Viveka Berggren Torell

Institution/Department: School of Sport Science
Previous studies: University of Gothenburg, the departments of Ethnology and of Home Economics
Thesis: Children’s clothes in the People’s home Discourses on the dressed child in the 1920s to the 1950s in Sweden
Research areas: Cultural perspectives on clothing and textiles
Children’s clothes – Historical perspectives on children’s consumption combined with textile history
Current research: Football and clothing – Connections in consumer culture has three themes:
- Football-kits and clothes for training – How do players experience their clothed ­bodies when the traditional dress code of football meets new textile developments?
- Football and fashion – What do players think of connections between football and fashion today? How have relations between football and the ready-to-wear-industry been constructed earlier?
- Supporters’ clothes – What functional and symbolic meanings do clothes have for supporters?
Football clothes nowadays are carriers of sponsor brands, income generating­ ­supporter-items and functional working-clothes contributing to players’ ­top-performances at the pitch. In this time of “sportification” football kits also ­influence everyday clothing design and football stars spread images of the ­fashion-conscious man. This project, with an ethnographic approach, aims at ­investigating such connections between football and clothes in Sweden today. Some historical retrospects will also be made. Theoretically the starting point is to discuss how far “post modern conditions” can explain experiences of connections between football and clothes today. The project is also aimed at “making fashion material” by focusing on material properties and tactual sensations of clothes. When it ­comes to players’ experiences of their clothed bodies interpretations will be based on ­Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theories.

E-mail address: viveka.berggren-torell@ped.gu.se