Papers by Alexandra Sherlock
Out of step: Why sneakers and sportswear still lag on sustainability
Fashion Theory, 2021
Book review for 'Worn: Footwear Attachment and the Affects of Wear' by Ellen Sampson.
Through their narrative incorporation in fairy tales, song lyrics, in movies and on television sh... more Through their narrative incorporation in fairy tales, song lyrics, in movies and on television shoes have become a ‘loaded device’ recycled as metonymy for the wearer or as metaphor for experience (Pine, 2006: 353). This research argues that in academic studies a consequence of their visual and symbolic ubiquity has been the material invisibility or ‘humility’ of the shoe as a ‘thing’ (Miller, 2005). Following Magritte’s lead in his painting The Treachery of Images (1928-29) I suggest that a tendency to see and analyse the messages shoes convey, rather than the things themselves, has led to a lack of empirical interrogation into the role shoes play in everyday processes of identity and identification. This research addresses this lack, yet rather than separate the shoe from its representations to do so, it unites the material and visual to understand the relationship between representations and embodied experiences of shoes in processes of being and becoming. With a focus on the sty...
Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues, 2012
The place of footwear in relation to identity has not yet been effectively examined in fashion th... more The place of footwear in relation to identity has not yet been effectively examined in fashion theory or the contributing fields of sociology, anthropology and psychology. Existing fashion theory can be applied to footwear, however shoes as an aspect of clothing present additional qualities that deserve independent study. Among the few academics who have focussed on shoes, most have been unable to provide convincing explanations as to what these additional qualities are and why shoes continue to hold such a special place in the imagination of the consumer. This chapter suggests that this inability reveals inadequacies in fashion theory methodology. Historical, semiotic and postmodern approaches are characteristic of the discipline and translate to studies that use the shoe as metaphor or as a vehicle for intellectual illumination rather than focussing on the shoe and wearer themselves in a contemporary sociological context. Fashion theory tends to be a ‘mind’ centred discipline that could be seen to fortify binary oppositions of mind and body; structure and agency and this can be seen to constrain analysis of actual experience - this is a central criticism of the discipline. Fashion theory does, however, have the exciting capacity to connect mind and body. What is needed to transcend these unproductive dualisms are metaphors and models that link image and embodiment, that ‘implicate the subject in the object and lend insight into the constitutive articulation between the inside and the outside of the body.’ I propose that footwear is an ideal model to fulfil this requirement. In addition footwear, often referred to as the Cinderella of fashion theory (frequently overlooked and underestimated), could be the key to unlock the door between image and experience, mind and body and used as a model by which to advance fashion theory beyond abstract notions of image and representation into a study of how representation is involved in actual experience.
Occasions and non-occasions: Identity, femininity and high-heeled shoes
European Journal of Women's Studies, 2014
This article addresses theoretical problems around the notion of ‘choice’, using empirical data f... more This article addresses theoretical problems around the notion of ‘choice’, using empirical data from a three-year, ESRC-funded study of identity, transition and footwear among both women and men. With a focus on female participants who wore, or had worn high-heeled shoes, it draws on Budgeon’s argument for viewing the body as event, as becoming, and Finch’s use of the concept of display, to explore the temporalities of high-heeled shoe wear, particularly as an aspect of ‘dressing up’. Data from both focus groups and year-long case studies allowed everyday and life course patterns of high-heeled shoe wear to be explored – in many cases, as they unfolded. This material has led us to critique the linear, goal-oriented nature of a modernist ‘project of the self’, and to argue that identification, as a dynamic process, may often be erratic, partial and temporary. Emphasized femininity, it is suggested, can be ‘displayed’ episodically, as an aspect of ‘doing gender’, a perspective that problematizes notions of a ‘post-feminist masquerade’ that inevitably secures gender retrenchment. Through an examination of the occasions and non-occasions that pattern the temporalities of women’s lives, therefore, the article demonstrates a distinction between displaying femininity and doing gender, one that simultaneously sheds light on their relationship with one another.
Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, 2014
Through their narrative incorporation in fairytales, song lyrics, in movies and on television sho... more Through their narrative incorporation in fairytales, song lyrics, in movies and on television shoes have become a 'loaded device' (Pine, 2006: 353) recycled as metonymy for the wearer or as metaphor for experience. Due to such extensive representation this article argues that they have become, in a sense, invisible. In existing academic literature we have tended to see the message rather than the shoe and we become blind to what Miller describes as the 'humility' of the shoe as a 'thing' (Miller 2005: 5). This neglect of the materiality of the shoe itself obscures the highly nuanced and subjective experiences of the wearer. As consumers/wearers, we might fully understand - even aspire to - the cultural connotations of a particular pair of shoes, yet this does not mean we will feel socially comfortable wearing them. Using empirical data gathered from wearers of the culturally significant Clarks Originals brand, this article reveals the co-constitutive relationship between the social identity of the wearer and that of the shoe. By focusing on the materiality of objects, bodies and environments we can overcome subject-object dualisms and really 'see' shoes in terms of the role they and their meanings play in a process of identification, transformation and cultural embodiment.
According to Benstock and Ferris (2001: 67) “Shoes are hot”: from calendars, magazines, coffee-ta... more According to Benstock and Ferris (2001: 67) “Shoes are hot”: from calendars, magazines, coffee-table books, postcards, fridge magnets and book covers to visual references in film, television and the popular press, shoes are everywhere. But how do these representations affect everyday embodied experiences of wearing shoes, and to what extent are these representations informed by these experiences? This paper takes a sociological and anthropological approach that departs from traditional semiotic interpretations of images to give an empirically grounded insight into the co-constitutive relationship between representations and embodied experiences of this ubiquitous item of material culture. Following several months of interviews and observations at Clarks UK headquarters, the Originals Desert Boot, steeped in a rich history within visual culture, has emerged as a case study through which to understand this relationship. The Desert Boot despite its perhaps distinctly un-remarkable appe...
The temporal landscape of shoes: a life course perspective
The Sociological Review, May 1, 2014
This empirically grounded article draws on an ESRC-funded project on footwear, identity and trans... more This empirically grounded article draws on an ESRC-funded project on footwear, identity and transition to offer new understandings of how a linear model of the life course may, in practice, be disrupted, subverted or reconfigured. Combining the insights of material culture and life course studies, it develops the notion of a temporal landscape of shoes within which their scope for interrupting life course temporalities can be explored. In particular, it identifies four temporal strategies made possible through the symbolic efficacy of footwear: the retrieval of an earlier identity through the purchase of styles previously worn; the deferral of later life by rejecting comfortable shoes that might symbolically reposition someone as ‘old’; the release of former age-based identities and the embracing of freedom from a felt need to wear impractical or painful shoes; the appropriation or reconfiguring of the past as a contemporary resource through the wearing of vintage/hand-me-down shoes.
Journal of Material Culture, 2014
'Trainers' represent a form of footwear that has attracted academic attention, particularly in re... more 'Trainers' represent a form of footwear that has attracted academic attention, particularly in relation to the historical development of footwear since the 19th century, addressing various aspects, from the industrial application of rubber to the technologies of shoe manufacture. This article contributes to a literature on the intersection between trainers and the individuals who have 'made' them. However, it asks a parallel question: how do trainers 'make' the individual, that is to say: it addresses the embodied processes of everyday life and the contribution of technology to the body and its techniques. We argue that the diversification of the trainer parallels the unfolding of particular lives, offering a valuable, if under-utilised resource for making sense of everyday and life course processes of embodied identification.
Worn Shoes: Identity, Memory and Footwear
Sociological Research Online, 2013
This article raises questions about the role of footwear within contemporary processes of identit... more This article raises questions about the role of footwear within contemporary processes of identity formation and presents ongoing research into perceptions, experiences and memories of shoes among men and women in the North of England. In a series of linked theoretical discussions it argues that a focus on women, fashion and shoe consumption as a feature of a modern, western ‘project of the self’ obscures a more revealing line of inquiry where footwear can be used to explore the way men and women live out their identities as fluid, embodied processes. In a bid to deepen theoretical understanding of such processes, it takes account of historical and contemporary representations of shoes as a symbolically efficacious vehicle for personal transformation, asking how the idea and experience of transformation informs everyday and life course experiences of transition, as individuals put on and take off particular pairs of shoes. In so doing, the article addresses the methodological and an...
