No Rules, Only Choices?: Repositioning the Self within the Fashion System in Relation to Expertise and Meaning: A Case Study of Colour and Image Consultancy

This article presents a case study about the way women make decisions about colour and dress prior to, and after a visit to an image consultancy, Color Me Beautiful. It specifically asks to what extent women feel they have benefited from such a consultation in relation to the fashion system and the experience of consumption. The article is divided into two sections. The first section argues that the interviewees, prior to the consultation, had adopted a narrow and restricted mode of decision-making in relation to colour and clothes due to a variety of social and personal reasons. The second section explores the processes by which the majority of interviewees began to gain confidence and a renewed interest in selecting clothes after a colour consultation. Such a technology of the self enabled the respondents to question and ‘play’ with the fashion system, in such a way that they had not felt able to do before. In particular, the mechanisms of expertise and of meaning were central to this process of change.