Page 112 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

96 Consumer Culture and Fashion Studies

information that Forbes provides and with the high - end fashion tips that
younger members of the corporate community, especially men looking for
mates and therefore interested in how they look to the opposite sex, might
need. The second type of magazine is linked to activities and regions of the
country usually associated with men in a lower - income range. What you
will see is a difference between the elegant style that wealth supports and
the somewhat more workaday and functional style associated with less
wealth and with more practical needs than display for the purpose of
impressing others or with attracting the opposite sex. Rather than Valentino,
Carhartt.
If a man who usually wears Carhartt with his hunting friends suddenly
showed up in an Yves St. Laurent suit, he would raise eyebrows
and probably provoke laugher. We often use clothes as a way of express-
ing solidarity with a particular social or cultural group, for example,
by dressing the same as them, or we distinguish ourselves from other
groups or from particular values by dressing in a particular way that is
strikingly at odds with the other group ’ s style. One of the most resonant
and obvious examples of such a use of fashion emerged in Black hip
hop clothing styles over the past several decades. Initially, Black youth
reached upward in American sartorial culture, borrowing a particular

style from White clothing – the Tommy Hilfiger brand that was associ-
ated with the preppy or college preparatory school lifestyle. The adop-

tion of Hilfiger by Black hip hop artists initially and then eventually by
Black youth in general was ironic, but it also expressed a desire to over-
come a social and economic class difference, registered in clothing styles,
that symbolically embodied the exclusion of Black youth from White
educational culture and the wealthy White leisure lifestyle. For Black
youth, Hilfiger was a way of buying in symbolically to a world that in

reality excluded them.
Not all sartorial meaning is expressive of inner identity or of group soli-
darity or group exclusion. Some meanings are assigned by other social
groups. When I was growing up in the early to mid - 1960s, there were two
distinct social groups and two distinct clothing styles adopted by each
group. The preppies wore penny loafers (yes, with pennies in them) and
brown to light - colored clothing with traditional styling. Blue jeans were
not yet fashionable, and they would have appeared too informal to this
group. Mostly, these kids were middle class and aspired to go to college.
On the other side were greasers. If the preppies wore their hair down in