This research aims to investigate the role of fashion in the context of the deconstruction of gender

stereotypes. Expectation of society and culture related to the biological structure of the individual
carries some roles and this role also carries many gender stereotypes in it. But the individual can be
use the clothing style to express his or her gender identity which may not match the expectations of
the community and society. In the context of big role of the clothing, stereotypes could be
deconstructed because clothes are the visible expression of gender identity of the person. And
fashion is a big part of this structure because fashion is a pioneer of what people wear. Nowadays
fashion has also mean about expressing identity independent of whether you were born male or
female. Many fashion brands prepare their collections in the concept of ‘gender fluid’ by
deconstructions. The representations of gender fluidity through fashion help bring a sense of
normality to people who are trying to find the self-confidence to express who they want to be. And
the results are showed that the numbers of collections about it are increasing and fashion sector
takes this issue into consideration.

http://journals.euser.org/index.php/ejser/article/view/3530

`ROLE OF FASHION AND CLOTHING IN CONSTRUCTION

OFGENDER IDENTITIES
’

To be blessed as a male or female in any community is more than an

easy natural reality.It is a natural reality with social and cultural
significance. Females comprise a unique groupingof any given society,
and the agent of that group, long ignored by experts, has nothing to do
withwomanly "nature." "Gender" is the phrase now commonly used to
reference those methods inwhich a lifestyle reformulates what starts as a
reality of characteristics. Fashion and clothing areintertwined with each
other in creating a gendered-structure of society predicated on the
outlookof clothed human body. Li (2011, pp.128) puts this observation
in these words,
“
Countlessstudies of nineteenth-century women and gender have attested
to the pervasive presence inEnglish culture of the separate-sphere
ideology which assigned the private domain of home andfamily to
women and the public arena of politics, commerce and work to men. In
contrast tothese ostensibly gendered spheres, fashionable society
appeared not to be gendered even as itsgender-free façade was
underpinned by a complicated poli
tics of gender.”
Similarly Wilson(2005
, pp.120) observed that “In general, however, in the early industrial
period gender
difference was more firmly marked by dress. Fashion became an
important instrument in aheightened consciousness of gendered
individuality.”
Attfield (2005, pp.77) writes in similar
way, “The case of fashionable dress is particularly apposite in addressing
questions about group
and self-identity since it constitutes the layer of material that lies
between the body and theoutsid
e world.”
Fashion generates and alters identities based on the gender-based
relations in a society. Aman wearing clothes of a woman is generally
ridiculed as a feminine. Similarly if a woman
adopts men‟s style in clothing, she will be regarded as a masc
uline. Li (1996, pp. 194) says,
“Facilitated by fashion,
masculinity and femininity became a constant matter of
negotiation between the seemingly trans-historical universal and the curr
ently exigent. Fashionable genderroles did not do away with the ancient
division between the inner and the outer; nonetheless, theyrewrote new
version of their relationship to best accommodate nineteenth-
century‟s discovery ofthe „surface effects‟
.
”
Crane's study
„
Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identityin Clothing
‟
(2000) gives an excellent account of the role of fashion in creation and
alteration ofgender studies in which, she has applied Foucauldian post-
modernist technique of analysisregarding incredulity to meta-narratives
of gender-identity formation as a social reconstruction.Crane (2000, pp.
16) says
“Fashionable clothes are used to make statements about social class
and social identity, but their principal messages are about the ways in
which women and men
perceive their gender roles or are expected to perceive them.”
She provides both new information and understanding, especially for the
earlier interval.In her focus on nineteenth-century working-class outfits,
for example, she considered working-class style both in respect to
sociologist Georg Simmel's well-known top-down concept of
stylediffusion as upper-class replica, and competitive statements by later
academicians that

democratization best represents changing styles in industrializing or

developed countries. Crane(2000, 16) vividly writes that
“In the nineteenth century, fashionable clothes g
enerally expressed
the gender roles of upper class women.”
Clothes mark a line of difference between the social world and the
naked body, thusacting as an agency wherein social expectations with
regard to gender can be coagulated intoreality and are made obvious in
the body. Allhoff (2011, pp.6) says
“Of course fashion is not
always about or even primarily about individuality. As Yim points out it
is also a powerfulmeans of communicating group membership and social
roles. Clothes we wear, along withhairstyle and other items of
adornment, can and often do, whether we are aware of it or
not,communicate our social and professional roles and status
—
think power dressing, fitness freak,ladies who launch it. They may also
communicate our gender, our sexuality, our political
commitments, our religious and moral beliefs, and our aesthetic
judgments.”
 Crane (2011) attracts a nuanced symbol of working-class outfits,
indicating that working-class individuals made choices about which
middle-class items of style they discovered attractiveand inclusion to
their new mode of adaptation in their daily life. Allhoff (2011, pp.6) also
comesto such observation as
“Clothing ourselves is clearly not simply a matter of what is convenient
or
comfortable. It is also not just a matter of what is fashionable this year
(since a wide variety ofstyles may meet that criterion) or of what looks
good on us. What we wear communicates manydifferent messages to
those around us. Fashion can be important as a way of expressing
our person
al styles, our preferences, and even our moods.”

