Professor Hilary Radner
Department of Communication Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin

Seeing the self in a global culture: fashion and the New Zealand context

The issue of voyeurism defined the initial terms of feminist film theory. For Mulvey and a generation of feminist theorists, the "gaze" and hence "the voyeur" was theorized as masculine. (1) A second wave of feminist theory challenged these terms taking up a variety of paradigms to explain the process of women looking as women. (2) Fashion and the fashion magazine directed towards women readers offers the researcher a context in which to examine this problematic, that of a voyeurism that is not defined exclusively by a masculine gaze. (3)
     The consumption of magazines is a leisure activity that is primarily justified as a pleasure that is linked, among other things, to other leisure activities such as shopping. Within the intertexual nexus in which the woman's magazine is lodged, clothing through the purchasing and the displaying of "fashion" items is transformed from a utilitarian to a leisure activity in which the body is foregrounded as a vehicle for voyeuristic and narcissistic pleasure. (4) Feminist theory has widely investigated fashion and the woman's magazine using a range of methodologies from textual analysis to ethnographic research. (5) Here I would like to take up the problem of leisure, fashion and national identity using the New Zealand context as a concrete example of these issues.
     Fashion today is largely defined by the ready-to-wear market (as opposed to the couture market of the pre-World War II era). The international ready-to-wear fashion industry is dispersed geographically in terms of production. In terms of consumption, the industry addresses a global market. In contrast, local design, depends on a sense of taste that is global in its iconography but that is locally produced and locally consumed.
     The New Zealand fashion industry offers a context in which to observe and to analyze the intersection of the global and the local. L'Oréal Fashion Week has come to define what Metro (Auckland, New Zealand) designates as New Zealand "high end fashion designers. " (6) L'Oréal is, however, a multi-national company with a global market. A L'Oréal hair color campaign coined the phrase: "I'm worth it. " This notion of self-worth characterizes the marketing of fashion in the post-1970s and marks the uneasy alliance between traditional codes of femininity and the new codes that define the image of the economically autonomous woman as global citizen. I will elucidate the stakes of this alliance by analyzing the way in which New Zealand designers (such as Zambesi, Untouched World, etc. ) represent themselves in local publications (such New Zealand Fashion Quarterly, etc) as New Zealand Fashion while nonetheless invoking global trends.
     This project draws upon the work of scholars such as Angela McRobbie [1998], Elizabeth Wilson, in particular Angela Partington and others who have looked at the connection between the fashion industry and the construction of feminine identity. The analysis will focus upon the representation of New Zealand fashion in New Zealand high-end magazines such as New Zealand Fashion Quarterly, New Zealand Style, Pavement and Urbis. It will also include some interviews with local designers in Auckland and Dunedin. The analysis will, in addition, consider the geographical specificity of the fashion industry in New Zealand as it is transposed from a location such as Dunedin with a largely local market to a location such as Queenstown with its largely international market. I will consider how these geographical transpositions mark shopping as a leisure activity which in turn informs the way in which fashion represents itself to the consumer.  
Notes
(1) See Mulvey, Pollock for examples of this approach. For full bibliographical references see select bibliography below.
(2) See for example Brundson, ed. For an overview of these issues see Thornham.
(3) See for example: Craik; Ash and Wilson, eds. ; Benstock and Ferriss, eds. ; Gaines and Herzog, eds.
(4) For a discussion of fashion and the body, see Entwistle.
(5) See for example: Gammon and Marschment, eds. ; McRobbie. ed. [1988]; McCracken.
(6) Walsh, Frances. "Lights, Camera, Catwalk," 60.

Select Bibliography
Ash, Juliet and Elizabeth Wilson, eds. Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Benstock, Sheri and Suzanne Ferriss, eds. On Fashion. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
Brundson, Charlotte,ed. Films for Women. London: British Film Institute, 1986.
Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. London: Routledge, 1994.
Entwistle, Joanne. The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress, and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.
Gamman, Lorraine and Margaret Marshment. The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture. Seattle: The Real Comet Press, 1989.
Gaines, Jane and Charlotte Herzog. Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body. New York: Routledge, 1990.
McCracken, Ellen. Decoding Women's Magazines: from Mademoiselle to Ms. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
McRobbie, Angela. British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? London: Routledge, 1998.
---, ed. Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan, 1989.
New Zealand Fashion Quarterly. ACP Media Ltd., Auckland, New Zealand. ISBN: 9 414576 001575.
New Zealand Style. INL Magazines, Auckland, New Zealand. ISBN: 9 414666 000129.
Partington, Angela. "Popular Fashion and Working-Class Affluence" in Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson, eds. Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 145-161.
Pavement. Auckland: New Zealand. ISBN: 0 415006 001523.
Pollock, Griselda. Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. London: Routledge, 1988.
Troy, Nancy J. Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion. Cambridge: MIT, 2003.
Thornham, Sue. Passionate Detachments: An Introduction to Feminist Film Theory. London: Arnold, 1997.
Urbis. Auckland: New Zealand. ISBN: 9 414638 000065.
Walsh, Frances. "Lights, Camera, Catwalk. " Metro: October 2002 (issue 256). 60-62.
Wolfe, Richard. The Way We Wore: the Clothes New Zealanders Have Loved. Auckland: Penguin Books, 2001.
Wilson, Elizabeth. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. London: Virago, 1985.