Speaking of Fashion: Consumers' Uses of Fashion Discourses and the Appropriation of Countervailing Cultural Meanings

Abstract

This article explores the ways that consumers use fashion discourse to inscribe their consumption behaviors in a complex ideological system of folk theories about the nature of self and society. Verbatim texts of 20 phenomenological interviews concerning consumers' perceptions and experiences of fashion are interpreted through a hermeneutic process with specific consideration given to gender issues. Whereas critics of consumer culture frequently argue that fashion discourses enshroud consumer perceptions in a common hegemonic outlook, our analysis suggests that this ideological system offers a myriad of countervailing interpretive standpoints that consumers combine, adapt, and juxtapose to fit the conditions of their everyday lives. By appropriating fashion discourse, consumers generate personalized fashion narratives and metaphoric and metonymic references that negotiate key existential tensions and that often express resistance to dominant fashion norms in their social milieu or consumer culture at large. A theoretical model is derived that portrays a dialogical relationship between consumers and this cultural system of countervailing fashion meanings. The implications of this model for future research on the meaning transfer process and the sociocognitive dimensions of consumer beliefs are discussed.