Ms Fiona Anderson
Design & Visual Culture
Edinburgh College of Art
f.anderson@eca.ac.uk
Now lecturing at Edinburgh College of Art, Fiona has previously worked as a
freelance Curator, including assisting on the Paul Smith True Brit exhibition
(Design Museum,1995), the Cutting Edge exhibition (V & A 1997), and Curator
of the Conran Foundation Collection. Fiona has taught Fashion and Textile History
at various institutions, including Brighton University and the Royal College
of Art. Recently published work includes 'Fashioning the Gentleman: A Study
of Henry Poole and Co. Savile Row Tailors 1861-1900' in Fashion Theory: the
Journal of Dress, Body and Culture and 'Museums as Fashion Media'in Fashion
Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis.
Fashion and Masculine Fancies: Tweed Cloth, Masculinities and Male Urban Fashionability 1860-1900
This paper will explore the significance of Scottish tweed cloth in relation to late nineteenth century male sporting dress and its adoption as leisure wear. Previous research carried out on Henry Poole and Co. (see article listed above) has involved the exploration of the complex links between male fashionability, class, national identities and utilitarian sporting dress between 1861-1900. This paper will extend that research by looking at the design, production and consumption of the tweed cloth that played an important role in forming the cultural and social meanings associated with male sporting and leisure wear in that period. Through this research the aim is to make a further contribution to the small body of published work that questions J.C. Flugel's theory of the 'Great Masculine Renunciation'. Most of the now substantial body of research that may be linked together under the term the 'new fashion history' has neglected textiles as an area of study. This has been due to a desire to focus on the consumption of fashion and a perceived need to move away from approaches grounded in social and economic history that tended to over-emphasise the importance of production to the fashion system. This paper will stress the need to look again at textiles as objects of production that can play an important role in broadening and deepening our understanding of the complex processes of fashion. The examination of Scottish tweed in particular may be used to examine diverse issues such as ideas of the rural and the urban in relation to late nineteenth century male dress, to the links between commercial practices and international perceptions of Scottish vs English vs British national identities of the period.
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