• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.101-110
• /
• 2005

Vivienne Westwood could be placed in a unique position in the contemporary fashion design. She has never belonged in a core group of mainstream fashion designer but not been always in an outsider position. She got from mainstream fashion designer circles enormous appreciation, even established fashion industry was influenced by her fashion design. She began her fashion design with rebellious T-shirts like 'destroy' T-shirt, chicken-bone T-shirt, and nipple-zipper T-shirt, all of which revealed her disgust against establishment. All these T-shirts testify her total negation tendency in her youth. However, she did not continue to keep such a kind of total negation attitude against establishment In 1980s she changed her political attitude towards establishment, and this change also found a reflection in her fashion design. In her pirate-collection the dark image of her fashion in the 1970s changed into a totally different bright image with full of gold colour. Although this collection had radiated brightness, it contained still outsider character from mainstream fashion design. The following fashion design in 1980s and 1990s evolved further on the line of Pirate-collection, but they continued to contain certain outsider characteristics. Vivienne Westwood kept some kind of anti-establishment attitude, and this attitude more or little came to the surface of her design. She was always political and critical to the establishment. In 2005, in her 64, she designed a liberty T-shirt, which showed her political attitude and her engagement in social issues. Also it showed the change from the early total negation to the constructive critical affirmation. In this paper the relation between the fashion design of Vivienne Westwood and her political attitude and the influence of her political attitude to her fashion design is analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
• /
• v.61 no.10
• /
• pp.42-54
• /
• 2011

The study was focused on surveying the cultural identity and the origin of T-shirts, and examining their functions. Six cities were selected to categorize the design motifs of cultural identity appearing in the design of contemporary T-shirts. These cities include a city in France, United Kingdom, Italy, United States and Japan where collections are currently presented at, and also a city in China that has shown a high economic growth as one of the most popular sightseeing cities. Cultural identity was presented in the T-shirts that were examined in this study through diversified design motifs. Motifs used in T-shirt designs to reflect cultural identity included national flags, notable places, letters, names of geographic places, and individuals. A national flag is a motif that signifies national identity and it was used in the front of T-shirts as it is or was just partially used. Also, many world-renowned structures or architectural buildings were applied to T-shirt design. Noted places such as the White House, the Statue of Liberty in the U.S., Tienanmen Square in China and the Eiffel Tower in France were used. The unique characters of language, such as Hangeul in Korea were used as design elements to reflect the structural characteristics of letters. Names of geographic places were used as design elements through the disclosure of the name of a symbolic city or a tourist site in each country. In terms of figures, not only the historical figures or celebrities from each country were used, but the image of bodies and faces that represent each culture were used as well. In addition, this study was used to develop T-shirt designs that reveal the cultural identity of Korea.