A Contextual Study of the Pluralization of Sexuality Represented in Mainstream Fashion and Anti-Fashion Since the Late Century

The purpose of this study is to reinterpret sexuality represented in fashion since the latter half of the 19th century in a contextual view, on the basis of Foucauldian idea of post-structural sexuality. As for research methodology, literary research was undertaken from the conception of sexuality to a historical review of the culture and dress. Foucault maintains the view of plural sexuality, which floats by power relationship between dominant and oppositional discourses in a specific historical context. In contextual approach sexual ideology codified in fashion since the latter 19C shows the following aspects: First, the traditional sexual ideology in the latter 19C is a capitalist value, which gives a priority to bourgeois man's profits, and the Victorian discourses of sexuality constructs the dichotomized fashion of the period. Next, the former half of the $20^{th}$ C is regarded as the period of conformity rather than opposition with various alternatives appropriated to the mainstream, so the traditional sexual ideology in fashion of this period is still preserved. Finally, in post-capitalism period of the latter 20C a variety of anti-fashion visualized plural sexuality from the enormous oppositional discourses. Although it doesn't all mean deconstruction of sexuality in fashion by the anti-fashion re-appropriated without oppositional meanings, pluralization of sexuality implies dynamics of sexual discourses in the next historical period. As a result, fashion since the latter 19C has been changed as a means for expressing age and sexual desire out of gender and class. And mainstream fashion in even postmodern period keeps the modern value on the center of the hegemonic heterosexual masculinity though the increase of Androgynous Femininity in women's fashion may connote the meaning of femininity. The plural sexuality represented in fashion has a contextual flexibility, thus sexuality floats with a specific socio-cultural context and fashion represents a masquerade as an identity vehicle.

19세기 후반 이후 주류패션과 반패션에 표현된 성의 다원화에 관한 맥락적 연구