourdieu 1993). Here, the social practices of the art world contribute almost exclusively to upholding and maintaining contemporary art’s value. For example, the invisibility of financial transactions in commercial art fairs, as well as the tacit hierarchy of inclusion and visibility of certain galleries to ensure the exclusivity of certain fairs over others. This is most often the case for galleries working with living artists whose careers may not be cemented into the ‘canon’, therefore the economic value of their work is relatively unstable. It is also implicitly understood that financial transaction is masked under the premise that collectors buy the art that they love and, in doing so, are supporting artists’ careers. However, in reality, only a few artists are able to survive based on their commercial representation alone. It is against this background, that artists must perform a multiplicity of different roles involving self and institutional representation in order to find legitimation in the wider art world. Graw writes that the relationship between artist and artwork is fraught, but at the same time, ‘artists have the possibility of shaping the relationship between person and product…’ (2009: 15) that reflects or even rejects the conditions of the marketized art world.

Contemporary artists as professionals The recent changes to the production and distribution of contemporary art mean that the relationships between agents in the field are in flux (Lind and Velthius 2012). In this condition, the professional identity of the artist has also changed and ‘the roles of artist, producer and curator intermix in unprecedented ways’ (Helguera 2012: 44). This has led to a series of new professional identities in the art world. Since the 1990s, for example, curatorial practice has been understood as a collection of creative activities that take the form of an artistic practice. This has moved the figure of the curator from a care-taker of objects and arbiter of taste to an ‘independently motivated practitioner with a more centralised position within the contemporary art world’ (O’Neill 2012: 2). This heightened competition means that artists, more than ever, must actively manage their professional careers as contemporary art is being produced by many agents in the field, not just by artists alone (Graw 2009). The notion of the ‘professional’ artist is not unproblematic, however, as entry into the field is not a result of institutionalized arrangements. Speaking of the field of design, Guy Julier says that it has ‘no normative systems’ (2008: 44) through which individuals can become commercial designers. As the field of contemporary art similarly has no normative systems through which to determine levels of professionalism, it is perhaps more appropriate to consider how artists gain legitimation in the field. In Bourdieu’s words:

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As it ceases to operate as a hierarchical apparatus controlled by a professional body, the universe of the producers of art-works slowly becomes a field of competition for the monopoly of artistic legitimation. (Bourdieu 1993: 252) Under such conditions it can be argued, as Bourdieu does, that the value of contemporary art is decided by those taste-makers who have acquired ‘legitimate capital called “prestige” and “authority”’ (1996: 75). He terms them ‘cultural intermediaries’, or ‘all the occupations involving the presentation and representation’ (1984: 359) involved in the ‘symbolic work of producing needs’ (1984: 365). In the expanded field of contemporary art, cultural intermediaries range from artists themselves to curators, academics, gallerists, critics, dealers and buyers among others. This means that processes of legitimation have also become more complex as there are many entry points into the field and many agents creating meaning around works of art. Therefore the identity of the ‘artist’ is understood through a complex blend of self and institutional representation that determines an insider/outsider status. The construction of the artist has been conducted through the discourse of art history. The earliest accounts of the lives and work of artists can be found in Giorgio Vasari’s ([1550] 1965) Lives of the Artists, which contains a series of artists’ biographies from the early Modern era. The introduction of the individual artist is generally said to have occurred in this period, where artists were separated from artisanal, group activities and elevated as idiosyncratic people with a singular artistic vision (Baxandall 1972; Inglis and Hughson 2005; Wolff 1993). The Romantic notion of the artist held: that it is in the nature of art that its practitioners are not ordinary mortals; that they necessarily work alone, detached from social life and interaction and often in opposition to social values and practices. (Wolff, 1993: 11) Vasari’s writing was significant because it connected creative artefacts to artists through their biographies. Furthermore, it establishes the centrality of the artists’ biography to understanding his or her work. For example, the notion of the artistic ‘genius’ is demonstrated through early detachments from society, such as: …in place of studying, he never did anything but daub his own books, and those of the other boys, with caricatures, whereupon the prior determined to give him all means and every opportunity for learning to draw. (Vasari [1550] 1965: 32) The biographies write the stories of these artists through a chronological reading of their training, influences and social circles. The importance of managing these biographies is displayed in the anecdotal ‘stories’ included

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in Vasari’s writing that contribute to maintaining the aura of the artist as a figure separated from society and engaged in a certain lifestyle, rather than an occupational role. While Modernity compensated for the isolation of the artist by glorifying the working lives of artists, these historical narratives have now been destabilized. Academic discourse has sought to demystify the myth of the ‘artist as genius’ and instead claims that artists are ‘enmeshed in a whole series of social relationships’ (Inglis and Hughson 2005: 17) which they are reliant on to produce their work and to maintain their status as ‘artist’. While museums were once the dominant institutions of power and influence in the art world, the art market has now emerged as an arbiter of taste and success and artistic production now happens across an expanded network of competing positions. In this context, the construction and management of the artist’s biography is of central importance not only to determining the legitimacy of the artist, but also maintaining their ‘aura’ as an artist, which separates them from the rest of society (Helguera 2012). While Vasari’s biographies of artists focus on their training, influences and social circles, contemporary artists’ biographies are constructed in much more complex ways. Where artists live and work, as well as the social circles they move in and their methods of representation, production and distribution all contribute to the construction of their biographies. Importantly, what they demonstrate is that the formation of artistic identities coalesces around the accumulation of artistic capital, or cultural capital specific to the field of art. Therefore, artists’ biographies are enacted and performed by artists themselves as well as mediated through the formal institutions of art. For artists like Sue Tompkins, this means that the objects that she produces have an intimate connection to her biography and cannot be understood as commodities that circulate separate to her persona as an artist.

Spatial biographies In the twenty-first century, artists’ biographies are narrated through multiple means. These include information galleries and museums communicate about artists in the form of press releases, interpretational information and curatorial displays, as well as through art criticism, academic writing and the wider media and Internet. Artists also represent themselves by mediating their own work, giving talks and through their own self-presentation. Of primary importance to the artists’ biography is the location in which he or she lives and works. This is often the first means through which an artists’ work can be ‘read’. The following section explains how artistic capital in the form of geographic location confers legitimacy in the field of contemporary art production. In doing so, it proposes

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that artists’ biographies can be understood as ‘spatialized’ frameworks through which artistic identities emerge. Bourdieu’s concept of the field provides a spatial metaphor through which to understand artistic practice. Within the field, certain subfields can be identified, for example, certain practices such as sculpture, painting and film could be understood as subfields of the broader field of contemporary art production. Each of these subfields has its own distinct logic and rules that interact with the wider field. Different geographical locations of artistic practice can also be considered subfields as they too have their own distinct logic and legitimate capital. These subfields can also be understood through Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as they produce knowledge, skills and competencies particular to the contemporary art field. Bourdieu writes: The agent engaged in practice knows the world…too well, without objectifying distance, takes it for granted, precisely because he is caught up in it, bound up with it; he inhabits it like a garment…he feels at home in the world because the world is also in him, in the form of the habitus. (Bourdieu 2000: 142–143) Artists ‘learn’ the rules of the habitus through their training at art schools and through their social scenes. These scenes can be understood as ‘small performative environments’ (Helguera 2012: 7) where artists ‘act out’ the rules and the logic of the wider art world. This explains the ways that artists adhere to these rules and how they come to understand capital and its symbolic value often without questioning it. The rules of the game are embodied by artists as a result of the particular social, economic and cultural resources available to them. Because the habitus is formed through practice, particular social scenes emerge in different places at different times. As Elizabeth Currid explains, while the formal institutions of art provide a ‘nexus for art and economics to converge’ (2007: 112), the informal, social spaces that artists’ occupy are arenas in which artists can develop, discuss and mediate their practices. These informal spaces are ‘great sites of creative exchange within a scene’ (Currid 2007: 104), and they can be understood as geographically specific networks of studios, meeting places and social spaces that, together, create and support practice at its grassroots level. They are spaces that are defined and organized by artists, and therefore exclusively the domain of artists themselves. Nikos Papastergiadis (2006) calls these the ‘places for art’, where the working practices of artists are lived out. As he says: The art of placing and the place for art is always shifting. Artists stretch the boundaries of their practice by defining their context and strategies in paradoxes…. (Papastergiadis 2006: 8)

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Sites of social exchange can also be found in artists’ initiatives in the form of projects and collaborations. These usually take the form of a self-organized network of artists focused on a central theme or idea who collectively produce work within a discursive structure and self-mediate their own projects (Hebert and Karlsen 2013). These discursive sites can be geographically understood through Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) concepts of ‘representational spaces’ and ‘representations of space’. According to Lefebvre, representational spaces are lived spaces where inhabitants appropriate used space and make symbolic use of the objects within it. In his words, ‘This is the dominated – and hence passively experienced – space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate’ (1991: 39). Therefore, representational space can be seen as both physical and nonphysical spaces, similar to informal sites and networks of artistic and creative exchange. In contrast, representations of space are conceptualized spaces that ‘identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived’ (1991: 38). These are dominant spaces and can be seen as the formal institutions of art, for example, galleries, museums and art fairs. According to Lefebvre, artists such as Picasso and Klee were inventing a new representational spatiality through their paintings, not merely producing objects. This new spatiality presented an ‘object – in – space…bound up with a presentation of space itself’ (1991: 304) and its purpose was to reflect the political transformation of social life and space in Modernity. It did this by detaching itself from the ‘affective and the expressive’ (1991: 304) surface of the canvas and instead sought to reduce painting to its signifiers and symbols. In doing so, it presented a spatialized view of the world using its everyday, symbolic objects. The use of everyday, symbolic objects has defined art since Modernity, which has in turn impacted on the position of the artist in society. As Papastergiadis explains, ‘…the idea that the place of art is above life is an illusion that no longer has meaning’ (2006: 8). Similarly, artists no longer hold a privileged position detached from society. However, the geographic spaces artists choose to inhabit can be seen as ‘parafunctional spaces’ (2006: 130), or sites that have yet to be determined by developers and city planners. Papastergiadis, similarly to Lefebvre, defines these as places outside of predictive control spaces. In his words, they retain ‘the potential for new and unpredictable alignments and forms of cultural production whose proper name is yet to emerge’ (2006: 131). In cities, this can be seen through disused industrial warehouses transformed into artists’ studios and galleries. In Papastergiadis’ words: …they serve as opportunities to discover wonder and contemplate the weird patterns of history. These thoughtful zones – spaces in which a different kind of thought is possible – are so loaded with resonance and inspiration, partly because they were never intended as places of reverie…Perhaps it is a kind

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of homage to the traces of labour and other kinds of effort that survive in the ambience of waste. (2006: 131–132) While Lefebvre’s writing on representation positions art within the realm of everyday symbols and signifiers, Papastergiadis argues that artists have the capacity to extend the ‘language of resistance and representation’ (2006: 24). Therefore, the processes of making art that address the everyday is not a form of escape, but rather it serves to ‘…expand the contours of perception and experience, rather than to reinforce or accentuate political views on existing social divisions’ (2006: 24). Returning to the focus of this chapter, the following sections trace the ways in which Sue Tompkins has appropriated the symbolic materials and narratives found in the geographical and discursive sites where she lives and works. In doing so, it argues that she has fashioned her identity as an artist because of the kinds of cultural capital created within, and associated with, these social scenes.

