Chapter Three of Lycra How a Fiber Shaped

Chapter Three of Lycra: How a Fiber Shaped America focuses on one of Dupont’s diversified divisions – textile fibers – and how it took advantage of social change and popular culture to identify itself with the emerging women’s market after World Wars I and II, creating new chemical fibers for modern life © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Gunpowder and explosives were the original Dupont products, essential products in the early nineteenth century when vast tracts of North America was being opened for settlement, and also essential for national defense in the War of 1812, World War I and other conflicts. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

• However, in the early twentieth century, anti-war sentiment and concern about monopoly control of the explosives market led Dupont to diversify, using the scientific technology they had applied to explosives to the development of products like plastics. • They also set out to change the public image of the company. Instead of emphasising the public, masculine sphere with its negative connotations of conflict, they began to associate themselves with the private domestic arena, peacetime and the emerging female consumer. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

In the 1920 s, women were entering the working world, driving automobiles, voting for the first time, demanding cheaper and better clothes and goods for the home, and acting as purchasing agents for the whole family. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Spotting the potential of this new market, a Dupont report noted: ‘now that women had the asking power, there was almost no end to the good things women demanded of industry and especially its chemical branch’. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

‘What women want’ and market research Dupont’s diversification coincided with the rise of market- or consumer-research: the attempt to find out what people wanted in a systematic and ‘scientific’ manner. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Dupont were particularly interested in synthetic fibers and fabrics made using chemical processes. When they undertook market research to find out what women wanted from synthetic textiles, women said they wanted cloth and clothes that were stain resistant, easy to clean and care for, held their shape, and were reasonably priced. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Because of its unrivalled chemical expertise, once the company knew what women wanted, Dupont

Dupont’s ‘family of fibers’ Ultimately, Dupont invented and/or developed seven synthetic fibers: rayon, acetate, nylon, Dacron (polyester), Orlon (acrylic), Neoprene and Lycra. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

• But when they had invented them, Dupont encountered strong consumer resistance. Despite having said they wanted the new synthetic fibers, women were reluctant to buy them because they didn’t believe they would ‘work’. • This was a classic example of phenomena well known to anthropologists – the difference between what people say they want and what they really want, and the difference between what people say they do, and what they really do. An important part of the anthropology of stuff is recognizing these differences. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Dupont discovered that in order to be successful, it had to do more than invent new fibers- it had to change popular culture, and sell a new way of living and of thinking about cloth to manufacturers, retailers and consumers. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

Inventing a new material world • To create a new ‘cloth culture’, Dupont built up an unparalleled textile marketing department, embracing market research, advertising, promotion, publicity and retail services which literally transformed the way people thought about, made, sold and used synthetic fibers and fabrics. • Recommended reading on marketing synthetic fibers: O’Connor, Kaori 2008. The Body and the Brand: How Lycra Shaped America. In Blaszczyk (ed)2008, Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture and Consumers. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp 207 -227. © 2011 Taylorand. Francis

But no company can just ‘invent culture’, and Dupont’s success lay in the way they were able to harness technology to new patterns of work and leisure, and to an emergent group of consumers – the children of the Post World War II baby boom - the ‘Babyboomers’. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

The Babyboomer cohort • a cohort is a group defined by common characteristics. • A birth cohort is a group defined as being born within a particular period of time • The Babyboomer birth cohort is defined as being born between 1945/6 and 1964/5 • The Babyboomer birth cohort was the largest birth cohort in history. • Dupont began to produce new materials such as easy care fabrics and unbreakable plastics for this new cohort, and thought of them as the future consumer market for Dupont products. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

• In the women’s market, Dupont’s first great popular success with synthetic fibers was nylon stockings, which sold out across the country on the first day they went on sale in 1940. • Unlike today, skirts and dresses were standard everyday wear for women then, always worn with stockings. • 64 million pairs of nylon stockings were sold in the first year alone, an unprecedented figure. • From then on, Dupont were on the lookout for ‘the new nylon’: a new fiber, to be used in a mass-market garment that women ‘had’ to own and wear. © 2011 Taylor and Francis

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS – CHAPTER THREE 1. Dupont had to change the way people thought about synthetic fibers in order to sell them. Can you think of other companies who also ‘create culture’ to sell their products? What do they sell, and how do they do it? 2. What products today are things that everyone feels they ‘have’ to own, and why? © 2011 Taylor and Francis

3) How would you overcome the methodological problem of the difference between what people say they want, and what they really want? 4) Generation X is sometimes called ‘Generation Sushi’ because they were the cohort that popularized this food. Generation Z is sometimes called the ‘Net generation, because they grew up with and on the Internet. What products do you think epitomize your birth cohort and why? 5) What products and companies can you think of that are ‘gendered’, and why do you think so? © 2011 Taylor and Francis •