Fashioning melancholia : sartorial aesthetics and cultural identity in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis presents the first comprehensive research on fashion and melancholia. It is a theoretical and interdisciplinary project that explores the cultural history of place through the representation of dress and the fashioning of sartorial aesthetics. Focusing on Aotearoa New Zealand, this thesis establishes the fundamental relationship between fashion and melancholia and demonstrates the heuristic capacity of melancholia as a device through which to consider the construction of national cultural and aesthetic identity. The concept of melancholia, determined by a deep ambivalence and a profound sense of loss, is positioned as a constitutive feature of sartorial fashion in Aotearoa New Zealand and as an indicative analytical apparatus. Employing the concept of melancholia in this way affords the research both a unique perspective and a distinctive historical depth. In presenting a cultural history of Aotearoa New Zealand, this research does not examine the history of fashion per se. Rather, it is concerned with the ways in which fashion, represented in different forms of cultural production, informs the construction of particular narratives of place, history and aesthetic identity. Both fashion and melancholia, this thesis argues, are characterised by contrast and loss. As such, they are both afforded the capacity to show different versions of the same story, different iterations of the same narrative. Considering the two in conjunction offers an illuminating lens through which to consider the cultural history of place. By engaging with the concept of melancholia in relation to sartorial aesthetics and cultural identity, this thesis presents an original approach to the study of culture and history in Aotearoa New Zealand. Examining sartorial aesthetics within the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, this thesis illustrates how cultural history contributes to the production of aesthetic identity, and how the fashioning of a particular aesthetic contributes to the construction of cultural identity. It examines cultural artefacts through melancholia to explore the ways in which sartorial aesthetics function in the fashioning of place and cultural identity and, in so doing, determines the significance of melancholia as a concept of great contemporary relevance and affective application in the study of fashion and cultural history.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English