The Glasgow art scene Sue Tompkins is a key figure in the Glasgow art scene, which can be understood as a geographically specific subfield of the wider contemporary art field. Discursive interactions and a constant need to engage in dialogue about practices have historically defined the production of art in Glasgow and have therefore become intertwined with the artists’ identities who live there. The highly social environment and the willingness of artists to self-organize, thereby ‘mediating their own work and the work of their peers’ (Lind in Wood 2010: 173), have profoundly shaped the institutions of art in the city, as well as informing artistic practices. Artists in Glasgow have historically appropriated space in the city, transforming industrial warehouses into studios and artist-run galleries (Lowndes 2010). Therefore, the art scene can be described as a particular artistic habitus where artists’ identities and practices have developed through the accumulation of symbolic and cultural capital. As Bourdieu writes, the ‘Habitus, as a product of social conditionings, and thus of a history…is endlessly transformed’ (Bourdieu 1994: 7), meaning that the artistic capital of any artist in the scene is continuously fluctuating according to changing field positions and structures. This explains the emergence of a particular set of practices in Glasgow that have in turn been legitimized in the wider art world as an artistic identity. The following section maps out the relationship between the Glasgow art scene and the wider field of contemporary art in order to explain how this has happened through the representation and self-representation of artists themselves. Art in Glasgow has historically been defined through its discursive interactions and tight-knit social scene. Sarah Lowndes (2010) attributes this to the meteoric

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upsurge in grassroots activity in the Glasgow art, music, literature and theatre scenes since the 1970s and the various institutions, artists and collectives that bolstered it. While it is impossible to pin one style of working to a particular art scene, it can be said that a ‘narrative tradition’ (Lowndes 2010: 59) has been apparent in Scottish painting since the 1960s. This found favour with artists wishing to represent a more realistic view of their environment than figurative or abstract painting would allow. Maria Lind also acknowledges the ‘poetic conceptualism’ (Lind in Wood, 2010: 173) of much of Scottish art, although she is also quick to point out that this is not an all-encompassing style or approach. Rather it is perhaps a reflection of the capacity of Glasgow artists to organize their own scene. It is also reflective of the tendency of Scottish artists to use the everyday, symbolic materials and narratives in their immediate environment to create their work. Conceptual art is described by Lucy Lippard in terms of an historical movement in which the ‘dematerialization’ of the art object’ became paramount, therefore the artwork in its material form is secondary to the idea, the art object is ‘lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or “dematerialized”’ (Lippard 1973: vii). Dating back to the late 1960s and early 1970s Conceptual Art emerged during a time of dramatic social and cultural change. Art produced during this period is seen to have responded by disavowing its elite status and attempting to situate itself discursively in the realm of everyday life. Possibly for the same reasons, and because of a lack of money in the art scene, even recent art in Glasgow has tended towards a conceptual, dematerialized status. Another important quality of the Glasgow art scene is its capacity to foster interdisciplinary practices that transcend field boundaries. For example, many artists work between and across disciplines such as art and performance and art and music. Elizabeth Currid (2007) writes about a similar tendency in New York City because of the relative closeness of these scenes and the shared spaces in the form of clubs and bars where artists, musicians and fashion designers socialize. This in turn leads to a cross-fertilization of ideas and the movement of agents between fields via their social networks. While a full analysis of the Glasgow art scene is beyond the limitations of this chapter, the highly social environment and the willingness of artists to selforganize thereby ‘mediating their own work and the work of their peers’ (Lind in Wood 2010: 173) have profoundly shaped the network of art galleries and museums in the city. While many of these have received international recognition in the art world, most of them originated as spaces founded by artists themselves. As Lefebvre describes: Their intervention occurs by way of construction – in other words, by way of architecture, conceived of not as the building of a particular structure, palace or monument, but rather as a project embedded in a spatial context and a

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texture which call for ‘representations’ that will not vanish into the symbolic or imaginary realms. (Lefebvre 1991: 42) The capacity for artists to appropriate spaces for art and to use objects and references in their everyday environment describes the habitus of the Glasgow art scene. As a subfield, it has formed in relation to the wider field of contemporary art and has gained legitimation through its representation in the field. For example, in 1996, art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist termed the success of these artists and institutions ‘The Glasgow Miracle’2 which has, through the media become the title for the Glasgow ‘brand’. This is because so many of the artists working in Glasgow at that time went on to achieve much international success despite coming from an area that was very economically deprived and an art scene that had virtually no money. As a term, ‘The Glasgow Miracle’ is quite fraught, however, because it quite romantically and uncritically sums up a decade or more of artistic activity that was developed through the hard work of the artists, curators and mediators who lived and worked there. As mentioned, Sue Tompkins is one such artist who has gained artistic legitimation through the Glasgow art scene. Her practice typifies the conceptual and interdisciplinary tendencies described here. Through an analysis of her artistic biography, the following sections explain how the accumulation of artistic capital specific to Glasgow has legitimized her identity as an internationally recognized artist.

Sue Tompkins: The Glasgow habitus and self-representation Sue Tompkins’ work has been formed in the artistic habitus of the Glasgow art scene. Born in Leighton Buzzard in 1971, she attended Glasgow School of Art in the 1990s and was part of Elizabeth Go, an all-female art collective in the 1990s together with her twin sister and three other artists. The group formed in part as a response to what the men in the Glasgow art scene were doing (Lowndes 2010) but also as a way to experiment with cross-disciplinarity between film and music. Tompkins was also the vocalist for the indie band Life Without Buildings, which she formed with fellow Glasgow Art School graduates Robert Johnston, Chris Evans and Will Bradley. These activities have been critical in attributing certain forms of artistic capital to her identity. Drawing on a Bourdieusian framework, Graw writes that, ‘sometimes it is the market that dictates its conditions to art; at other times, artistic criteria win over those of the market’ (2009: 82). To explain this, she

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introduces the notion of the ‘artist’s artist’, a figure she uses as evidence of artistic reputation over commercial success. The artists’ artist, according to Graw, values peer over commercial recognition. She interprets this kind of artist and artwork as bearing a type of symbolic capital that may or may not translate to economic capital in the artists’ lifetime; however, as she points out, the artist’s artist usually finds such commercial success posthumously, once their careers have been stabilized within the canon of art history. For the artist’s artist, the labour of their work is completely bound up with the objects that they produce and commercial viability is a low priority. Therefore, they cannot be understood as typical art-commodities that circulate independently of the artists themselves. In turn, this charges the work with a ‘performative energy’ (Graw 2009) where the focus is on the artist as a subject. Tompkins can be seen to embody this identity as an artist. The materiality of her work and her self-presentation is, as Papastergiadis explains an extension of ‘the language of resistance and representation’ (2006: 24) and this can be understood through her embeddedness in the discursive spaces of the Glasgow art scene. Tompkins’ work is composed of found phrases, popular song lyrics and snippets of conversation with friends. She collects everyday words and language and lovingly labours over them, presenting them back to her audience on colourful scraps of paper and newsprint sheets. At first, it would seem as though Tompkins randomly selects these words and phrases, however, on closer inspection it is clear they have a particular significance for Tompkins and that they can’t be understood in isolation. Rather, her work is an entire language filled with rhythm and intimacy of everyday conversation. It is comprised of her casual observations of human interactions and connections to things like music and fashion magazines, and also the very human experiences of humour and friendship and loss. Words are carefully selected, edited and placed with a precise sensitivity to weight and balance (Figure 8.1). Tompkins is also a performance artist. Her performances are the spoken version of her material objects. She ‘reads’ them out from a meticulously composed script comprised of words and drawings, playing with words and repeating them over and over until they are emptied out of meaning, becoming forms and sounds. Some are sung, some are spoken seriously, some are playful. The delivery is punctuated with pauses, where she moves from foot to foot, looking directly at her audience. Her performances can be seen as an extension of her time in Life Without Buildings as her lyrics similarly played with everyday language and repetitive phrases. For example, the recorded sound work ‘My Dataday’ (Tompkins 2010) starts with a sung repetition of ‘My Dataday’ lasting over a minute. Dataday, obviously an idiom of ‘day to day’, plays on the casual expression of everyday speak. Through the repetition, the idea of the personal every day is heightened, while,

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Figure 8.1 Sue Tompkins, ‘Your Pocket Magic’ (detail), Typewritten text on paper, card, black felt, glass table, 2007. Commissioned by The Showroom, London. Courtesy the artist, The Showroom, London and The Modern Institute, Glasgow.

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elsewhere, words are almost posed as questions, as if pointing out the slippages between language and communication. The recording continues: Mmmmh In Private. (Pause) On guard. On guard! On guard! On guard! In Private. On guard. Very funny. The sound is embedded in the fuzz and imperfections of an analogue home recording using a microphone with no filter, but these imperfections become part of the work, as does the irregular, found papers on which she types. My Dataday has an accompanying text piece titled ‘For My Dataday’ (2010). Again, words from the sound recording are typed out on delicate pink paper. For her performances, the papers of her script are often bound together using colourful treasury tags, or ring binders; and like the use of the typewriter, these somewhat out-dated office supplies comprise a significant aesthetic drawn from everyday symbols and signs (Figure 8.2). Tompkins work has been formed in the artistic habitus of the Glasgow art scene and, as Lefebvre (1974) writes, it uses the signifying elements found in the everyday to construct its meaning. While it references the artistic movements of Conceptualism and Concrete Poetry, her conceptual framework is found in her economy of means. For example, language and exchange, as well as an interrogation of everyday materials. Tomkins can be seen to typify Graw’s explanation of the ‘artists’ artist’ through her focus on self-representation and working collectively within the highly social landscape of the Glasgow art scene. Returning to Bourdieu, it can be said that her active involvement in the scene has given her artistic legitimation in the subfield of art. However, Tompkins has managed to gain further legitimation in the wider field of contemporary art, including commercial representation by the Modern Institute and as part of the Glasgow brand. In this sense, the Glasgow art scene is an example of Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘field of restricted production [which] can be measured by its power to define its own criteria for the production and evaluation of its products’ (1993: 115). In Glasgow, artists create their own legitimation and value specific to their scene. This has produced a ‘closed field of competition for cultural legitimacy’ (1993: 115) where artworks can’t be reduced to external economic, political or social factors. In Bourdieu’s words, they are

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… stocks of products which may either relapse into the status of material objects (valued as such, by the weight of paper) or rise to the status of cultural objects endowed with an economic value incommensurate with the value of the material components which go into producing them. (Bourdieu 1993: 97)

Figure 8.2 Sue Tompkins, ‘For my Dataday’, 2010, typewritten text on coloured paper. Courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow.

