Style Failure: Consumption, Identity and Social Exclusion

Abstract

Recent studies of youth culture suggest that consumption is central to the construction of adolescent identities. Many of these studies have focused on the links between consumption, style and identity, and have concluded that style is a crucial means of sustaining and defining group boundaries. Drawing on a series of group interviews with young people from an ESRC-funded study of young consumers, we focus here on the causes and consequences of being seen as a ‘style failure’. We argue that the link between styles and branded and designer goods makes the maintenance of a style identity economically costly. However, there are also social costs associated with failing to maintain such an identity. We examine the consequences of such ‘style failure’ for young people in relation to issues of social exclusion and status loss.