Larger Than Life: Digital Resurrection and the Re-Enchantment of Society
The Information Society, 2013
New debates surrounding the digital remains of people who have died and the possibilities that ne... more New debates surrounding the digital remains of people who have died and the possibilities that new technologies raise in terms of symbolic immortality are generating significant interest. These issues provide exciting opportunities for sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists to further understand evolving attitudes to death and mourning. But what happens when the deceased is a popular media figure and the symbolic immortality extends to a digital resurrection played out through the media in new contexts and over an extended period of time? Drawing on sociological, anthropological, and cultural theory, this discursive article addresses some of the reasons for the perpetuation of media personalities whose posthumous careers often exceed their living careers, both in longevity and popularity. It is argued that digital technologies add a new dimension to the many parallels that can be drawn between celebrity culture and religion in what are becoming increasingly secularised societies. For many, digital technology and the Internet remain incomprehensible, leaving room for mythical and magical interpretations especially in relation to a prospect many prefer to deny: ultimate nonexistence. It is proposed that the disenchantment with religious belief, brought about by science and rational thought during the Enlightenment era, leaves many people with inadequate or unacceptable ways of understanding death and mourning. Ironically, it seems that science and new technology now provide the fuel for a re-enchantment of society, and the now normalized suspension of disbelief inherent in the consumption of media entertainment and popular culture helps to facilitate this process.
Conference Presentations by Alexandra Sherlock
The World at Your Feet, University of Northampton, 20th-21st March, 2013., 2013
Following the release of Jamaican deejay Vybz Kartel's song 'Clarks' in 2010, Clarks Originals ha... more Following the release of Jamaican deejay Vybz Kartel's song 'Clarks' in 2010, Clarks Originals have hit the headlines with an unlikely tale of a 'quintessentially British brand' turned Caribbean sub-cultural style essential. The recent publication of a book about the history of Clarks Originals in Jamaica along with a Newsnight feature and countless other articles offer a fascinating account of how the 'Clarks booty' has been taken up as an iconic item of Jamaican sub-cultural style. Despite all this publicity the question remains: why has this happened? Looking at both the affordances the design offers this unlikely market and the social circumstances of its migration the paper will start by applying sociological and anthropological theory concerning the cross-cultural appropriation of material culture to understand what is so special about the Desert Boot. The paper will proceed by drawing on data gathered during interviews with the Clarks Originals team to investigate what this particular case study can contribute to theories of perception and structure-agency debates: what can the Jamaican interpretation of Clarks Originals tell us about the dialogue that exists between the producer and consumer and the social life of the shoe. Moreover, why has this unusual appropriation excited such public interest in the UK.
‘Gender and Visual Representation’, Winchester University, 12th September 2012., 2012
It is perhaps no surprise that shoes are used in visual culture to signify gender and sexual iden... more It is perhaps no surprise that shoes are used in visual culture to signify gender and sexual identity. In terms of film, one need go no further than Sandy's transformational high-heeled red mules in the movie Grease to realise their significance. However, through an innovative set of research methods the research reported in this paper sheds light on the extent to which shoes and gender-through visual metaphor-are enmeshed in much more mundane, and powerful, visual contexts. Drawing on Butler's assertion that gender is constituted and also transformed through stylised repetitive acts (1988), the paper analyses the results of a 48-hour content analysis, performed to determine the various ways shoes are represented on television. A small selection of the resulting 170 references will show some of the ways gender stereotypes are not only fortified, but also transformed and subverted through shoes. During a recent empirical study, the selection of clips was shown to research participants who work in the footwear industry. Their responses revealed that in some circumstances metaphorical use renders particular shoes invisible-even those people most conditioned and likely to notice the shoes were surprised by what they saw. The invisibility of these shoes raises concerns about their subliminal power when representing gender and sexual identity. By shining the spotlight on visual shoe metaphors one is able to 'make strange' and therefore deconstruct what we think we know about shoes, and gender.
