Civilizational dissent at late 1990’s: body, fashion and club cultures in contemporary society

Authors

  • Paula Guerra University of Porto - Faculty of Arts and Humanities IASPM - Individual Member (i.e. without affiliation to a specific branch) http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2377-8045
  • Henrique Grimaldi Figueredo University of Campinas

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5429/2079-3871(2022)v12i1.9en

Keywords:

fashion, body, aesthetics, club cultures, Alexander McQueen.

Abstract

British fashion of the 1990s manifests a fin-de-siècle social anxiety. Facing a systemic crisis of culture, some designers embodied the sociological concepts of risk and carnivalization in their creations. This attitude is reflected in the emergence of themes such as the wasted look and abject aesthetics, epistemological solutions arising from a legacy of grunge experiences. Based on a documental approach, materialized in media and art works, to some British fashion shows of the 1990s, we will discuss in this article several aspects of the relationships between body, risk, carnival and fashion, focusing on the works of British designers and its manifestation in the hidden economies (club cultures scenes included), in which Alexander McQueen played a central role.

Author Biographies

Paula Guerra, University of Porto - Faculty of Arts and Humanities IASPM - Individual Member (i.e. without affiliation to a specific branch)

University of Porto, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Institute of Sociology of University of Porto, Porto, Portugal Paula Guerra is a Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Porto (FLUP) and a Senior Researcher in the Institute of Sociology (IS-UP). She is also Invited Researcher at the Centre for Geography Studies and Territory Planning (CEGOT) and CITCEM – Transdisciplinary Research Centre “Culture, Space and Memory” at the University of Porto (UP), and Adjunct Professor at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research (GCSCR). Professor Guerra is currently the Head Researcher of ‘Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! Prolegomena and Punk Scenes – a Road to Portuguese Contemporaneity (1977–2012)’, an international and interdisciplinary project about the Portuguese (and global) punk and underground scenes. She is also the founder and the co-coordinator of the KISMIF Conference (https://www.kismifconference.com/)

Henrique Grimaldi Figueredo, University of Campinas

Henrique Grimaldi Figueredo is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP, Brazil), with a research internship at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, France). Fapesp fellow (2019/10315-5 and BEPE 2020/02298-0), he is executive editor of the journal Todas as Artes, based at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Porto (UPorto, Portugal).

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Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

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Published

13-01-2023

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 1 (2022): Open Issue

Section

Articles – Open Section

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