My reflection on A. O'Neill text

On page 9, O’Neill explains that the cultural critic Walter Benjamin believed it was possible to write about history by taking ‘random’ objects from the past and bringing them into contact with objects from the present to ‘give insight to the present and offer a critical understanding of what had gone before’ (O’Neill, 2007: p9). Do you think this is a good or a bad approach to investigating historical sources? Explain why you think this.

I believe it is different, but good approach to investigating historical sources because it offers ‘an alternative form of history’, more personal and creative speculations, that are more interesting then dry historical facts.

2. On page 13, O’Neill states that people use the way they dress and project ‘fashion, style and taste’ to show their ‘cultural capital’ (O’Neill, 2007: p13). What do you think ‘cultural capital’ might mean?

I think that is how person express himself through ‘fashion, style and taste’ considering himself as a part of capital, its society, its image.

3. O’Neill criticizes many histories of London fashion for only ‘presenting […] a bird’s eye view, with little regard for understanding it [fashion] as a situated practice at eye level’ (O’Neill, 2007: p19). What do you think you can find out about historical fashion from looking at how people use fashion at street level, for example by looking at documentary photographs, that you cannot see by looking from above?

Fashion at street level can bring to us something more unusual, detailed, specific and surprising. From above we only see ‘the totalizing vision’, maybe something that is cliché, something that represents the majority, but not individual fashion, style, taste.

4. O’Neill explains that this book is about ‘challenging histories of fashionable London by presenting them from a perspective that makes them appear strange and unfamiliar’ (O’Neill, 2007: p22). Please take a photo that shows an unusual perspective or view of fashion in London and post it on your blog. Explain what you think the photograph shows.

Working on this answer.