The contents of the display box outside shoe shop Donna Più encapsulate summer. As befits its tropical location in Alghero, a Sardinian town overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the shop’s display box house hats and sunglasses to protect from the sun, and gold-coloured scarves, bags and jewellery to show off bronzed skin. The sandals and bikinis in the bottom row are brightly coloured, in step with a rainbow assortment of lipstick and nail varnish. The coordinated chaos of the contents resemble the look of the many other boxes that adorn the walls of the town’s historic centre, containing jewellery made from the island’s abundant coral reefs. While these natural products are wrought into charms and pendants for consumers who wish to personify a season or place, the creators make clothing and accessories that prescribe how people should present themselves in the summertime.

Seen together, the objects in the box also evoke the female form. Joanne Entwistle wrote that “So significant are clothes to our readings of the body that they can come to stand for sexual difference in the absence of a body.” And, although Donna Più predominantly sells shoes, it seeks to signify ‘more’ than just that. Its fragmented name meaning, ‘women more’, calls to mind all things feminine. But whose definition of femininity is it? As women stroll through the streets and glimpse their reflections in the box’s glass, they project their image onto the display. Fragments entwine with inner thoughts, and become bodies, ideal feminine tourists, or more.

Source:

Entwistle, J. (2000) The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 141.

“Who said surfing wasn’t chic?” inquired surfertoday.com in a brief feature about Chanel’s pricy surfboards featured in its 2010 Spring/Summer ad campaign. While Karl Lagerfeld’s take on Chanel’s signature tweed suits imbued the streamlined, monochrome boards with an air of modern elegance, surf culture’s associations with youthful vitality reinvigorated the fashion classic. The campaign illustrated how conceptions of cool have evolved over the course of the twentieth century and how the appropriation of subcultural styles give high fashion designs an edge. Surveying these images with legends of Chanel’s adventurous and determined personality in mind, I imagine that Mademoiselle herself would have been tempted to try the sport had she been presented with the opportunity.

Surfing has become a global phenomenon as a professional competitive sport and as a favoured leisure activity. Its popular mythology, promoted by music and films, is associated with the rejection of mainstream culture and the pursuit of personal freedom through a communion with nature. These romantic preconceptions make it a desirable brand in itself, which both consumers and manufacturers seem keen to buy into. Indeed, its longterm relevance to dress history was underlined when a surprising fragment of interwar surfing history circulated on blogs and websites in the form of a photograph of a woman standing in front of a surfboard on a nondescript beach. Agatha Christie was identified as the unlikely subject of the image. Christie first tried the sport in South Africa, but it wasn’t until a trip to Hawaii in 1922 that she mastered the cumbersome art of surfing standing upright on the board. In her 1972 autobiography, Christie described how she needed to adjust her wardrobe to the demands of the sport, as her “handsome silk bathing-dress” could not withstand the force of the waves. Instead, Christie opted for “a wonderful, skimpy, emerald-green wool bathing-dress,” purchased from the hotel shop and accessorised with laced, soft leather boots to protect her feet from the sharp coral of the Honolulu beach. This suggests that even before surfing became the fashionable sport it is today, its practical demands did not mean the end of individuality in dress. Her words give us a glimpse into attitudes towards surf-related attire before preconceptions were created by vivid marketing campaigns and promoted through music and film, as its popularity has grown since the 1950s.

By 2010 – the year of the Chanel campaign – the surfing industry, which encompasses a range of specialised companies from wetsuit manufacturers to wax and leash makers, generated more than seven billion dollars annually. Established companies, such as Quicksilver, which was founded in 1969, viewed attempts to tap into the developing market by big sportswear brands, such as Nike, with suspicion. Many of surf companies began as small local businesses during a period when the sport lacked mainstream popularity and their history is a key component of their brand identity. The way that labels, such as O’Neill, founded in 1952, and credited with the invention of the wetsuit, evolved over the years is closely linked to how the sport. This kind of authenticity mattered within the industry, and is reinforced by the short lifespan of the Nike 6.0 surf project in contrast to the ongoing popularity of Hurley, an established brand bought by the sportswear giant in 2002.

