Cool, sunglasses and the modern woman: icons of the 1960s
- Submitting institution
-
Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 8R - 697339
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1386/ffc.7.2.97_1
- Title of journal
- Film, Fashion and Consumption
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 97
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 2
- ISSN
- 2044-2823
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
C - Fashion and Textiles Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This article makes a detailed analysis of three iconic images of 1960s women (Kathleen Cleaver of the Black Panthers; Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (and the Lolita of Stanley Kubrick's film) in order to explore the role played by sunglasses and their connotations of coolness to the images’ enduring appeal. The article picks up on themes introduced in Brown’s Cool Shades (2014) and develops them with greater emphasis on gender and the meaning potentials of these images in contemporary culture, considering the developments of 'cool post-feminism’ and the relevance of 'blank affect' to current gendered representations. It analyses the mutations of these images from their original media appearances in documentary film, fiction film and film promotion and subsequent circulation and commodification in the present day. Though very different, these images have all had substantial academic attention as complex, compelling and problematic, and very little, if anything, has been said about them in relation to notions of coolness. The article argues that focusing on the presence of sunglasses, their forms, and how they are represented (in conjunction with relevant theory) prompts us to better acknowledge the variously nuanced concepts of cool made available to contemporary audiences within them.
The article was developed from a paper Brown was invited to give at a symposium about women, modernity and the city in the 1960s. It draws on scholarship published since the completion of Cool Shades and permits a tighter focus on gender than was possible in Cool Shades.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -