Miss Prudence Ahrens
Bachelor of Arts, University of Queensland, 1990-1994. Bachelor of Arts, Honours Class 1, University of Sydney, 1995. Doctor of Philosophy, University of Sydney, 1997 - Submitted November 2001, and is in revision. Presently a part-time Lecturer/tutor, Art Theory Department, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.
Pets, Pretenders or Pint-Sized People? Ways of Seeing Contemporary Children's Wear.
This paper will explore via a number of different frameworks, the nature of children's clothing in the 1990s and early twenty-first century. I will be looking at the meaning of the spectacle that surrounds contemporary children's clothing. This phenomenon sees traditionally haute couture designers like 'Dior', 'Moschino' and 'Versace' now designing for 'under fives'. The axis around which the discussion will turn is the shift in the appearance of children, which will be interpreted as a move away from the sharp differentiation of children through their dress in the sixties, seventies and eighties. There will follow a series of tentative explanations for this phenomenon in terms of the rise of 'children's rights', re-workings of Veblen's ideas and Baudrillard's notion of the 'no sense' of the modern fashion spectacle. The idea of the spectacle of children's wear will be explored. Is it simply an exercise in reading advertising? Are children becoming fashion conscious? Is it some collective imaginary in which children and adults are caught up? What is intriguing is the idea that this fashion spectacle might be a sort of self-image which is circulating amongst children. This contemporary fashion phenomenon will be considered in terms of classic fashion theory to hopefully shed some light on the topic of youth and the direction of fashion consumption.
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