Crane‟s study
also deeply peruses the greater attention given to stylish outfits
byworking-class spouses employed in professional tasks than by their
spouse who stayed mostly athome. She has also contextualized Simmel's
visual view itself, indicating his results might bemanipulated because he
unknowingly restricted his findings to those working-class
individualsmost often noticeable to the middle class category:
experienced men and single womenemployees. Crane also states about
the value of community space in spurring style diffusion.City working-
class partners who wanted to practice pleasurable activities such as
walking
need properly stylish attire to do so perfectly. This practice created fluid
gender identities as Crane(2000, pp.17) observes,
“
By the late twentieth century, nineteenth century notions of fixedgender
identities and intolerance of gender ambiguity were gradually
disappearing.
”
Crane's creative feature of nineteenth-century middle-class women
‟
s "alternative dress"as a center ground between oppositional and
preponderant style is a significant rethinking ofgendered style in this
interval. Less complicated to existing women style than obvious
attirechange designs such as the 1850s Bloomer Outfit, substituted attire
and provided a means forfemales to avoid contouring completely to the
hegemonic feminineness showed by stylish attire.Women covered
themselves up with overcoats, ties, and other clothing designs and
codesderived from men's wear to create less frilly and decorative outfits.
Crane (2000, pp.19) observesthese changing trends as
“
In nineteenth century it agenda was conservative, based on the

conception of women‟s roles that was widely shared.

In the 1920s and 1960s, fashion agendawas more progressive, reshaping
the appearance of women in keeping with changes in theirsocial roles
and in the rest of society. Thus according to Parkins, Sheehan and Felski
(2011, pp.
n.a), “In this rich material and discursive moment, fashion emerged as a
battle ground betweensexes”
In modern times, the discourse of fashion is particularistic about women
only. Many people think that fashion is
all about women in general; and the beautification of their
physicaloutlook in particular. Craik (1993, pp.176) says
“
Historically and cross-culturally, the clothing ofmen and women has
been subject to trends in styles and fashions. From the eighteenth
century,in Western Europe male fashion has received less attention than
women's.
”
This particularistic view accrues from over-emphasis of fashion industry
on femaledresses and their costumes. Craik (1993, pp.176) says that
“
Women are fashionable but men arenot. This lament is common in
western cultures. Indicatively, most studies of contemporaryfashion
emphasise female fashion and marginalise attention to male dress.
”
But most of the observers are usually mistaken by
this idea of fashion industry‟s
exclusive focus on female as an object of its advertisement blitz. This
particularistic approachtowards female as locus of fashion has roots in
the ethos pursued during Victorian era ofaristocracy. Craik (1993,
pp.196) brilliantly traces the historical roots in the following words,
“
Yet the equation of fashion with women and the exclusion of men is
historically and culturallyspecific, stemming from nineteenth-century
Victorian and European notions of etiquette, genderrelations, and
sexuality. In particular, these ideas proposed a radical split between
genders andassigned each of them specific roles and locations. An index
of this order of sexual division wasthe continuous recreation of dress
codes. Within this process women were gradually assigned therole of the
fashionable gender of the species.
”

It is well nigh possible to deconstruct the gender construction in a

society by applicationof techniques for analyzing. Technique here
implies the paradigm to underline the salientfeatures of identity
formation in binary-polarisation of gender roles in society. These
techniqueare related to the fact that how we know about our social roles
on different basis. This
problem becomes more glaring when it comes to define the identity of fe
males in differentiated roles based on physical characteristics and social
responsibilities as Craik (1993, pp.33)
“
It is also possible to distinguish techniques associated with the occupancy
of a female body (being female)from techniques that deploy gender as a
social strategy (being feminine). While techniques
of being female include practices associated with fertility, nurturing and
caring, they also includetechniques associated with domesticity and the
management of everyday life. Techniques offemininity are related to
these (and obviously there is a fine line between the two) are
characterised by techniques of display and projection of the female body.
”
http://lepo.it.da.ut.ee/~cect/teoreetiline%20seminar%2001.10.2013/Turner_2012.pdf

https://www.google.co.in/search?rlz=1C2GIWA_enIN604IN605&safe=strict&source=hp&ei=4d6AXLSiHaKSvQS8-
J2wCg&q=fashion+gender+stereotypes&oq=fashion+gender+s&gs_l=psy-
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The importance of clothes transcends cultures, time and geographies. No matter whether we are talking
about the present or Victorian times: what we wear on our bodies has meaning. Our clothes indicate who
we are as individuals as well as a society. Indeed, some anthropologists refer to clothes as “the social
skin.” he surface of the body seems everywhere to be treated, not only as the boundary of the individual
as a biological and psychological entity but as the frontier of the social self as well. As these two entities
are quite different, and as cultures differ widely in the ways they define both, the relation between them
is highly problematic. The problems involved, however, are ones that all societies must solve in one way
or another, because upon the solution must rest a society’s ways of ‘socialising’ individuals, that is, of
integrating them into the societies to which they belong, not only as children but throughout their lives.
The surface of the body, as the common frontier of society, the social self, and the psychobiological
individual; becomes the symbolic stage upon which the drama of socialization is enacted, and bodily
adornment (in all its culturally multifarious forms, from body-painting to clothing and from feather head-
dresses to cosmetics) becomes the language through which it is expressed