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Here, the economic value of Tompkins’ work cannot be seen in the rawness of her materials or her economy of means, rather it has been produced through the attachment of her artistic biography to her work.

Conclusion Bourdieu, quoting a painter, says that artworks are ‘sorts of winks inside a milieu’ (1993: 161) meaning that art is not understood as an autonomous object, but rather through the structure of the field in which it has been produced. He explains that these ‘winks’ or silent references link to other artists present and past, and that each act and each gesture within the field serves to reveal precisely the interrelations and interactions of the field. Tompkins’ practice constructs intersecting histories that connect objects, language and everyday life to space in often surprising, but strangely familiar ways. As Papastergiadis says, ‘Artists stretch the boundaries of their practice…’ (2006: 8) through interdisciplinary reaches and through acts of resistance to the dominant structures of the field, which tie their work to situations and contexts beyond the established and visible institutions of art. Spatialized biographies tell the story of artists’ lives through the spaces and social networks they inhabit. They problematize ‘professionalism’ as a form of legitimation and instead demonstrate that artists’ identities are formed through complex negotiations between self and institutional representation, and the performance of a multitude of selves.

Notes 1 My observations on contemporary art production are made from the viewpoint of a participant in the field. I am an independent curator, and I am curating an exhibition with Sue Tompkins that will be presented in 2017. Therefore, I am also involved in the mediation and representation of artists’ identities and the objects they produce. 2 ‘The Glasgow Miracle’ was a term coined by Hans Ulrich Obrist after a visit to Glasgow in 1996. It has since become a catchall term to describe art in Glasgow. The term has received much criticism from Glasgow-based artists as it served to create a myth around their success, obscuring the decades of hard work and also the variety of work produced in the city. From 2012 to 2014, The Glasgow School of Art in partnership with the CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts produced The Glasgow Miracle: Materials for Alternative Histories, a research project using archival materials to reflect on the renaissance of the visual arts in Glasgow since the 1970s.

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References Baxandall, M. (1972), Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice, London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1993), The Field of Cultural Production, trans. R. Johnson, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1994), ‘Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field’, trans. L. J. D. Wacquant, and S. Farage, Sociological Theory, 12 (1): 1–18. Bourdieu, P. (1996), The Rules of Art, trans. S. Emanuel, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (2000), Pascalian Meditations, trans. R. Nice, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Currid, E. (2007), The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Eisler, C. (1987), ‘“Every Artist Paints Himself”: Art History as Biography and Autobiography’, Social Research, 54 (1): 73–99. Graw, I. (2009), High Price: Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture, trans. N. Grindell, Berlin: Sternberg Press. Graw, I. (2012), ‘In the Grip of the Market? On the Relative Heteronomy of art, the Art World, and Art Criticism’, in M. Lind and O. Velthius (eds), Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets, 183–208, Berlin: Sternberg Press. Helguera, P. (2012), Art Scenes: The Social Scripts of the Art World, New York: Jorge Pinto Books. Herbert, S. and A. Szefer Karlsen, eds (2013), Self-Organised, London: Open Editions. Inglis, E. and J. Hughson (2005), The Sociology of Art: Ways of Seeing, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Julier, G. (2008), The Culture of Design. 2nd Ed. London: Sage. Lefebvre, H. (1991), The Production of Space, trans. D. Nichlson-Smith, Oxford: Blackwell. Lind, M. and O. Velthius, eds (2012), Contemporary Art and Its Markets: A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios, Berlin: Sternberg Press. Lippard, L. (1973), Six Years: The Dematerialisation of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Lowndes, S. (2010), Social Sculpture: The Rise of the Glasgow Art Scene. 2nd Ed., Edinburgh: Luath Press Limited. O’Neill, P. (2012), The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Papastergiadis, N. (2006), Spatial Aesthetics, London: Rivers Oram Press. Thornton, S. (2008), Seven Days in the Art World, London: Granta Publications. Tompkins, Sue (2010), ‘My Dataday’. Available online: https://soundcloud.com /icalondon/sue-tompkins-my-dataday (accessed on 14 July 2016). Vasari, G. ([1550] 1965), Lives of the Artists, trans. G. Bull, London: Penguin Classics. Wolff, J. (1993), The Social Production of Art. 2nd Ed., London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Wood, K.B. (2010), Selected Maria Lind Writing, Berlin: Sternberg Press.

9 THE MAKER 2.0: A CRAFT-BASED APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING A NEW CREATIVE IDENTITY Catharine Rossi

Introduction In September 2011 Power of Making: The Importance of Being Skilled opened at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 9.1). It was curated by the designer, educator and curator Daniel Charny in collaboration with the Crafts Council, the UK’s contemporary craft development agency. The exhibition sought to ‘celebrate the role of making in our lives’ by presenting ‘works by both amateurs and leading makers from around the world’ (News Release n.d.). The result was an eclectic mix of over 100 artefacts from around thirty countries, ranging from a traditionally crafted British leather saddle and an ornate handmade Ghanaian coffin to a digitally programmed quilt and self-replicating 3D printer. The exhibition didn’t just display made objects but their making and makers too: projected at the gallery’s rear were films about makers-in-action, while a ‘Tinker Space’ hosted demonstrations and workshops for visitors to watch and participate in making (Beaven 2013; News Release n.d.). This proved a winning combination. Power of Making attracted 315,000 visitors, making it the Museum’s most popular free exhibition ever (From Now On n.d.). It confirmed an international craft revival that had been gathering momentum since the midnoughties (Peach 2013), fuelled by a reawakening to the importance of making amid its possible demise (Charny 2011: 7). It also identified the figure positioned as the protagonist of this renaissance: the maker. Power of Making revealed how the maker, an old European word (Online Etymology Dictionary n.d.) historically associated with specialist craft identities such as the cabinetmaker or the female-associated homemaker (Edwards 2006:

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Figure 9.1 Exhibition entrance, ‘Power of Making’, V&A Museum (6 September 2011 to 2 January 2012), Photo © Oscar Bauer.

13), has taken on new meaning and purchase in recent years. Today the maker can be broadly divided in two types. On the one hand it is a new name for the pre-existing identity of the crafts practitioner. This rebranding is explicit in the exhibition’s name: Power of Making replaced the exhibition’s initial title Craft Traces, following the curator’s search for a more accessible and inclusive way of presenting craft (Charny 2010, 2016). This echoes a wider trend of adopting maker terminology to describe craft in the United Kingdom and the United States, the currency of its authentic and quality associations informing its appearance in marketing campaigns by brands from Burberry to Häagen Dazs (McGuirk 2013; Gibson 2014: 3). Power of Making also presented another maker, one born outside of the craft world but who shares its hands-on approach and who often uses craft tools and techniques to work collaboratively in what Ele Carpenter described in the catalogue as ‘digital making’ (2011: 50). Calling this type of creative figure a maker is more recent. It can be traced back to the 2005 establishment of MAKE:1 magazine and accompanying makezine.com by Dale Dougherty at O’Reilly Media, the publishing company owned by Internet evangelist Tim O’Reilly and based in California’s hi-tech heartlands. According to the publisher (Maker Media 2013), it was Dougherty who coined the terms ‘maker’ and ‘maker movement’ for what O’Reilly (2013) described

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as this ‘upwelling of interest in making things, embracing everything from new technologies like 3D printing and other forms of advanced manufacturing … to crafting and older hands-on technologies’ (O’Reilly 2013) This maker’s roots lie in California’s 1960s and 1970s hacker culture, in collectives such as the Homebrew Computer Club, whose members, including Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack, promoted computers as a DIY technology for selfliberation; an openness and alterity lost in the subsequent corporatization of this technology (Dellot 2015: 16, 17). Since the mid-noughties, this ethos has been reinvigorated by ‘the making and sharing ethos’ of Web 2.0 and its usergenerated sites and social media platforms. Notably, Web 2.0 was a term popularized by O’Reilly (Gauntlett 2011: 1, 7). This maker has been on the rise. Between 2010 and 2015 the number of makerspaces (Figure 9.2), an umbrella term to describe open-access workshops where makers gather to use and share digital design and fabrication tools, grew significantly in both the United Kingdom and China; from nine to ninety-seven in the former (Stokes, Stewart, and Sleigh 2015) and from one to over a hundred in the latter (Saunders and Kingsley 2016: 6). Personal consumption of 3D printers also increased, from sixty-six sold in 2007 to over 23,000 in 2011 (Tanenbaum and Tanenbaum 2015: 195). This new creative identity is a hybrid digital-analogue maker (Carpenter 2011: 49), an offspring of Web 2.0. To coin a phrase, this is a ‘maker 2.0’. Given the composite and often contradictory nature of these two

Figure 9.2 Makerspace, iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, http:// www. nesta.org.uk/blog/open-dataset-uk-makerspaces, Courtesy of iMAL/Fab Lab.iMAL.

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maker identities, this chapter will focus on this second, newer, identity, a partial gaze that enables an in-depth focus on this complex figure. Maker 2.0 has been regularly appearing on multiple digital and physical platforms, from websites to books such as Cory Doctorow’s 2009 novel Makers and Chris Anderson’s 2012 treatise Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, both manifestoes for the democratized digitally fuelled innovation that MAKE’s maker offers. The digital maker has also been embraced by the craft-based maker world, notably in the Craft Council’s biannual Make: Shift conference and Make: Shift: Do festivals, whose innovation and technological-led agenda have aimed to attract this fashionable maker breed (Greenlees 2016). These multimedia appearances have been accompanied by prominent government endorsement, premised on the maker’s perceived economic importance in knowledge economies to which technological innovation and the creative industries are central (Rooney, Kern and Kastelle 2012: 12). In Britain, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne ended his 2011 Budget speech calling for a ‘march of the makers’, conflating the craft and digital maker and small-scale making and large-scale production in his still-unsuccessful bid to reignite Britain’s manufacturing industries (Elliot 2016). The United Kingdom isn’t the only faltering economy to champion the maker: in 2014 President Obama launched Nation of Makers, an initiative to give Americans greater access to digital design and fabrication technologies, fostering a curious and problem solving ‘maker mindset’ ‘vital to the modern innovation economy’ (Kalil and Coy 2016). Encouragement for the maker 2.0 has also appeared in China, as it looks to shift towards this economic model. In 2015 the government announced ‘Made in China 2025’, a policy to move China away from the diminishing returns of mass manufacture and towards high quality, technology and innovation-led production. Makers, with their technical skills and culture of free experimentation, reuse and repair, have been positioned as the authors of this new industrial revolution (Lindtner 2015: 854, 855) and government funding has informed the rapid growth of China’s makerspaces. ‘We have seen makers coming thick and fast’ Premier Li Keqiang (2015) declared in 2015, ‘and the cultural and creative industries have been developing with great vitality’ (Keqiang 2015). Maker 2.0 has been one of the protagonists of China’s creative industries, an identity fashioned as much by the state as by grassroots developments. Clearly the maker 2.0 has emerged in the last decade to become a fashionable and valuable creative identity. Yet despite its international visibility, and seeming invention by a media outfit, this figure has been subject to little critical inquiry. The aim of this chapter is therefore to explore maker 2.0’s identity through its media representation, and explore how this presence is implicated with its coconstruction by the media and makers themselves.

