Ms Kaye Ashton (with Denise Whitehouse & Nanette Carter)
Frances Burke Textile Resource Centre
School of Fashion and Textiles RMIT
kaye.ashton@rmit.edu.au
Kaye Ashton coordinates the Frances Burke Textile Resource Centre at RMIT. The Centre facilitates and supports academic and community enquiry which extends the understanding of, and gives contemporary relevance to, Australia's rich cultural heritage of fashion and textile design. Kaye has a background in writing and project management, and has written and/or edited several publications on Australian fashion and textile design/ers and businesses including a coffee table publication on the famous shirt company, Gloweave. She is currently studying business leadership and is a qualified teacher of the Alexander Technique.
Boutiques, Brands and Youth: Sportsgirl and Prue Acton and the Pioneering of Youth Culture and Brand Marketing in Australia.
This paper will present the findings of a joint research project into the archives of two youth fashion leaders in 1960s and 1970s Australia, 'Sportsgirl' and 'Prue Acton'. Following overseas trends, Sportsgirl and Acton led the fashion industry's move away from the department store to the development of designer boutiques and lifestyle marketing for an emerging youth sector. As with Mary Quant and the Carnaby Street phenomenon, Sportsgirl and Acton's success rested on the development of distinctive brand identities; of total design 'looks' that linked their clothing lines into a supporting set of lifestyle values and accessories that included the boutique as a site of leisure and entertainment. This paper will focus on the development of Sportsgirl and Acton's brand identities through the astute use of a young and expanding design industry that included commercial architecture, graphic design, advertising, new media, visual merchandising as well as clothing and textile design. While the focus is the role of these design industries in the creation of fashion brands, the manner in which the Sportsgirl and Prue Acton brands promoted a myth of youth culture and gender politics will also be considered.
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