Du musée à la thèse : vers un modèle d’étude du vêtement de l’enfant
- Submitting institution
-
Heriot-Watt University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 22708961
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
-
-
- Title of journal
- Tétralogiques
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 115
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- 0755-8953
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
http://www.tetralogiques.fr/spip.php?article90
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Published in Tetralogiques, an international, online, per-reviewed journal, this article investigates the role and impact of children’s fashion and clothing on their social development. Through a renewed analysis of the history and present of children’s dress, the output moves beyond the traditional, chronological approach largely based on adults’ representation of childhood (Aries, 1960; Cunnington & Buck, 1965; Ewing, 1977; Rose, 1989). It offers an original, trans-disciplinary perspective, fusing object-focused material culture study to the research of children’s fashion history with the methodologies of childhood sociology (Quentel, 1997) and design anthropology (Balut, 2013), underpinned by Mediation Theory (Gagnepain, 1987), and in doing so opens up new methods of understanding for other aspects of material culture.
The investigation is based on a detailed cataloguing of 686 garments from the collections of prestigious international museums, specialising institutions and public community collections: Museums of the city of Paris (Palais Galliera), Marseille, Calais, and the French museum of children’s fashion (Cholet, France), the National Museum of Scotland, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the MET (New York). This corpus is completed by a discussion of the production of contemporary children’s wear brands. The thorough analysis of family photographs, testimonials and 700 pages of children’s wear catalogues contextualises these collections.
This research goes beyond the usual adult focus on children’s material culture and instead approaches clothing as an educational and socialising material through an analysis of the capacity of fashion to shape children’s identities. It provides insight to the impact of children’s spontaneous interactions with their material environment and promotes the adoption of inclusive design that allows children to appropriate their clothes. This heuristic, inter-disciplinary research has been presented at international conferences (i.e. International Childhood Conference, Sofia, 2018) and evidences the legitimacy of the study of children’s clothes in a comprehensive anthropology of childhood.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- Yes
- English abstract
- Published in an international online peer-reviewed journal, this article is based on the finding of an interdisciplinary thesis demonstrating the role and impact of fashion and clothing on the socialisation of children. The article investigates children's material culture and explores the interactions between adult "educators" and children through extensive archival research and cultural anthropology. This research provides a unedited and impactful insight on the way to design for children and the importance of education through fashion