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Given this chapter’s limited scope I will focus on the output of MAKE’s publishers, the media organization largely responsible for constructing and popularizing this figure in the United Kingdom and the United States. Admittedly, this restricts this chapter to the output of one media outlet, and it is important to assert the maker’s heterogeneous existence outside of MAKE (Hertz 2012). It also presents a largely post-2005 Western focus, but I will also consider the maker in contexts such as China, where this figure has emerged in a radically different context. The remainder of this chapter is divided into two parts. The first explores my methodology, an interpretation of ‘fashioning’ I term a ‘crafting’ approach. The second considers the maker’s representation and co-construction through MAKE’s publisher’s multiple platforms. In particular, it asks how MAKE has represented and selected who makers are, how it has enabled them to become makers, and what values it has placed on makers as creative practitioners in post-industrial and knowledge economies.

Methodology: Crafting the maker This chapter builds on research into the representation and construction of identities in the creative industries (Banks, Gill, and Taylor 2013; Hesmondalgh and Baker 2011). In particular, it looks to Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wissinger (2012) and Agnès Rocamora (2009, 2016), who have explored the interplay between representation and identity construction of fashion personas, from model ‘looks’ to Paris’s mythologized status as a fashion city. They address issues including agency in identity co-construction and the overlapping of real and represented identities, both of which have informed this research. This chapter offers an interpretation of this ‘fashioning’ approach suited to the particular characteristics and representative conventions of the maker 2.0; a ‘crafting’ approach. This frames the maker 2.0 in a craft context, offering a way to critically and historically contextualize this new figure, and deal with the paucity of critical literature on the maker.2 Positioning the maker 2.0 as a crafts practitioner is not unusual: the preeminent craft writer Tanya Harrod has described MAKE’s ‘tinkering, technological brand of craft’ ([2011] 2015: 180). It follows Richard Sennett’s widely read The Craftsman, in which the sociologist discussed the ‘technological craftsmanship’ (2008: 33) involved in the open-source Linux operating system. These technologically inclusive conceptualizations of craft align with Glenn Adamson’s approach. The craft historian advocates understanding craft as ‘an approach, an attitude, or a habit of action. Craft exists only in motion. It is a way of doing things, not a classification of objects, institutions or people’ (Adamson 2007: 4). This loose definition allows for a breadth of activities to be considered as craft, including making printed circuit boards and programmed quilts. It also

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allows us to think of craft as a process, echoing the verb-like conceptualization of fashioning that underpins this volume. As a process, crafting the maker through the media includes fashioning activities such as appearing in magazines and engaging in self-maintenance activities, what Entwistle and Wissinger term ‘aesthetic labour’ (2012: 6). Crafting adds a material dimension to this mix, including engaging in making as a key activity in the self-construction of this identity. Crafting’s hands-on nature encompasses the hybrid analogue-digital nature of the design, fabrication and media technologies available to the maker 2.0. It also lifts the maker 2.0 out of the codified skill set associated with earlier medium-specific craft identities and into the looser assemblage of skills associated with post-industrial economies, in a processing of de- and reskilling discussed later in this chapter. Adamson also identified a series of ‘core [craft] principles’ in his conceptualization of craft. They include its supplementarity, amateur associations and close identification with skill, discussed above and evident in the Power of Making catalogue, whose subtitle is ‘The Importance of Being Skilled.’ In this chapter I will explore how these craft concepts and craft’s feminine associations (Adamson 2007: 5; Edwards 2006: 12, 13) can inform our understanding of the maker and their mediation. Thinking through Craft positions craft as a subordinate and marginalized realm. This conceptualization underpins much English language craft research in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as more popular understandings of craft in countries with similar histories of industrialization, such as the United Kingdom and the United States (Sennett 20; Risatti).3 The term ‘modern craft’ (Adamson, Cooke, and Harrod 2008: 6) is used to describe craft in industrial modernity, in which it assumes an economic, political and socio-cultural marginality, an endangered existence wherein the handmade is positioned in ideological opposition to industrial capitalism. This image defined craft practice and its representation in industrializing nations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from William Morris’s championing of the handmade in the Arts & Crafts movement, to the politically charged craft revival of the 1960s and 1970s. Power of Making reminds us how much craft’s condition has changed in the twenty-first century. Significantly, this new centrality is because of, rather than despite, technological advances that are once again revolutionizing manufacturing on a global scale. In 2012 the Economist described the arrival of the third industrial revolution, defined by a ‘digitization of manufacturing’ (Economist 2012) that replaces mass production with mass customization, making the craft-based scales of bespoke and batch production affordable on a much bigger scale. This is the revolution in which the maker is posited as a key player. Despite this popularity, the unfashionable and marginal associations of the word ‘craft’ still linger, and contribute to use of maker terminology. While the craft world’s use of the term ‘maker’ predates MAKE: magazine by over a decade, by

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the mid noughties ‘maker’ had become the preferred term for the Crafts Council (Greenlees) and its Crafts magazine publication, due its apparent gender neutrality (Gibson 2016) and emphasis on more general skills and knowledge over discipline specificity (Greenlees). Interestingly, even amid craft’s growing fashionability, the ‘maker’ has remained the Crafts Council’s preferred term. In craft’s move from the margins into the mainstream, it has leveraged the currency of the maker 2.0 to reposition and assert the craft maker as a key player in the creative industries, a co-option that requires further unpacking than is possible here. Craft’s changing condition also informs this chapter. While asserting the validity of ‘modern craft’ to understand the maker 2.0, it also offers a critical approach suited to craft’s popularity today, a globalized context in which both analogue and digital making has a new prominence: in other words, a post craft condition.

Making MAKE’s maker A ‘Martha Stewart for Geeks.’ This was how Dougherty pitched MAKE to O’Reilly in 2005 (O’Reilly 2013). Provisionally titled Hacks, a title Dougherty rejected in favour of one he thought offered ‘a more positive framing for customizing and changing the world’ (O’Reilly 2013), his idea was for a magazine as a platform for individuals to share and make DIY projects, albeit those of a more technological spin than Stewart’s homemaking empire. Dougherty’s idea of catering for the then-unnamed ‘maker’ proved prophetic. The magazine quickly became the mouthpiece for the growing maker movement: its circulation doubled between 2005 and 2008 from 60,000 to over 125,000 and in 2012 (the most recent statistics available) the magazine had a total readership of 300,000 (Make Magazine 2016: np; Sivek 2011: 191). This growth has been fuelled by the magazine’s extensions into other media: in 2005 it organized the first fair for makers in the local Bay Area, as an opportunity for readers to meet like-minded individuals to show and share their interests. The Maker Faire is now a global brand. Held in cities from Tokyo to Detroit, Oslo and Shenzhen, and in locations including the White House, in 2015 Maker Faires and children-focused mini Maker Faires attracted over a million visitors (Maker Faire n.d.). There are even spin offs unconnected to the brand, including Shanghai’s Maker Carnival (Figure 9.3) and Maker Faire Africa. Today Maker Media consists of the magazine, makezine.com and fair, as well as the Maker Shed online and pop-up store and Make: YouTube channel. These brand extensions (Lury 2004: 11) proved so successful that in 2013 Dougherty led the launch of Maker Media as a spin-off company from O’Reilly Publishing (O’Reilly 2013). Established next to its founder in Sebastopol, a city to the north of San Francisco, Maker Media aims to actively create makers. On its foundation Dougherty declared: ‘The mission of Maker Media is to help more

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Figure 9.3 Shanghai Maker Carnival 2015. Photo by the author.

people become makers, and participate broadly in making a better future for themselves, their families and their communities’ (Dougherty cited in O’Reilly 2013). As the following sections will explore, this highly prescriptive mediation permeates its media outputs, a direct solicitation to its readers that makes it a rich case study for understanding the media’s role in identity construction.

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Since its first issue in February 2005 the magazine has retained a fairly similar appearance, and with it an equally regular representation of the maker, a consistency key to the magazine’s maker mission. The front cover of the initially quarterly (now bimonthly) publication features the word Make: in bright red san serif typeface on the top left corner, underlined with the tagline ‘technology on your own time’. Most of the cover (Figure 9.4) is dedicated to a single framed image; a self-built ‘kite camera’ for remote controlled aerial photography held

Figure 9.4 Issue 1 of Make © Make: Magazine.

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in the hands of its designer and maker, one Charles C. Benton, an ‘inveterate tinkerer’ and architecture professor at the University of California. Cover lines proclaim the issue’s contents, including ‘BUILD YOUR OWN KITE RIG USING THE PLANS INSIDE!’ and ‘181 pages of D.I.Y Technology’. The first issue includes articles by what would become a regular cohort of contributors. They include Makers author and open-source technology activist Doctorow on ‘hacking toy robots to sniff out toxic waste’; science fiction writer Bruce Sterling on makers dabbling in Stone Age flint knapping; and MIT scientist Neil Gershenfeld offering a tour of his Boston-based FabLab. These articles are joined by soon-to-be regular features, including: ‘Made on Earth: Report from the World of Backyard Technology’, a showcase of homemade endeavours including a monorail built in a Californian garden and a robotic Rubik’s Cube solver; a ‘Projects’ section of step-by-step instructions to make projects including the ‘kite camera’, and a how-to ‘Primer’ on soldering and desoldering.

