Australian women and style examined in new book

Think of the quintessential Australian dress?Anzac slouch hat. Perhaps moleskins, elastic-sided boots and a Driazabone. Or thongs, towelling hat and a smear of zinc.

While these images are iconic, University of Queensland academic Dr Margaret Maynard would like you to think again and broaden your selection.

In her new book, Out of Line: Australian Women and Style (UNSW Press, $39.95) Dr Maynard challenges beliefs that a specific national identity is exclusive to men's dress.

She examines the notion that Australia has made the quest for national identity a real obsession.

"Without doubt this has been a political and masculine quest that has by and large failed to include women," she said.

"Australia's myths and cultural rhetoric have constructed a clear but general exclusive national identity that is masculine, associated with wars, and land, outdoor clothing and so on, albeit an identity very much fractured in recent years.

"This study suggests that it is equally possible to find similar sets of defining notions in women's dress and behaviours."

Her new book attempts to redress the imbalance, adding substantially to the body of published academic material on the distinctiveness of Australian identity.

"Oscar Wilde once quipped that fashion was a form of ugliness so intolerable that it had to be altered every six months," Dr Maynard said.

"Nowadays, fashion is more likely tofall within the category of lifestyle, but is still a subject unfashionable among intellectuals."

She explores the view that style is a primary signal of a culture, and Australian style, a signpost to Australian culture.

"It is my contention that the study of fashion in Australia is not only a legitimate one, but crucial to any understanding of the nation's social practices and identity," she said.

"Fashion speaks about us, for us and to us. It communicates social changes and social cohesion; it is a system of representation which inhabits the world of dreams, ideas and aspirations yet simultaneously embodies the material nature of history. At its most subtle, dress and fashion too, signals the proclivities, tastes and identity of the individual but incontrovertibly also symbolises the collective language of nationhood."

Dr Maynard said her book questioned the orthodox view that fashion in Australia was both unoriginal and inferior to "master" European prototypes from which it supposedly and systematically appropriated.

She said Australian fashion and comportment were superficially derivative of Britain, France, the USA, and to a degree, Japan and Italy. But inflections of style, whether of taste, mannerisms, choice of accessories and colours, indigenous references and even regional, contextual and climatic differences, lent their unique qualities.

"If we define the appearance of being Australian, we necessarily make comparisons with what we are not, but even so it is clear that cultural profiles, derived from elsewhere, do not sit easily in this society."

The book has some wonderful illustrations - 40 black and white, and 20 colour - for the enjoyment of readers interested in fashion, cultural studies, identity studies and art history. It focuses strongly on indigenous design and designers.

Dr Maynard speaks from a position of authority. She trained as a dress historian at the Courtauld Institute of Art London, and is now a senior lecturer in art history at The University of Queensland. She has published extensively on dress, cultural studies and Australian colonial art and photography. Her first book was entitled Fashioned from Penury: Dress as Cultural Practice in Colonial Australia (1994).

Media: For further information, contact Jan King at UQ Communications 0413 601 248.