Dr Susan Kaiser
Susan is Professor and Chair, Textiles & Clothing; Professor, Women and Gender Studies at the University of California. Susan is author of "The Social Psychology of Clothing: Symbolic Appearances in Context" (2nd ed. revised, Fairchild 1997); and Past President of the International Textile and Apparel Association.
Just-in-Time Appearances
Because jewelry designer Ayala Bar is always searching the world for new materials, her work is constantly evolving. Indian fabrics may inspire a collection one season: in another, it may be Byzantine art. And each year, pieces are retired as new ones are introduced. So if you see something you love, grab it now. (Marshall Field's Direct: Holiday 2002) Globalization has a time-space compressing effect. In this paper, I explore the idea of what it means to appear and to feel "just in time" through the three contexts of production, consumption, and representation. Inasmuch as contemporary fashion blurs spatial and other boundaries, it also complicates what it means to feel in the moment. In recent years, the U.S. apparel industry has focused on "just-in-time" production to compete in the larger global economy. In consumer terms, the idea of being "just in time" implies having a sense of style and subjectivity or, to put it differently, to understand oneself as an agent who captures the flow of everyday life. And in the representational sense, style and fashion ultimately extend the production-consumption nexus to articulate mixed feelings about both timeliness and worldliness.
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