Designing fashion items by respecting silhouettes and proportions (01/12/2011)
(...) Wooden awl - This is used for marking any points within the pattern piece by punching through the pattern to leave a small mark on the fabric. Pins - These are used to temporarily fix pieces of paper or cloth together. Tape measure - An indispensable item, this is used for taking measurements of the body and its flexibility allows curved lines to be measured too. (...)

Sizing and grading in fashion design (01/12/2011)
(...) Shirt sizes are given by the neck measurement. In childrenswear the principal variable is usually height so sizing is governed mainly by age. Measurements for each size can be taken from everywhere but, where possible, it is always best to take real measurements from live models. (...)

A closer look at digital cinema aesthetics (01/20/2010)
(...) When it was attempted, the result was usually dangerously contradictory; think of Ja-Ja Binks, Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor uncomfortably sharing the same shot in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Lucas 1999). The widely differing visual qualities brought to the image by human and CGI figures threaten to dismantle its illusion of believability. And also, the difficulty of combining CGI with the photographed human meant that the two elements had to be kept separate in different parts of the frame, with no intermingling or one crossing in front of or behind the other. (...)

Critical aspects of software aesthetics (01/19/2010)
(...) Far from the vistas of infinite freedom scented the Electronic Freedom Foundation, the Internet is rapidly becoming a highly and rigidly commercial domain. Against this utopian vision are ranged some darker fears. The key threat comes not from the state but from commercial surveillance, characterized by another invisible technology, cookies, small packets of software run by Internet applications on a user's computer which may report back on anything from what software you have to your browsing habits, without your knowledge, and with the collusion of browser manufacturers. (...)

Feminine adornments in male fashion (12/25/2009)
(...) Although women have taken on men's trousers and made them their own, there is no male version of the female skirt. The closest one comes to a "skirt" in male attire today is the sarong or kilt, but in both cases, they derive from cultural sources where such items were traditionally worn by men, rather than being based on an imitation of female dress. Even in the case of the more adventurous gender transgressions engaged in by male celebrities such as Stephen Linard and Leigh Bowery during the late 1970s and early '80s, the dominance of the male principle is still evident. (...)

Fashion and female social life (12/25/2009)
(...) As the relation between the outward "mask" and the body that wears it is entirely arbitrary, it makes no difference whether the body is "male" or "female." Since gender identity is seen as constituted by the mask that one adopts, the nature of the body wearing that guise is no longer considered relevant. The male transvestite is just as much a "woman" as the woman who dons the masque of femininity since there is no self apart from the one forged by our outward appearance. (...)

Exercise is no longer a male prerogative (12/25/2009)
(...) Even in the case of the recent trend toward the unisex marketing of fragrances such as Calvin Klein's One, the product continues to be "masculine" in its look (in this case, resembling a hip flask), so as not to alienate the male segment of the market. Also, men's fragrances are frequently associated with traditionally manly outdoor activities, such as sailing or athletics, to reassure the man using the product of his masculinity, or are displayed in conjunction with a professional man in a business suit who radiates an air of authority and confidence in his masculinity, as exemplified by recent advertisements for Hugo Boss men's fragrance. Similarly, while there are an increasing number of advertisements promoting fashion and personal care products to the male consumer, in which men are portrayed in a quasi-feminine position as the object of the gaze, at the same time, this is counterbalanced by the inclusion of elements that remind us of the masculinity of the models depicted. (...)

Tatoos as statements of identity (12/23/2009)
(...) . . central to a lot of contemporary tattoo and piercing talk is the idea of individuation; of the tattoo . (...)

About the nature of tatoos (12/23/2009)
(...) This sense of the obsolescence of the body has become particularly acute in recent times with the growing ubiquity of the virtual world of cyberspace. In such a context, invocations of the corporeality of the body represent a last ditch attempt to rescue the "real" from its absorption into the realm of simulation, where the original referents have fallen out of sight. Baudrillard, in a somewhat hyperbolic fashion, writes of the body in postmodern culture as having been assimilated to the general condition of "hyperreality," which represents a panic attempt to simulate a sense of the "real" in the wake of its disappearance. (...)

The meaning of tattoos is changeable (12/23/2009)
(...) tattooing and piercing are read explicitly as statements of the self. No longer is tattooing accounted for as drunken impulse or forcible subjection: tattoos, like piercings, are to be ‘chosen' after much deliberation". The individual who acquires tattoos today sees this most frequently as an act of self-assertion rather than as a capitulation to the trends of fashion or as indicative of conformity with a social group. (...)

A particular type of masculine identity (12/23/2009)
(...) Not only does the tattoo serve as a badge of male identity, but the process of its acquisition also contributes to the sense of male bonding, as men in the same platoon or gang often acquire their tattoos at the same time. The actual process of tattooing thus serves as a type of initiation rite in which individual men have the sense of being inducted into a particular community. The stoic endurance of pain is integral to this experience, being seen as a proof of one's manhood. (...)

Reconnection with tribal cultures (12/23/2009)
(...) In contrast with the representational or pictographic nature of Western and Japanese tattooing, tribal markings, according to Lingis, are not a system of signs pointing to a meaning beyond themselves that needs to be deciphered, but rather, operate directly on the senses, circumventing interpretation. Such a view of tattooing was seen as liberating for gay men, who embraced it as a visible way of expressing non-normative desires, pleasures, and identities. Taking a practice that had hitherto been used to exclude them, they now converted it into a public display of the body's potential for a non-phallocentric eroticism. (...)

Advertisements and the male image (12/23/2009)
(...) . . and tattooed, his body a kind of visual masculine hyperbole . (...)

Another interpretation of the sailor icon (12/23/2009)
(...) The tattoos, which are prominently displayed on the men's upper arms, are reminiscent of the style of working class tattoos, featuring motifs such as semi-naked women and fearsome monsters. This symbolism of a tough and rugged masculinity is further reinforced in two instances by the nature of the setting within which the model is placed-in one case, an industrialized landscape with power pylons in the background, and in the other, a bodybuilding studio. Further indications of a tough masculinity are the well-muscled bodies of the models and the occasional scar, suggestive of a rough lifestyle. (...)

Increasing prevalence of gender border crossings (12/23/2009)
(...) Accompanying this apparently greater reciprocity in the crossing of gender boundaries is a sense of gender markers as no longer being connected with particular "sexed" bodies. Rather, they emerge as arbitrary signs that bear no necessary relation to the "sex" of the body of the wearer who appropriates them. No longer signifying anything beyond themselves, they are treated as "free-floating" signifiers, which can be adopted or discarded at will and mixed together in a myriad of different combinations. (...)

The process of infinite commutability in fashion (12/23/2009)
(...) The manipulation of the signs of gender in the realm of "appearances," here, is interpreted as a subversive act that undoes the systems of meaning and power. This is epitomized for Baudrillard by the figure of the transvestite. Rather than seeking to overturn social inequalities in the "real" world, the more effective strategy, according to Baudrillard in On seduction, is to unravel the system of signification of gender difference, thereby ushering in a polymorphous eroticism free from the strictures of Oedipal sexuality. (...)

Gender has become a stylistic fabrication (12/23/2009)
(...) By putting the markers of gender in quotation marks, as it were, she draws attention to their culturally constructed and hence, essentially arbitrary, nature. As Schwichtenberg writes: ". . (...)

Physical appearance in postmodern society (12/22/2009)
(...) While in premodern societies, modifications and adornments of the body were governed by traditional, ritualized meanings, the body in modernity has been secularized and is more frequently treated as a phenomenon to be fashioned as an expression of an individual's identity, rather than in accordance with some traditionally given system of meaning. In contemporary culture, we have become responsible for the design of our own bodies. However, at the same time as the aesthetic cult of the self has been increasingly conceived in individual terms, there has been a deindividualization of the self. (...)