This study incorporated social media microblogging technology (Twitter) across disciplines to provide 411 first-year undergraduate students studying in large-classroom settings with opportunities to connect in real-time, both within and outside the classroom, with their professor, other students, and members of the professional community. This extension to the traditional teaching and learning environment gave students unique opportunities to enhance their university experience, both from engagement, learning and community-connectedness perspectives. Based on student outcomes and lessons learned, we provide educators with insights into the effective use of social media microblogging technology in a largeclassroom format.

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While scholars have theorized about men’s motives for consuming fashion, few empirical studies have explored these theorizations against men’s lived experiences. A gap in knowledge exists between how scholars understand men’s fashion consumption and how men understand their fashion consumption. In this article, I examine men’s motives for consuming fashion based on individual interviews with 30 demographically diverse male consumers. Findings reveal that men are motivated to consume fashion because it provides benefits, including expressing identity, cultivating success and facilitating engagement. However, the pressures of body anxiety, exclusion and sartorial stress temper these positive outcomes. The common thread of hegemonic masculinity connect the various benefits and pressures that men experience when they engage in fashion. My research enhances knowledge about the operation of masculinity in consumer culture and the anxieties that men experience during the fashion consumption process. Menswear brands are advised to promote diverse masculine ideals in order to prevent negative business outcomes.

This article analyzes the sartorial biographies of four Canadian men to explore how the suit is understood and embodied in everyday life. Each of these men varied in their subject positionsbody shape, ethnicity, age and gender identity-which allowed us to look at the influence of men's intersectional identities on their relationship with their suits. The men in our research all understood the suit according to its most common representation in popular culture: a symbol of hegemonic masculinity. While they wore the suit to embody hegemonic masculine configurations of practice-power, status and rationality-most of these men were simultaneously marginalized by the gender hierarchy. We explain this disjuncture by using the concept of hybrid masculinity and illustrate that changes in the style of hegemonic masculinity leave its substance intact. Our findings expand thinking about hybrid masculinity by revealing the ways subordinated masculinities appropriate and reinforce hegemonic masculinity.Keywords: hybrid masculinity, embodiment, menswear, suits, sartorial biographies 2 IntroductionSociologist Tim Edwards (2011) tells us that "the suit is … the very essence of men's fashion and, indeed, of masculinity" (53). But what makes the suit masculine? And, moreover, what kinds of masculinities are expressed through the suit? Researchers on masculinity have tended to ignore clothing in their work, despite that fact that dress is one of the most immediate ways in which people read and express gender identity (Kaiser 2012). Fashion scholars have examined the shifting designs, practices and semiotics of suits at various historical and cultural moments. But they have often simply assumed that suits are masculine, without addressing how men's lived experiences of wearing them supports, challenges and nuances their claim. Research into the bodies that don suits is vital because dress, as Joanne Entwistle (2000) theorizes, is an embodied practice: it "operates on a phenomenal, moving body … that involves individual actions of attending to the body" (Entwistle 2000, 10-11). In this article, we explore the relationship between masculinity and suits through men's embodied experiences.We use the concept of embodiment to refer to how people's experiences of their body form the basis for their sense of self (Hewson 2013; Turner 1996). Specifically, we ask: what do men's embodied experiences of buying, choosing and wearing suits reveal about masculinity?To answer this question, we employed a sartorial biography methodology. Sartorial biographies combine life histories and object interviews to explore how clothing materializes identity (Woodward 2015, 1). Entering the wardrobes of four men, we examined their suits and interviewed them about these garments. This approach allowed us to uncover the ways in which the materiality of men's suits was intertwined with their embodied experiences of masculinity.What results is a rich description of the suit as material culture artefact through which overlapping subject positions are negotiated...

Men’s fashion is offering a growing selection of diverse and gender-blurring clothing for mainstream male consumers. This research explores the influence of these contemporary clothing trends on the dressing practices and gendered identities of style-conscious young men – a group of consumers whose voices are scarce in fashion research. Findings from the Canadian sample reveal that young men develop an idiosyncratic and creative sense of style to express their identities. While shifts in menswear and culture have inspired them to participate in fashion, social norms continue to prevent men from fully experimenting with dress. This study reveals the factors that influence young men’s fashion consumption and highlights changes in their consumer practices, including their use of social media. Fashion professionals will glean an understanding of Generation Y men’s fashion consumption habits and attitudes. They are advised to develop brands that focus on creativity and community to reach this audience.