Example fashion dissertation topic 7:

Fetish wear and the middle classes: A rejoinder.

Inspired by the literary success of Fifty Shades of Grey and conscious rise of more ‘risqu�’ lingerie within Marks and Spencers (that staple of the middle classes), as well as the more mainstream acceptance of sexual practices previously kept well-behind private doors, this dissertation seeks to explain the rise of fetish wear amongst the middle classes. Using not only the company reports of M&S but also Agent Provocateur and Ann Summers, this is a dissertation that explores a hitherto under-researched aspect of high-street clothing. Though an interest in sociology would be advantageous for this study, it is primarily a fashion and fashion retailing dissertation that could also involve primary fieldwork. Indeed, it is a study that could also benefit from being conceptualised within the changing nature of relationships between mothers and daughters where ‘best-friendship’ has increasingly taken the place of traditional generational hierarchies.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Almond, K. (2011). ‘Suffering in fashion: The links that expose issues for the future production of garments and their appropriation as fashionable items’. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, vol. 4(3), pp. 153-160.
• O’Donnell, K.A. (1999). ‘Good girls gone bad: The consumption of fetish fashion and the sexual empowerment of women’. Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 26, pp.184-189.
• Steele, V. (1996). Fetish: Fashion, sex and power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.