“Class, Distinction and Style Critique

“Class, distinction and style” is an article abstracted from a book titled “The Fashion Body” authored by Joanne Entwistle, currently a Professor of Sociology in the University of Essex. She has been renowned for publishing topics widely on fashion, body and gender. This book is written from a sociological and historical perspective. Meant mainly for students, researcher and academics that have a vested interest in the role of fashion and style that affects modern culture and how modern social identities is formed through expression of the body, gender and sexuality.
In the past, one is able to distinguish the upper class and working class individuals by merely observing their clothing.   Moving on to modern times, the article provides an insightful perspective on how subculture has influence in today’s society, citing them from several fashion authorities on the occurrence of subculture fashion styles. She identified themes that are tagged along certain subcultures which affect the way particular group dress and carry themselves. The author provides a brief introduction on how social meaning could be assigned to individual sense of fashion style and group association. And she claims that the association between class identities and fashion are less distinguishable in modern culture.
However, I would beg to differ on her argument regarding this diminishing association (Entwistle, 2005)   between class identities and fashion style as the evidence provided were insufficient, not comprehensive and her style of writing is rather esoteric in nature. Thus before attempting to understand this article, background knowledge on fashion and sociology would be recommended as author employs several technical jargon such as “haute couture” and”flaneur” which was lacking in explanation and authors like Polhem, Simmel and Hebdige whom she cited may be foreign to students at an introductory level as they aren’t expose to them and might question the credibility of the sources....