Who is a MAKE maker The cover’s depiction of the maker as a white, middle-aged male is fairly typical of the magazine. Half of MAKE’s first ten covers depict a white middleaged male holding a self-built gizmo. While the magazine has attempted to overcome this lack of gender and ethnic diversity in recent years, symptomatic of a broader unevenness in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education and careers, it continues. Between 2005 and 2013, 85 percent of MAKE’s cover stars were male, and all were white (Britton 2015; Quattrocchi 2013). This representation tallies with the magazine’s readership. In 2012, 80 percent of MAKE’s readers were male and their median age was forty-four (Maker Media 2016: np). This also accurately represents the maker movement it has fostered in the United States and the United Kingdom, where 80 percent of makerspace users are male (Dellot 2015: 24). This is echoed in China, where 77 per cent of makers are male and 54 percent are university students (Saunders and Kingsley 2016: 6). This educated and middle-class demographic is also true of the United States: according to the Maker Market Study, a 2012 survey of Maker Faire exhibitors and MAKE magazine and newsletter subscribers, maker’s median income is $106,000, 80 percent have a post-graduate qualification and 83 percent are employed (24). This depiction also reflects the make-up of its editorial staff (Quattrocchi 2013), a homogeneity that strengthens the identification between the magazine and its readers. This male and masculine identity is also evident in the type of making that Make covers. This isn’t obvious at first. All of Maker Media’s products and marketing, and the multiple talks and interviews that Dougherty gives, promote a universal

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image of the maker. As he declared in his 2011 TED talk ‘We are Makers’, which nearly 700,000 viewers have watched: ‘All of us are makers. We’re born makers. We have this ability to make things, to grasp things with our hands. We use words like “grasp” metaphorically to also think about understanding things. We don’t just live, but we make. We create things’. Harrod identifies a craft precedent in Dougherty’s message, echoing the inclusive proclamations of the sculptor and typographer Eric Gill ([2011] 2015: 180). However, this universalist identity is not reflected in MAKE itself, wherein the type of projects included enforce parameters of what is and is not part of maker culture; an activity of boundary setting characteristic of cultural production (Bourdieu 1993: 42). The first and subsequent issues are based around DIY projects in electronics, computing, cars and other vehicles, robots and software, an emphasis that continues today (Britton 2015; Maker Market Study 2012: 12). While some more low technology and traditional skills are included, Make’s conceptualization of making largely excludes craft-associated making such as textiles, ceramics and glassblowing. The absence of craft in MAKE is highlighted by O’Reilly Media’s 2006 launch of Craft: magazine. Much of CRAFT’s cover’s design (Figure 9.5) is the same as MAKE. It has the same masthead and central image overlaid with cover lines – although here the tagline is ‘transforming traditional craft’ and the robots in the image are made of wool. The first issue features a programmable LED tank top made by a female PhD student, which editor Claire Sinclair uses to describe how CRAFT features projects considered outside of MAKE’s purview: This project definitely has the elements of a MAKE project – it involves soldering, LED technology, and programming. But there are also craft elements that don’t quite jibe with MAKE’s harder-edged sensibility: it requires a sewing machine, sewing skills, fabric, and a pattern. And unlike the projects in MAKE, where the end result is more about function than form, it’s essential for this project to be as aesthetically attractive as it is useful. (Sinclair 2006: 7) These materials, tools and techniques are all associated with textiles, a realm historically and pejoratively associated with the female gender (Adamson 2007: 5). Textile’s female and feminine associations are confirmed by the magazine’s first ten covers. Of the five that feature people, four are females – three of which are holding textile and fashion artefacts – and another four feature textiles. These projects are too crafty, and too female, to be included in MAKE; a story of defining a field by excluding craft played out repeatedly in the history of creative practice (Adamson 2007: 2). CRAFT’s tenth issue of February 2009 proved its last. Citing rising costs and reduced advertisers’ interest in print publishing more generally, Dougherty (2009) sought to assuage its readers that they had a place in MAKE: ‘We

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Figure 9.5 Issue 1 of Craft © Make: Magazine.

have always regarded crafters as we do makers, a creative vanguard who are remaking the world in ways that are especially vital today.’ Nevertheless, such female-associated textiles crafts remain marginal in MAKE’s universe; less than

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20 percent of makers describe themselves as involved in ‘sewing/weaving/ knitting/e-textiles’, compared to nearly 80 percent involved in hardware and software (Maker Market Study 2012: 12). Dougherty’s statement reinforces a perception of crafters and makers as two different, gendered identities, a separation and exclusion reinforced by the magazine’s promotion of the latter. Maker 2.0’s gendered identity also conforms to DIY’s historically male associations. This was evident in magazines such as Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, which Dougherty (2014) cites as inspiration for Make. These predecessors connect MAKE to a science and technology-infused DIY first popular in the eighteenth century and which re-emerged after the Second World War in activities such as making crystal radio sets and model planes (Harrod [2011] 2015: 180). These magazines fuelled a more general DIY boom: in the mid-1950s, DIY was the largest hobby in America and the third most popular leisure activity for married men (Lichtman 2006: 42). Design historian Paul Atkinson (2006: 7) describes this male-dominated twentieth century amateur home maintenance as ‘a means of asserting a masculine identity in a changing or uncertain world’. In the twenty-first century, DIY continues to serve in the selfconstruction of gendered, as well as class and sex identities (Moisio, Arnould, and Gentry 2013). By representing makers as male and, as the next section explores, through enabling them to performatively assert (Butler 1990) their gendered identity by participating in its DIY projects, MAKE contributes to its readers’ construction of their gendered and maker identities. As such, MAKE reproduces ideals of masculinity, evidencing a link between media representation and broader societal norms (Entwistle and Wissinger 2012: 4).

How to be a maker As the previous section suggests, one of the primary ways MAKE’s readers constitutively perform their maker identity is through making the DIY projects featured in the magazine. This making also asserts identity traits beyond that of the maker; not just in terms of gender, but also professional status. For the majority of MAKE readers making is a voluntary, non-commercial leisure activity that exists alongside their professional identity: most Maker Market Study (2012: 10) respondents identify their maker ‘type’ as hobbyist or tinkerer. Their responses assert the maker as an amateur figure, albeit one that exists in symbiotic relationship with these readers’ professional identities. The DIY articles can be split into two types: the ‘Primer’ feature, which would later become a ‘Skillbuilders’ section, provides instructions for makers to skill-up with technologies new and old, from speed squares to printed circuit boards,

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and the more elaborate ‘Projects’, which in 2016 include a smartphone garage door opener and DIY concrete lantern. The latter state upfront the time, money, materials and tool required, and the ‘complexity level’ involved. Both combine written descriptions with illustrated photographs of hands at work, paused processes, and tools, as part of the step-by-step instructions for makers to follow. Such articles are part of a broader culture of manuals, ‘how to’ guidance and advice literature long central to amateur craft practice (Knott 2015: xvi). They are part of what Ann Sophie Lehmann terms ‘showing making’, a ‘genre’ characterized by depictions of craft processes that has particular currency in our image-saturated digital age (2012: 12–13). Lehmann argues that such imagery serves four key ‘functions’: ‘archival’; ‘instructional’; ‘participatory’ and ‘display’. In MAKE the primary purpose of such imagery is their ‘instructional function’ as they ‘enable the acquisition of skills and material knowledge’ (Lehmann 2012: 9). They speak to an uneven distribution of expertise among its readers, many of whom are interested in making but lack the necessary skills. They embody a widespread deskilling in Western nations such as the United States, a result of the outsourcing of production and shift towards service economies (Charny 2011: 7; Lindtner 2015: 871). MAKE shows this has affected the skill level not only in the workplace, but at home too. As Dougherty lamented in 2012: There once was a time when most Americans commonly thought of themselves as tinkerers. Tinkering used to be a basic skill, and you could get a little bit more out of life than the average person if you had good tinkering skills – if you could fix your own car, for example, or improve your home or make your own clothes. I think we lost some of that over the decades, but I also think it is coming back. (Dougherty 2012: 11) MAKE’s readers might lack these making and repair skills, but they seek to regain lost skills and add new ones through the magazine; a process of de- and re-skilling that accompanies each new technological advance. The magazine’s middle class readers have sufficient means and time to engage in making in their free time (Knott 2015: xiii) and they choose to use this time to learn and apply skills to make a variety of domestic-scale projects, such as rigging for kite aerial photography. MAKE’s readers’ making is informed by their professional background. Like the cover star architecture professor Benton, many combine their leisure interest in making with a profession in an allied area: a third of Maker Market Study respondents work ‘in technical areas such as scientific or engineering’ (Maker Market Study 2012: 24). This is not uncommon. Knott describes the high incidence of creative practitioners spending ‘holiday or ‘free time’ engaged in a similar activity’ to their work (2015: 98). As Knott argues, the elision of work and

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leisure interests shows how individuals do not ‘switch off’ their work interests in their free time, but instead continue ‘to engage with the skills, tools and mentalities’ of their profession (2015: 98). To see qualified architects, engineers and scientists as amateur makers makes clear how leisure time identities reflect professional ones, and how reading MAKE, and realizing its DIY projects, is not about escaping a professional identity, but entrenching it. Reading and making MAKE’s DIY projects offers a way to assert both an individual and community maker identity. This co-construction of the maker’s identity chiefly occurs through readers’ participation in Maker Media’s other platforms. Makers can meet, show and take part in making activities at Maker Faires, and upload photographs and self-made films of their attempts to realize the magazine’s DIY projects, as well as their own making projects, to the publisher’s multiple social media channels, using the #makeshowtell hashtag. As Susan Currie Sivek has shown, user-generated content ‘intensifies readers’ buy-in to the ideologies presented’ (2011: 188) in MAKE, a close relationship between magazine and reader that enhances the sense of community, and also engenders consumer loyalty. Sharing making videos also exemplifies the ‘display’ function of ‘showing making’ that Lehmann identifies. This showcasing is part of a wider phenomenon of posting and sharing self-produced ‘how-to’ films on sites such as YouTube, many of which share their ‘unshowy, rough-andready’ appearance (Gauntlett 2011: 85). Such online sharing corresponds to Web 2.0’s participatory and usergenerated nature (Gauntlett 2011: 85) that enables individuals united by their interests but geographically separated to virtually come together and create their own communities. This digital connecting has been key to building local and international maker communities. According to the Economist (2012) ‘The ease with which designs for physical things can be shared digitally goes a long way towards explaining why the maker movement has already developed a strong culture.’ It also shows how the ‘maker 2.0’ may have been born in California, but makers can be located anywhere in the world, and the ability to be a member of the maker community is defined by the ability to access the Internet rather than being in any specific geographic location.

Why be a maker While the first two sections addressed who MAKE’s makers are and how to become one, this final section briefly considers some of the maker’s values, as posited by MAKE. While the maker’s gendering occurs through boundary setting, and becoming a maker is energized by making and sharing the DIY projects published in MAKE, the maker’s worth is communicated through the magazine’s voice. The magazine repeatedly features articles that proselytize the

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values of the maker, using ‘you’ or ‘we’ to engender empathy and identification between the author and reader. In the opening lines of MAKE’s first-ever editorial Dougherty declares: ‘more than mere consumers of technology, we are makers, adapting technology to our needs and integrating it into our lives’ (Dougherty 2005: 7). He posits the maker as an individual with agency, someone who does not passively accept technologies and products produced in some remote location; a passive and alienated relationship that defines contemporary consumer society (Dellot 2015). Instead the maker is a ‘craft consumer’ or ‘producing consumer’ (Knott 2015: xv), who exploits the accessibility of digital design and fabrication tools to make, adapt and fix their surroundings. Accordingly, the maker 2.0 is a response to the rapid technological changes of the third industrial revolution (Dellot 2015: 5); a response based on the embrace of emerging new technologies rather than their rejection. The idea of the maker as a backlash to the passivity of consumer technology is most explicit in the ‘Maker’s Bill of Rights’ that first appeared in the magazine’s fourth issue in 2006 (157). It was authored by one Mister Jalopy, a regular MAKE voice. Prefaced with the tagline ‘If you can’t open it, you don’t own it’ the manifesto consists of seventeen commandments for manufacturers to make their products more maker friendly. They include: ‘Cases shall be easy to open’; ‘Profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong and not making special tools available is even worse’ and ‘Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought’ (Jalopy 2006: 157). The manifesto exemplifies the magazine’s broader rejection of consumer technology’s closed ethos. This widespread corporate ideology is seen to have a detrimental environmental impact and to limit the country’s innovation capacity. Early articles in the magazine’s often have nationalist, nostalgic undertones about America’s former industrial and economic prowess, in which the maker is invested with the power to (re)claim the nation’s global might. As Fraudenfeld argues in the second issue: Yankee Ingenuity – that is, improvising with technology, taking ownership of it, and being self-reliant and creative with it, is a proud American tradition that has spread to every corner of the free world. Hollywood’s efforts to impose Soviet-style centralized control on technology are a huge step backwards for innovation. (Fraudenfeld 2005: 7) While such nationalist attitudes have since toned down, this idea of the maker as an economic figure has been central to other depictions of the maker. These include Anderson’s popular book Makers (2012), which positions the maker as the protagonist of the third industrial revolution, and so the key to America’s manufacturing future, and Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address, in which

