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- Title
The Microsociology of Aesthetic Evaluation: Selecting Runway Fashion Models.
- Authors
Hoppe, Alexander D.
- Abstract
Fashion model selection is a targeted case of aesthetic evaluation. For almost 100 years—beginning with data which Herbert Blumer collected in the 1930s—scholars have tried to understand how models are selected. Most have taken a critical and structural approach. I rely instead on a microsociology which centers endogenous decision processes. It highlights the agency and constraints of situational perception and situational stratification, yielding a novel analysis of the casting encounter. Data comes from an ethnography of a fashion week in a semi-peripheral city. It includes backstage evaluations gathered during a stint as a casting agent. I find that agents surprisingly ignore faces, instead focusing on the embodied cues of height/heels, the walk, and body size. Sustained microsociological analysis opens a layered mode of perception highlighting the dynamics of time, attention, emotion, and situations.
- Subjects
MODELS (Persons); AESTHETICS; BODY size; DECISION making; FASHION Week; EMOTIONS
- Publication
Qualitative Sociology, 2022, Vol 45, Issue 1, p63
- ISSN
0162-0436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11133-021-09496-x