The End of Fashion conference: Massey University, 2016
In an increasingly dynamic consumer culture academic studies have started to recognize brand iden... more In an increasingly dynamic consumer culture academic studies have started to recognize brand identities as co-produced by both producers and consumers rather than determined and controlled by brand managers (da Silveira et al., 2013). This happens through 'encounters' (mediated or face-to-face) between the brand and the consumer. In their many solicited and unsolicited forms, endorsements account for a significant proportion of these encounters where a transference of identity is said to occur between endorser and product, reinforcing or changing consumer perceptions in positive or negative ways. While existing literature successfully identifies endorsement as a key aspect of an evolving fashion system it does little to understand the 'affective' (Featherstone, 2010) and material nuances of how this process works in terms of embodied experience, perception and identification. Furthermore a focus on consumer perception neglects the reciprocal affects endorsements now have on producers, and the strategies incorporated by both to deal with changing meanings in order to maintain a coherent and 'authentic' identity, and save 'face' (Goffman [1967] in da Silveira et al., 2013: 31). Existing studies therefore continue to reinforce dichotomies between consumption and production, representation and experience, structure and agency. With a particular focus on peer and celebrity endorsement this paper investigates the intersubjective processes of meaning-making that happen between the various bodies that materially engage with shoes throughout their 'biography' or 'social life' (Appadurai, 1986, Kopytoff, 1986). The study uses data from interviews, focus groups and observations with wearers and producers of Clarks Originals, a well-known culturally meaningful brand of shoe, to ask how people and objects 'make' one 'Getting the shoes on the right feet'
AAANZ Conference: 'Ngā Tūtaki – Encounter/s: Agency, Embodiment, Exchange, Ecologies', The University of Auckland., 2019
In 2010, the Jamaican dancehall deejay Vybz Kartel made headlines in the UK with the release of h... more In 2010, the Jamaican dancehall deejay Vybz Kartel made headlines in the UK with the release of his song 'Clarks'. To the surprise of most of the British public and many within the company itself, the song represented the latest chapter of a history spanning over 60 years of Clarks shoes in Jamaica. The Somerset company, often thought of as 'quintessentially British' and associated in the UK with school shoes and the 'preserve of middle England' (Newman, 2012, 11), perhaps seems an unlikely brand to achieve cult status in the Caribbean. Yet despite their rural English origins, in Jamaica, Clarks Originals styles such as the Desert Boot, Desert Trek and Wallabee are considered authentically Jamaican. Using ethnographic fieldwork conducted at Clarks Headquarters in 2012 this paper investigates the ways Clarks responded to the Jamaican appropriation of these styles through collaborative projects that 'hybridised' and 'remixed' these important cultural signifiers. In doing so, it considers but moves past debates around cultural appropriation to advance an understanding of cultural exchange in fashion and consumer culture.
Fashion Reimagined: Proceedings of the 24th IFFTI Conference, Nottingham Trent University, 2022
'Affordances' are understood to be the subjective and embodied perception of what an object or ma... more 'Affordances' are understood to be the subjective and embodied perception of what an object or material might enable one to do, or, in the words of ecological psychologist James Jerome Gibson, 'the affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill' (Gibson, 1979: 127). In a consumer culture context, the natural environment has afforded the production and use of vast amounts of materials and goods resulting in devastating amounts of waste. As a key contributor to this waste, the fashion industry-including fashion educators-are responsible for addressing and reducing this waste which constitutes an undeniably large proportion of the 'environment' in which the contemporary fashion designer now finds themself. This paper presents data collected during an introductory activity within the course Fashion Design Body Artefacts and Accessories in the Bachelor of Fashion (Design) program at RMIT, Melbourne (2021). Extending upon Glăveanu's research which utilises Gibson's seminal theory of affordances to re-evaluate the agentic role of material objects in the conceptualisation of creativity (2012), the activity This is Not a Shoe uses the material deconstruction and consequent 'defamiliarisation' of used shoes to explore how unconventional affordances can be perceived and utilised to inspire innovative fashion design outcomes. The research contributes to emerging sustainable fashion design pedagogies by developing and critically reflecting upon activities that assist a methodological shift from a design-led approach to materials, to a more sustainable materialdriven approach to design. More than simply upcycling waste materials the research explores the embodied and transferable capabilities and knowledges that can be enhanced through material reuse in an educational setting.
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Papers by Alexandra Sherlock
Conference Presentations by Alexandra Sherlock