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he argued that maker-friendly innovations such as 3D printing were the key to ensuring ‘that the next revolution in manufacturing is made in America’ (Lindtner 2015: 858). The maker is championed as the solution to America’s economic woes as it struggles to shift from a post-industrial to a knowledge economy. Significantly, the maker is not just posited as the saviour of the West’s faltering economies, but the East too. There is (at least) one key difference. As American academic Clay Shirky (2015) puts it, while in North American the maker movement occurs ‘against a background of nostalgia for the old US manufacturing industry’ in China ‘nothing in the Maker Movement is taking place against a background of nostalgia, because ‘the time when this country knew how to make things’ is just a synonym for “this morning”’. However, while there has been much prominent state and commercial investment in opening makerspaces in China, many of these stand empty and have in fact closed in 2016. Clearly, the role of the state, and of the media, is ultimately limited. Despite MAKE’s proclamations, the magazine did not invent the maker. Instead, it created the framework to support and promote an emerging identity, one that had its roots in the alternative culture of the 1960s and 1970s, and which was reawakened in the socio-economic, political and technological vicissitudes of the early 2000s.

Conclusion Of course MAKE is not the only representation of maker 2.0. As artist, academic and early MAKE contributor Garnet Hertz argued in 2012 (no pagination): ‘There is obviously a lot more to electronic DIY culture that what is found in the pages of Make.’ Hertz (2012: no pagination) is particularly critical of its increasingly commercial nature: ‘Make has done a lot of amazing work in popularizing the field, but it’s been sanitized into a consumer-friendly format in the process’, a criticism that reminds us that the hacker movement’s subversive spirit continues today. Equally different is Maker Faire Africa’s take on maker 2.0: it focuses on encouraging the maker as an entrepreneurial manufacturer, overcoming the limitation of the continent’s manufacturing industries during centuries of colonial exploitation (Harrod [2011] 2015: 181). Yet, as this chapter has argued, there is no doubt that MAKE and Maker Media have played a key role in constructing the maker 2.0. Using a ‘crafting’ interpretation of ‘fashioning’, it has used concepts of gender, amateurism and skill to show how Maker Media has proactively co-constructed the maker 2.0. It has shown how questions around who the maker 2.0 is, how you become a maker, and why the maker is a desirable creative identity, can be explored through considering the design and contents of the magazine and associated Maker Faire and digital platforms. This includes the importance of participatory content and platforms that allow readers to actively construct and demonstrate

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their maker identity, and exposing the boundaries that establish who is excluded and included in the maker 2.0 identity. Such demarcations are key features of the process of professionalization of creative identities (Atkinson 2010: 140), so it is interesting to see this in a currently overwhelmingly amateur identity, suggesting at least some makers’ increasingly professional status. Academics are only beginning to attend to the identity of the maker, and there are key aspects of the maker identity that necessitate further research not possible here. This includes investigating deeper the craft-based maker identity, and untangling its complex relationship with the maker 2.0. Also in question is the longevity of the maker. The maker is increasingly internationally visible, yet such fashionability also leads to an inevitable unfashionability. Future researchers may not just be looking at the fashioning of the maker through the media, but also its unfashioning.

Notes 1 Hereafter Make: will be described as MAKE and Craft: magazine as CRAFT, following the magazine’s convention. 2 Key exceptions include Susan Currie Sivek and Silvia Lindtner, both cited in the references. 3 These include Richard Sennett and Howard Risatti’s writings as well as The Journal of Modern Craft, which first appeared in 2008.

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Harrod, T. (2015), The Real Thing: Essays on Making in the Modern World, London: Hyphen Press. Hertz, G., ed. (2012), Critical Making, Hollywood, CA: Telharmonium Press. Hesmondalgh, D. and S. Baker (2011), Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries, Oxon, New York: Routledge. Jalopy, M. (2006), ‘“Own Your Own: If you Can’t Open It, You Don’t Own It”. A Maker’s Bill of Rights to Accessible, Extensible, and Repairable Hardware’, MAKE, 4: 154–157. Kalil, T. and A. Coy (2016), ‘Announcing June 17–23 as a Week of Making’, The White House, 9 March. Available online: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/03/09 /announcing-june-17-23-week-making (accessed on 2 October 2016). Keqiang, Li (2015), ‘Full Text: Report on the Work of the Government.’ Available online: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-03/16/c_134071473.htm (accessed on 13 September 2016). Knott, S. (2015), Amateur Craft: History and Theory, London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Lehmann, A.S. (2012), ‘Showing Making: On Visual Documentation and Creative Practice’, Journal of Modern Craft, 5 (1): 9–24. Lichtman, S. (2006), ‘Do-It-Yourself Security: Safety, Gender, and the Home Fallout Shelter in Cold War America’, Journal of Design History, 19 (1): 39–55. Lindtner, Silvia (2015), ‘Hacking with Chinese Characteristics: The Promises of the Maker Movement against China’s Manufacturing Culture’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 40 (5): 854–879. Luckman, S. (2015), Craft and the Creative Economy, Houndmills, Basingstoke; New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Lury, C. (2004), Brands: The Logos of the Global Economy, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge. Maker Faire (n.d.), ‘Maker Faire: A Bit of History’. Available online: https://makerfaire .com/makerfairehistory/ (accessed on 28 September 2017). Maker Media (2012), ‘Maker Market Study and Media Report’. Maker Media (2012), Study and Media Report: An In-depth Profile of Makers at the Forefront of Hardware Innovation. Available online: http://makerfaire.com/hardware -innovation-workshop/research/ (accessed on 1 August 2016). Maker Media (2013), ‘Fact Sheet.’ Available online: http://makermedia.com/press/fact -sheet/ (accessed on 27 June 2016). Maker Media (2016), Make Media Kit 2016. Available online: makermedia.com/wp -content/uploads/2016/02/2016-Make-Media-Kit-Final.pdf (accessed on 1 August 2016). Margetts, M. (2011), ‘Actions Not Words’, in D. Charny (ed.), The Power of Making: The Importance of Being Skilled, 38–43, London: V&A Publishing; Crafts Council. McGuirk, J. (2013), ‘Fashion, Fetish and Craft’, in COLLECT, 18–23, London: Crafts Council. Miller, D. (2011), ‘The Power of Making’, in D. Charny (ed.), The Power of Making: The Importance of Being Skilled, 14–23, London: V&A Publishing; Crafts Council. Moisio, R., E. J. Arnould, and J. W. Gentry (2013), ‘Productive Consumption in the Class-Mediated Construction of Domestic Masculinity: Do-it-yourself (DIY) Home Improvement in Men’s Identity Work’, Journal of Consumer Research, 40 (2): 298–316.

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‘News Release: Power of Making’ (n.d.), V&A. Available online: https://www.vam .ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/178663/Power_of_Making_-_Press_Release.pdf (accessed on 17 July 2016). O’Reilly, T. (2013), ‘Why We Spun Out Maker Media’, Radar. Available online: http:// radar.oreilly.com/2013/01/why-we-spun-out-maker-media.html (accessed on 27 June 2016). Peach, A. (2013), ‘What Goes Around Comes Around? Craft Revival, the 1970s and Today’, Craft Research, 2: 161–179. Quattrocchi, C. (2013), ‘MAKE’ing More Diverse Makers’, Edsurge, 29 October. Available online: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2013-10-29-make-ing-more-diverse-makers (accessed on 3 August 2016). Rocamora, A. (2009), Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and the Media, London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Rocamora, A. (2016), ‘Mediatization and Digital Media in the Field of Fashion’, Fashion Theory, 1–18. Available online: DOI: 10.1080/1362704X.2016.1173349 (accessed 29 July 2016). Rooney, D., G. Hearn and T. Kastelle eds. (2012), ‘Knowledge Is People Doing Things, Knowledge Economies Are People Doing Things with Better Outcomes for More People’, in Handbook on the Knowledge Economy, vol. 2, 1–14, Edward Elgar Publishing. Ebook. Saunders, T. and J. Kingsley (2016), Made in China: Makerspaces and the Search for Mass Innovation, London: Nesta. Sennett, Richard (2008), The Craftsman, London: Penguin. Shirky, C. (2015), ‘China’s Version of the ‘Maker Movement’ Puts the U.S. to Shame’, Fortune, October 21. Available online: http://fortune.com/2015/10/21/chinas-version -of-the-maker-movment-puts-the-u-s-to-shame/ (accessed on 5 October 2016). Sinclair, C. (2006), ‘The Crafting of Craft: Welcome to the New Magazine for the New Craft Movement’, CRAFT, 1: 7. Sivek, S. C (2011), ‘“We Need a Showing of All Hands”: Technological Utopianism in MAKE Magazine’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 35 (3): 187–209. Stokes, K., H. Stewart, and A. Sleigh (2015), ‘Top Findings from the Open Dataset of UK Makerspaces’, NESTA, 24 April. Available at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/top -findings-open-dataset-uk-makerspaces (accessed on 5 October 2016). Tanenbaum, G.J. and K. Tanenbaum (2015), ‘Fabricating Futures: Envisioning Scenarios for Home Fabrication Technology’, in N. Zagalo and P. Branco (eds), Creativity in the Digital Age, 193–221, London: Springer [online].