Both surfing and fashion are pursuits that allow self-expression, suggesting successful future collaborations, if collaborators are carefully chosen. Although the surfing industry has experienced setbacks in the last few years, the announcement that Kelly Slater, one of surf’s superstars, left his sponsor Quicksilver in order to partner with the Kering Group in March of this year suggests that the sport is still considered to have potential from a commercial standpoint. Slater and Kering’s joint venture will take the shape of an eco-friendly clothing company and Slater will serve as the Group’s ambassador for its issue concerning sustainability. It seems that through this collaboration, new standards can be set for both fashion and surfing, that combine authenticity and trend-awareness.

Sources:

Books:

Christie, A. (1977) An Autobiography. Glasgow: Fontana Collins.

Heinemann, J. (2004) Vintage Surfing Graphics. London and New York: Taschen.

Laderman, S. (2011) Empire in Waves: A political history of surfing. Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.

Schmidt, C. (2012) The Swimsuit. London and New York: Berg.

Wade, A. (2012) Amazing Surfing Stories. Chichester: Wiley Nautical.

Websites:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8340453.stm

http://www.businessinsider.com/billabong-demise-surfwear-2013-11

http://www.businessoffashion.com/2014/04/kering-to-back-surf-star-kelly-slater-in-new-lifestyle-brand.html

http://business.transworld.net/8642/features/how-hollister-co-stole-surf-eight-years-after-abercrombie-fitch-invaded-the-surf-market-what-can-be-done-to-defend-against-them/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chicceo/2013/08/02/a-blue-ocean-industry-beyond-the-ocean/

http://www.marketingmag.com.au/news/surf-brands-take-a-dive-as-gen-y-aussies-opt-for-disposable-fashion-45596/#.U9drBIB5PSF

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/fashion/thursdaystyles/01surf.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

http://www.prweb.com/releases/surfing_surfboards/surfing_apparel/prweb8581431.htm

http://www.retronaut.com/2011/08/agatha-christie-and-her-surf-board-1922/

http://sima.com/about/

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/surf-label-rides-a-hot-new-wave-20130810-2rous.html

http://surfcareers.com/blog/surfing-a-growing-industry/

http://www.surfingmagazine.com/news/kelly-slater-leaves-quiksilver/

http://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/3406-chanel-fashion-house-releases-luxury-surfboards

http://www.theinertia.com/business-media/surf-business-surf-industry-is-growing-up-target-nike/1/

I love packing for my summer holidays. I realise that may seem an odd, even slightly masochistic statement. But no, for me, packing is a pleasure – it taps into my innate enjoyment of organization and neatness – and more than that, it allows me to combine my research into fashion history with my lived experience of dress. My fascination with American sportswear from the 1930s-50s, and special interest in designers Vera Maxwell and Claire McCardell can be given full reign, as I pursue the perfect travel wardrobe.

While fashion magazines are now full of stories on ‘capsule wardrobes’ and articles on how to dress for every possible travel destination, in the 1930s, this was a newly emerging trend. Maxwell and McCardell helped to define this idea of a small, well-curated selection of separates that could be mixed-and-matched for the duration of the holiday. Developments in diverse areas, including, ready-to-wear manufacturing, advances in dying various fabrics the same colour and the growth of travel as a leisure activity – think cruise ships and new airlines – meant the coordinated capsule wardrobe was the rational and modern way to approach dressing.

By the late 1930s, McCardell was making five or seven piece collections of clothes that addressed women’s lifestyle needs – whether travelling for business or pleasure. Lightweight chambray in an easy dress, shorts, jacket and sun top, for example could be taken for a short beach holiday. Or a navy-based wardrobe of jacket, skirt, trousers, culottes and knitted top might be good for a business trip.

What mattered was the sense of ease and appropriateness – these designers were professional women themselves, they understood the demands of modern life and saw their task as problem-solving – making their customers’ choices more straightforward, allowing them to carry minimum luggage, while being assured of their fashionable status.

But their designs are not just logical, cold answers to a fashion question. Their love of fabric and detail, focus on clear silhouettes and variety-through-combination make them fascinating pieces of modern design. And fashion photography of the time, by Louise Dahl-Wolfe for example, emphasized the sense of happiness and ease their work promoted.

So when you pack your suitcase this summer, think of these pioneers of travel fashions, and enjoy the pleasures of simple, modern classics.