Nakama, Julie
(2017)
Shopping the Look: Hollywood Costume Production and American Fashion Consumption, 1960-1969.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
“Shopping the Look” is a cultural, historical, industrial analysis of the production and consumption practices around film costume and consumer fashion during the 1960s. This work identifies a fundamental shift in costuming practices in the post-studio era and demonstrates how changing methods of costume production altered the relationship between female filmgoers and fashion marketing that had been established in the studio era. Through an analysis of archival documents like studio wardrobe records, production memos, and budget breakdowns, this project creates a history of changing production cultures within wardrobe departments. Concurrent with this story of production, “Shopping the Look” tells a story of consumption by examining the cultural landscape of film promotion and fashion advertising aimed at white, middle-class women in the 1960s. Through an analysis of studio marketing materials, film reviews, fashion show programs, and advertising in women’s magazines, this project shows that locations of consumption became diffused and diverse during the period, further displacing the cinema as a site of marketing address for female consumers.
Methodologically, this project engages archival research, textual analysis, and media industries analysis. It is further situated within several frameworks that include: industrial histories of film costume, studies of post-studio American film, production culture & media industry studies, gender and consumption studies, cultural histories of the 1960s, and fashion & design cultures of the 1960s. Working among these intersections, “Shopping the Look” brings together a range of discourses to think more deeply about the ways in which costume functions both onscreen and off, and to think about the complicated relationships among women, the cinema, and consumer culture during a period characterized industrially by massive studio reorganization and culturally by shifting attitudes about gender, the family, and the home. The goal of this project is to provide a heretofore untold history of post-studio costume departments that reaches past existing paradigms about gender and consumption to reconsider the means, and sites, through which the cinema addressed women. Ultimately, “Shopping the Look” is interested in the ways that women negotiated questions of consumerism, stardom, ideological positioning, and constructions of femininity through costume and fashion in the 1960s.
Share
| Citation/Export: |
|
| Social Networking: |
|
Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
|
| Date: |
28 September 2017 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
14 July 2017 |
| Approval Date: |
28 September 2017 |
| Submission Date: |
11 August 2017 |
| Access Restriction: |
5 year -- Restrict access to University of Pittsburgh for a period of 5 years. |
| Number of Pages: |
256 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > English |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
film costume; fashion; costume plot; women's magazines; gadgets; Doris Day |
| Date Deposited: |
28 Sep 2017 22:53 |
| Last Modified: |
28 Sep 2022 05:15 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/33085 |
Metrics
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}