INDEX

Note: Locators with letter ‘n’ refer to notes. Abrams, J. 38 accreditation system 3 Adamson, Glenn 7, 185–6, 191 Advertiser’s Weekly 88, 90, 93, 99 advertising AA and IIPA standards 86–7 ASA regulations 71–2 gender and professional identity 18, 88–92 global phenomenon 96–8 historical development of British 86–8 professional cultures 94–8 professional status 86–7 ‘semi-profession’ status 4 women and 18, 85–99 Advertising Association (AA) 86, 87, 95, 96, 98 Advertising Federation of America 97 Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) 71–2 Advertising World 86, 91, 93 aesthetic labour 186 African-American culture 59 African-antebellum-Victorian aesthetics 61 Alexander McQueen 52, 55 Alsworth-Ross, Edward 3 Alvesson, Mats 5 American Institute of Architects (AIA) 105 Anderson, Chris 184, 196 ‘antebellum-slash-Victorian-slashmodern-day’ aesthetic 58, 59, 61 architecture architect’s role and professional identity 104–8 architect types 106

and Bauhaus style 107–8 institutional history 103, 109–10, 115–16 and the New Objectivity culture 104, 107 Armstrong, Leah 1–21, 32, 35, 146, 148 Arnold, Rebecca 153 art and commerce 165–6, 173–4 and design 32, 149 and music 172 and performance 172 art criticism 165, 168 art history 15, 33, 38, 132, 138, 167, 174 Art Nouveau 109 Arts & Crafts movement 186 aspiration 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 54, 89, 96, 150 Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries 95–6 Atkinson, Paul 4, 8, 193, 198 autonomy 7, 106, 110, 115, 123, 124, 131, 164, 166, 178 avant-garde 108, 109, 123, 132 Bailey, David 158 Barromeo, Manolo 132 Bauhaus architect 18, 103–17 Bayley, Stephen 16–17, 29–32, 35–45 Benjamin, Walter 107 Benton, Charles C. 190, 194 Beyer, Herbert 108 Beyoncé 17, 51, 57–62 black female subjectivity 57–62 black modernism 60 blogging. See fashion blogging Blogosphere Magazine 76

INDEX

Blueprint journal 40–1, 42 bohemianism 11, 123, 124, 131, 132 Boilerhouse Gallery 16, 29–46 Boltanski, L. 70, 73 Bourdieu, Pierre 7–8, 10, 32, 33, 38, 39, 66, 69, 74, 108, 131, 164–7, 169, 171, 173, 176–7, 178, 191 Bousquet, Jacques 130 bowtie 41, 105, 115 Brauer, Marcel 108, 109 Bravo 56 Breton, André 124 Breward, Christopher 3, 9, 11, 12, 13, 45, 129–30, 146 bricolage 53 British Beauty blogger 72 British Federation of Business and Professional Women 98 Brofferio, Eddie 137 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, The 154 Brummell, Beau 37 Building Design journal 38 Burton, Anthony 29, 30, 33–4, 36, 37, 39 Butler, Fred 54 Butler, Judith 130–1, 193 Calloway, Stephen 43 Campaign journal 41 Capital (Marx) 108 capitalism 4, 7, 8, 10, 67, 70–5, 186 Carpenter, Ele 182, 183 Carrington, Leonora 124 Castiglione, Baldassare 130 celebrity culture 124, 163–4 Chadwick, W. 124 Chalaby, J.K. 69 Chambers, David 37 Chang, Marcus 52 Charny, Daniel 181–2, 194 Chartered Society of Designers 32 Chiapello, E. 70, 73 China, makerspaces 183, 184, 185, 187, 190, 197 Clendinning, A. 93 code of conduct 4, 11, 71 Cole, Henry 33, 41, 44 Comerford, Eleanor 95, 98 commodification 6–7, 17, 65, 70, 75

203

commodity fetishism 108 conceptual art 172 conceptualism 172, 176 Concrete Poetry 176 Conran, Terence 35, 36, 37, 38 Conran Foundation 29, 31, 33, 35–8, 42, 43 conservatism 88–90, 107, 109, 116, 124 Constructivism 123 contemporary art production 19–20, 163–78 field dynamics 164–6 Glasgow art scene 171–3 professional identity of artists 166–8 spatial biographies of artists 168–71 Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York 44 Cornell, Peter 123, 132 Cornforth, Dorothy 96, 97 Cotton, Charlotte 53, 54 Couldry, Nick 16 Council of Fashion Designer’s of America 54 couture garments 60, 147 Coveteur 61–2 Cowl, Jane 154 craft, conceptualizations of 185–7 CRAFT magazine 187, 191–2 Crafts Council 181, 187 Crary, Jonathan 5, 8 creative industries concept and characteristics 1, 4, 6–7 and ‘creativity’ 6–7 flexibility 8 precarity 9 work in 8–9 Creative Review 42 cultural bolshevism 109–10, 115, 116 cultural capital 94, 132, 168, 171 cultural intermediaries 7–8, 160, 167 cultural production 7–8, 62, 69, 146, 160, 164, 170, 191 curatocracy 33, 40 Currid, Elizabeth 169, 172 Daily Telegraph 93 Dalí, Salvador 123 Dazed &Confused 52, 56 Deleuze, Gilles 128, 129

204

dematerialization 164, 172 Department of Culture, Media and Sport 7 design contemporary 17, 29, 34, 36, 38, 39, 45, 59 definition 44 growth of London’s industry 29–46 Design Council 42 design criticism 42 design culture 42, 43, 44, 148 Design Museum 16–17, 29–32, 35, 37, 39, 40–5 Design Week 42 Designer Decade 16, 45 Designer magazine 36 Dewey, John 6 Die Brenessel magazine 109 digitization of manufacturing 186 discourse, concept 67–8 Doctorow, Cory 184, 190 Dougall, E. M. 96, 98 Dougherty, Dale 182–3, 187–96 Droste, Magdelina 108 Duffy, B.E. 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 Dürer, Albrecht 123 Durkheim, Emile 4 École des Beaux-Arts 104–5 Economist 186, 195 editorials 32, 52–6, 71, 76, 190, 196 Edwardian culture 88, 94 efficiency 4, 34 Eisler, Colin 163 Elfline, Ross 9 Elias, Norbert 3, 10–11 Elizabeth Go 173 Elle magazine 56 embellishments 10, 54 England, Katy 52 enlightenment 3 Enninful, Edward 53 Entwistle, Joanne 11–16, 45, 56, 59, 185–6, 193 Entz, Adele 154–5 Ernst Kállai magazine 107, 108, 116 Evans, Caroline 3, 9 everyday symbolic objects 29, 170–8

INDEX

Face, The, magazine 53, 55–6 Facebook 54, 73, 75, 76 Farías, Ignacio 6 Farrelly, Liz 9, 16–17, 29–46 fashion and beauty 58 function and 57 and music 51–63 fashion blogging 7, 9, 65–79 ASA regulations 71–2 and authenticity 69–72 criticism of 68–9 discourse on 67–8 as hobby or career 66–7, 69, 70–1, 72 as immaterial labour 66–7, 72–5 vs. journalism 68, 69, 71 monetization of 75–7 fashion and fashioning concept 2, 12–14, 66 and ‘dress’ 12–13 key transitions in 1 and modernity 9–10 and professional identities 9–12 self-fashioning practices 19, 121–40 Fashion Icon award, CFDA 54, 55 fashion journalism 67 fashion knowledge 17, 52, 56, 57, 58, 59 Fashion Law, The 71–2 fashion merchandising 148, 150–1 fashion studies 12, 15, 65 Fashion Weekly 158 Federation of Women’s Advertising Clubs of the World 92 Federation of Women’s Clubs 97 Feininger, Lyonel 104 femmes-enfants 124 femmes fatales 124 field, Bourdieu’s analysis 33, 69, 164, 169, 176–7 Fielding, Bee 96 Fini, Leonor artistic creativity 126–30 biography 121–3 costumed and masked performances 130–7 public identities 131–4 First World War 88, 94, 96–7, 106, 107, 109, 116

INDEX

205

Fordism 43 Formichetti, Nicola 17, 51, 52–5, 59, 62 Forrest, Diandra 58 Foucault, Michel 11, 67 Fountainhead, The 104 Frankfurt School 6–7 Fraudenfeld, M. 196 free labour 17, 65, 72–5, 78 freelancing 5, 33, 53, 77 Frischmann, Marcel 114–15 Fuchs 74 Futurism 55, 123

Helguera, Pablo 163, 165, 166, 168, 169 heritage industry 30 Hertz, Garnet 185, 197 Hesmondhalgh, D. 73, 74–5 high fashion 54, 55 hip-hop 59 Hirst, Olive 96 Homebrew Computer Club 183 Hopkins, Rick 158 Horst, Horst P. 122, 138 Howard, Brittany 58, 104 Hund, E. 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74

Gaba, Lester 148, 155–6 Geddes, Norman Bel 152 gender-bending aesthetic 60 gender identities 8–9, 19, 32, 91, 146, 149, 152, 154, 160, 193. See also specific topics genius 104, 106, 115, 167, 168 Giddens, Anthony 3, 5, 12 Giedion, Sigfried 105 Gill, Eric 191 Glasgow art scene 171–8 Glasgow Miracle 173, 178 n.2 Glen, Alexander 36 globalization 4, 21, 30, 187 Goffman, Erving 11, 136 Graw, Isabelle 163, 165–6, 173–4, 176 Greenblatt, Stephen 3, 12, 13, 134, 136 Gregory, Oliver 38 Greneker, Lilian 152 Grew, Rachael 140 n.3 Gropius, Walter 104, 106–12 Guattari, Félix 128, 129 Gucci 40, 59–60

i-D magazine 52, 53, 54, 55 Imans, Pierre 147 immaterial labour 5, 17, 65, 66–7, 69 as free labour 72–5 Independent, The 55 Independent Fashion Bloggers (IFB) 76 individualism 15 industrial revolution 20, 184, 186, 196–7 industrialization 3, 6, 7, 30, 36, 45, 105, 147, 160, 186 Ingold, Tim 6 Instagram 55, 61, 70 Institute of Incorporated Practitioners in Advertising (IIPA) 86–7, 96 International Advertising Convention, 1924 92–4 International Association of Display Men 152 International Expositions 147 Internet 77, 168, 182, 195

habitus 33, 108, 111, 113, 169, 171, 173–8 Hall, Stuart 15, 104 Hamburger Anzeiger magazine 110 Hansen, Fritz 39 Harlem Renaissance 60 Harrod, Tanya 185, 186, 191, 193, 197 Harvey, David 5, 7 Haslett, Dame Caroline 98 Haughton, Phillipa 4, 9, 18, 85–99 Heine, Thomas Theodor 109, 110–15

Jewish Bolshevism 109 Jones, Ann Rosalind 12–14 journalism boundaries of 71 citizen- 71 professional identity 4 three-dimensional 16, 41, 42, 43, 45 Joy, Christian 58 Jugend journal 109 Julier, Guy 7, 30, 42–5, 166 Kandinsky, Wassily 43, 110 Keers, Paul 37, 42–3, 46 n.5 Keqiang, Li 184

206

Kidd, Eunice 97 Kjaerholm, Poul 39 Kladderadatsch magazine 109 Klee, Paul 170 Klein, Steven 55, 61 Knight, Nick 52, 55 Knott, S. 194–5 Kollnitz, Andrea 9, 18–19, 121–40 Koolhaas, Rem 104 Lady Gaga 17, 51, 52, 54–5, 62 Langen, Albert 108–9 Lash, Scott 5 Lau, Susie 69, 70 Lazzarato, Maurizio 5, 17, 66–7, 72, 73, 75, 77 League of Advertising Women of Germany 97 Lees-Maffei, G. 146, 149 Lefebvre, H. 170–3, 176 Lehmann, Ann Sophie 194, 195 Lehmann, Ulrich 3, 9 Lehtovuori, P. 7 Lepri, Stanislao 134, 135 Leverhulme, Lord 92, 95 Life magazine 155–6, 157–8 Lifter, Rachel 6, 7, 17, 51–63 Light, Alison 89–90 Lind, Maria 166, 171, 172 Linux operating system 185 Lipovetsky, Giles 3, 9, 10 Lippard, Lucy 172 literary criticism 13 Loewy, Raymond 152 Longhurst, Margaret 34 Loos, Adolf 37, 40, 105, 113 Lowndes, Sarah 171–2, 173 Lynge-Jorlén, Ane 53, 54 Lyon, Marion Jean 85, 90, 93–6, 98 Mackie, Alister 52 Mackie, Bob 58 mademoisellerobot.com 68 Maholy-Nagy, László 43 Make: Shift conference 184 Make: Shift: Do festival 184 MAKE magazine 182–96 maker 2.0 9, 181–98 ‘crafting’ process 185–7 gendered identity 193

