About the project
Is there such a thing as rural fashion? What does it look like? Where is it located? Who wears it? From the 'green welly brigade' to 'our green and pleasant land', the projects hosted under the Fields of Fashion banner set out to understand all aspects of fashion in - and of - the rural.
The Fields of Fashion (FoF) research cluster operates out of the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University. It was established in October 2008 and brings together a number of academics from diverse backgrounds in the visual and creative arts, all of whom share a common interest in fashion and rural life.
In recent years, there has been a tendency for scholarship to concentrate on the study of fashion in 'world cities' and urban spaces and places. The fashion industry too is organised around a hierarchy of city-based hubs: London, Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo.
Meanwhile, rural spaces and places - the countryside - are imagined as being mired in anti-fashion with utilitarian work wear and traditional costume being the order of the day. Part of the work of the Fields of Fashion team is to consider the provenance of these arbitrary classifications - and to problematise them.
Findings from our (ongoing) fieldwork have been presented at international academic conferences, disseminated to key fashion industry players in the form of interactive workshops and published internationally as articles and visual essays. The FoF archive is a work-in-progress, containing interview transcripts, numerous digital images of consumption in the countryside and related ephemera.
To date, the FoF team have pursued research in three interrelated areas:
Rural trend tracking
One strand of research activity involves the tracking of rural fashion trends in contemporary designer collections and on the British high street. Of late, fashion designers have raided the country wardrobe for inspiration, so that quilted tweeds, brogues and Barbours have become de rigueur, signposting a rural lifestyle that can be 'bought off the peg'. These items of country clothing are adapted to the needs of today’s fashion consumers but, so too, have a long history, rich in symbolic meaning.
History of rural dress
A further strand of research makes an historical study of rural clothing, tracing the stories behind specific garments and the biographies of those that wore them. The contention is that clothing is socially and politically charged and that micro studies of individual items of country apparel - notably equestrian dress from the early 1900s - provide avenues into broader discussions regarding contemporary gender, culture and identity issues. FoF has pursued this research via a collaborative relationship with the National Sporting Library, Virginia, USA, successfully securing a John H Daniels Fellowship at its Centre for Horse and Field Sports to conduct archive work on historical riding apparel.
Retailing and consumption at field events
The equestrian world provides inspiration for yet another research strand, which is characterised by dynamic, ethnographic, fieldwork. The FoF team has carried out research at high profile equestrian sporting events such as Badminton Horse Trials and the Olympia International Horse Show. As much about the spectacle of consumption as the spectacle of elite horsemanship, 'pop-up' shopping villages have become an integral part of the horse trials circuit. Indeed, eventing is now very closely associated with retailing. FoF research considers this phenomenon and proposes the idea of the 'field as mall' – analysing what happens when the countryside turns marketplace and becomes a temporary site of trade and commercial exchange.
