TY - JOUR
T1 - "We make the shoes, you make the story" teenage girls' experiences of fashion
T2 - Bricolage, tactics and narrative identity
AU - Marion, Gilles
AU - Nairn, Agnes
PY - 2011/3
Y1 - 2011/3
N2 - This article explores the ways that French teenage girls use fashion discourse to construct their evolving identity from their recently left childhood to their future as fully grown women. Verbatim texts of 14 phenomenological discussions concerning clothing, accessories, make-up and fashion are interpreted using the concepts of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss),tactics (Certeau) and narrative identity(Ricoeur). The findings resonate with Thompson and Haytko's portrayal of adialogical relationship between consumers and a system of countervailing fashionmeanings and with Murray's exposition of a dialectical and discursive tensionbetween sign-experimentation and sign-domination. But beyond this we elucidate the process by which teenagers also acquire, from personal social milieu, skills and tactics through which they toy with preconstrained sartorial symbolism to construct the plot line of their own lives which, in turn, reflects their past, defines their present self and presages their future.
AB - This article explores the ways that French teenage girls use fashion discourse to construct their evolving identity from their recently left childhood to their future as fully grown women. Verbatim texts of 14 phenomenological discussions concerning clothing, accessories, make-up and fashion are interpreted using the concepts of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss),tactics (Certeau) and narrative identity(Ricoeur). The findings resonate with Thompson and Haytko's portrayal of adialogical relationship between consumers and a system of countervailing fashionmeanings and with Murray's exposition of a dialectical and discursive tensionbetween sign-experimentation and sign-domination. But beyond this we elucidate the process by which teenagers also acquire, from personal social milieu, skills and tactics through which they toy with preconstrained sartorial symbolism to construct the plot line of their own lives which, in turn, reflects their past, defines their present self and presages their future.
KW - Bricolage
KW - Fashion
KW - Narrative identity
KW - Tactics
KW - Teenagers
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79952401714&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10253866.2011.541181
DO - 10.1080/10253866.2011.541181
M3 - Article (Academic Journal)
AN - SCOPUS:79952401714
SN - 1025-3866
VL - 14
SP - 29
EP - 56
JO - Consumption, Markets and Culture
JF - Consumption, Markets and Culture
IS - 1
ER -