INDEX

maker culture 7, 8, 191 Maker Faire 187, 190, 195, 197 Maker Faire Africa 187, 197 Maker Media 182–3, 187–8, 190–1, 195, 197 maker spaces 183–4, 190, 197 makezine.com 182, 187 Management Today journal 43–4 mannequin makers/designers 145–60 female professionals 151–60 gendered perspectives 149, 152, 155–6 history and developments 145–9 Mannerism 123, 130 manrepeller.com 67, 68–9, 74 Marcus, Leonard 146, 151, 152 marginalization 19, 105, 154, 186 Marx, Karl 108 masculinity, and professionalism 5, 11, 36, 87–99, 105, 108, 113, 115, 181–98 mass intellectuality 66 Matsoukas, Melina 56, 58–9 Mau, Dhani 56 McAlhone, Beryl 40–2 McDowell, Colin 37, 40 McDowell, Felice 1–21, 32 McRobbie, Angela 7, 8, 53, 71, 72, 73 mediation 1, 8, 15–16, 146, 160, 163, 186, 188 medieval culture 3, 10 Meerloo, Anne 95 Menkes, Suzy 68–9 Mercer, Kobena 60–1 metaphors 56, 169 Meyer, Hannes 106, 110, 115, 116 Michele, Alessandro 60 Miller, Janice 11, 58 Miller, Monica 60–1 Miller-Lane, Barbara 116 Millerson, Geoffrey 4 mises-en-scène 131 Modern art 165 modern craft 186, 187 Modern Institute 176 Modernity 3, 9–12, 14, 21, 32, 39, 89–90, 168, 170, 186 morality 4 Morris, William 186 Mort, Frank 3, 42, 53

INDEX

multiple museum audiences 46 n.3 Museu de les Arts Decoratives, Barcelona 44 Museum of Industrial Design 35 music art and 172 and fashion 1, 16, 17, 36, 51–63, 174 film and 173 Muthesius, Hermann 105, 106 narrative identity 33, 52, 53 narrative tradition 172 National Advertising Benevolent Society 96 National Association of Window Trimmers of America 152 National Heritage Act (1983) 34 Negus, Keith 8 neoliberalism 5, 7, 21, 71, 72, 73 New Economy 7 new media 8 New Negro 61 New Objectivity 103, 104, 107–16 New York magazine 150 New York Times, The 52, 55, 58, 153, 154 non-places 8 Obama, Barack 184, 196 Obrist, Hans Ulrich 173, 178 n.2 O’Connor, Justin 7 Official Secrets Act (1920) 34–5 Oppenheim, Meret 124 O’Reilly Media 182, 187 O’Reilly, Tim 182–3, 187–8 Osborne, George 184 Ostier, André 126, 127, 134, 135 Ottenberg, Mel 17, 51–2, 55–7, 59, 62 outsourcing 7, 194 Overstreet, Richard 130, 131, 136, 138, 140 n.4, 140 nn.1–2 Papastergiadis, Nikos 169–71, 174, 178 parafunctional spaces 170 Paris, as fashion city 185 Parsons, Talcott 4 Paul, Bruno 109 Paul, Nora Vincent 94 Perkin, Harold 3, 87

207

permanent international revolution 46 n.6 Pevsner, Nikolaus 40 Picasso, Pablo 170 Piscator, Erwin 111–12 PK24 Hammock Chair 39 poetic conceptualism 172, 176 Poor Richard Club 97 Pope-Hennessey, John 34 Popular Science magazine 153, 193 post-Taylorist culture 66, 67, 75 Power of Making: The Importance of Being Skilled (V&A exhibition) 181–2, 186 privatization 30 professional cultures 3–6, 94, 98, 99 professional society 3, 95 professional status 3, 4, 5, 17, 18, 19, 52, 86, 87, 103, 105, 107, 109, 114, 148, 149, 193, 198 professionalism, defined 3–4, 17–18 professionalization defined 4 history of 3–6 Punch magazine 85, 95 punk 57 Purple magazine 56 radical architecture movement 9 Rawsthorn, Alice 32 Ray, K.R. 107 Read, Herbert 40 Reardon, Ben 52, 54, 55 reflexive modernity 5 Renaissance 10, 12, 14, 123, 124, 126, 129–30, 134–5, 138, 181 representation definition 104 and identity construction 1, 2, 3, 185 presentation and 8, 12 theoretical perspectives 14–16 representational spaces 170 representations of space 170 Reynolds, Jessie 85 Rhondda, Lady 90, 98 Ricoeur, Paul 33 Rihanna 17, 51, 55–7, 62 Rittenburg, Max 86, 88 RnB 59 Roark, Howard 104

208

Robinson, John Charles 33 Rocomora, Agnès 32, 65–79 Rootstein, Adel 19, 146, 147, 151, 156–60 Roper, Michael 5 Rose, Gillian 32 Ross, Shaun 58 Rossi, Catharine 6, 7, 9, 20, 181–98 Rousset, Isabel 9, 18, 103–17 Rowe, June 6, 9, 19, 145–60 Royal Charter 3 Runacre, Jenny 157–8 Saint, Andrew 4, 8, 106–7 Samson Clark advertising agency 85 Sandino, Linda 30, 31, 32–4, 44 Sangster,Florence 85, 91–2, 95, 97, 98 Schiaparelli, Elsa 123, 126 Schnapp, Jeffrey 104 Schneier, Matthew 55, 56 Schuldenfrei, Robin 107 Schwartz, Benno 112, 113 Scovil, Cora 19, 146, 147, 151–6, 160 seaofshoes.com 67, 74 Second World War 4, 149, 193 Seddon, Jill 8, 87, 98, 146, 148, 149, 152–3, 154 self-branding 67 self-fashioning 1, 13–14, 19, 32, 121–40 Selman, Adam 56 Senbanjo, Laolu 61 Sennett, Richard 7, 185, 186 Senofonte, Marni 17, 51–2, 57–61, 62 Sforza, Sforzino 134, 135 Shirky, Clay 197 Silicon Valley 9 Simmat, R. 87 Simplicissimus magazine 18, 103, 104, 108–17 Simultanism 123 Sinclair, Claire 191 Sivek, Susan Currie 187, 195 Skype 66 Slater, Don 15–16, 59 Smelik, Anneke 12, 32 Smith, Harold 97 social media 61, 75, 77, 183, 195 Song, Aimee 71–2 Sphinx Club 88

INDEX

Squires, H. C. 94 Stallybrass, Peter 3, 12–14 Sterling, Bruce 190 Stevenson, Caroline 19–20, 163–78 Strong, Roy 31, 34, 35–7, 42 Styled By June (reality TV show) 62 Styled to Rock (reality TV show) 56–7 styling(ists) 51–63 art of customization 52, 53–4 Beyoncé’s stylist Senofonte 51, 57–61 emergence of stylists 53–4 Lady Gaga’s stylist Formichetti 51, 52, 54–5 Rihanna’s stylist Ottenberg 51, 55–7 subculture 36, 53 Suchadolska, Jadwiga 97 Sudjic, Deyan 32, 42 Surrealism 19, 121, 122, 123–4, 132, 138 symbolic capital 71, 74, 171, 174 syncretic aesthetics 60–1 ‘taste’ 7, 10 Bayley’s idea 39–40 Bourdieu’s view 33, 38 Taste magazine 40 Taylor, John 158 10 Men magazine 56 Terranova, T. 67, 73, 74 Thatcher, Margaret 30, 31 Thatcherism 17, 29–30, 45 Thirty Club 88, 95, 97 3D printing 181, 183, 197 Times, The 93 Titton, Monica 67 Tompkins, Sue 20, 164, 168, 171, 173–8 Tosh, John 87, 88, 90 total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) 123, 130 trade journals 18, 38, 41, 90, 93, 95, 151 Trotsky, Leon 46 n.6 Twemlow, Alice 38, 42 Twitter 69, 75 Ulk magazine 109 United States advertising women 92–3, 96–8 architect’s role and public image 105 art market 165

INDEX

art scene 172 display directors 150, 152 DIY boom 193 maker/crafting technologies 182, 183, 184, 190, 194, 197 mannequin designers/manufacturers 146, 148, 150, 151–6 Urry, John 5 US Magazine 59 Valentine, Mrs 97 van de Rohe, Ludwig Mies 108 van de Velde, Henry 106 Vasari, Giorgio 167–8 Venice Biennale 105 Versace, Gianni 57 Verwijnen, J. 7 Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum 16–17 Bayley’s style and design and widespread media coverage 37–45 Boilerhouse Project 35–42 Circulation Department (Circ) 34, 39 curator’s/Keeper’s role and identity 33–5 impact of Thatcherism 29–31 sponsors 44–5 V&A Album, The 33, 36 Victorian culture 4, 58, 59, 61, 88, 90 vintage fashion 53, 59, 60, 66, 75 Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein 44 vlogging 71 Vogue 53, 58, 147, 148 vogue.com 55, 69 Vogue Hommes Japan 52 Vriens, Matthias 55 W magazine 53, 58 Walls, Ernst 95 Ward, Beatrice 97, 98 Ward, Ella 98 Ward, Janet 107–8 Ward, Melanie 54

209

Web 2.0 20, 183, 195 Werkbund 105–6 Werkbund Cologne Exhibition 106 Whitehead, Alfred North 6 wigs 132–3, 156–7 Wilkie, Alex 6 Williams, Matt 52 Wilson, Elizabeth 3, 9–11, 12, 123, 124 Wissinger, Elizabeth 15, 185, 186, 193 Women’s Advertising Club of London (WACL) 85–99 emerging professional culture 94–8 foundation of 85, 90, 92 founding aims of 95 gender and professional identity 88–92, 93 innate feminine expertise 90–2, 96 and International Advertising Convention, 1924 92–4 international connections 96–8 membership 85–6, 94 Women’s Provisional Club 98 Wood, Ethel 90–1, 95, 96, 97, 98 Woodyard, Maude 4, 95–6, 98 work concept of 5, 10–11 ethics and professional identity 5–6 fashion blogging vs. 66–7, 69, 70–1, 72 masculinity at 88–92 World Wide Web 77 Woudhuysen, James 41 Wozniack, Steve 183 W. S. Crawford’s advertising agency 85, 95 Yohannes, Eyob 60 Young British Artists 165 YouTube 71, 187, 195 032c 56