The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies

Description

This collection of original essays interrogates disciplinary boundaries in fashion, gathering fashion studies research across disciplines and from around the globe. Fashion and clothing are part of material and visual culture, cultural memory, and heritage; they contribute to shaping the way people see themselves, interact, and consume. For each of the volume’s eight parts, scholars from across the world and a variety of disciplines offer analytical tools for further research. Never neglecting the interconnectedness of disciplines and domains, these original contributions survey specific topics and critically discuss the leading views in their areas. They include discursive and reflective pieces, as well as discussions of original empirical work, and contributors include established leaders in the field, rising stars, and new voices, including practioner and industry voices. This is a comprehensive overview of the field, ideal not only for undergraduate and postgraduate fashion studies students, but also for researchers and students in communication studies, the humanities, gender and critical race studies, social sciences, and fashion design and business. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Figures Editors Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction Notes Part I: Fashion theories and histories 1. Worlds with no fashion? The birth of eurocentrism Worlds with no fashion Multiple worlds Conclusion Notes 2. Aesthetics of fashion Fashion's challenge to philosophy Fashion's challenge to aesthetics Aesthetics of fashion and fashion's aesthetics A new aesthetic agenda Notes 3. If philosophy were a fashion show: what then? Value systems as costumes Interpretive puzzles Received wisdom about clothing The received wisdom in Thoreau The Platonic legacy The Gay Science on dress The actor's clothes Philosophy's costume Notes 4. Contemporary avant-garde fashion Defining "what is 'avant-garde'?" Theories of the avant-garde The neo- and contemporary avant-garde Toward an avant-garde in contemporary fashion: modernity and post-modernity Contemporary avant-garde fashion as art Conclusion Notes 5. Economic theories of fashion Introduction Fashion industry as an organization Vertical integration Inventory level Product differentiation Consumer behavior, and their relations to the industry Created shortages by brands Traditional utility Social interaction theory, including conspicuous consumption and Leibenstain's theory Interactions between Consumers and Firms Fashion Cycle Welfare Conclusion and further areas of study Notes 6. A posthuman turn in fashion Severed heads, androids, and aliens A posthuman perspective A posthuman aesthetic A posthuman critique A posthuman take on sustainability Conclusion Notes Part II: Fashion practices: from the museum to the workplace and beyond 7. Affect, haptics, and heterotopia in fashion curation Introduction Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination (2018) and Mme Grès: Sculptural Fashion (2012) Camp: Notes on Fashion (2019) and Rik Wouters & the Private Utopia (2016) Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (2011) and Olivier Theyskens: She Walks in Beauty (2017) Conclusion Notes 8. The future generation of fashion: how higher education contextualizes sustainability as a key design tool Background and context Implementing sustainable principles Is sustainability changing creative education? The role of the educator Current challenges and barriers Towards a sustainable future Notes 9. Reflecting on the future of fashion design education: new education models and emerging topics in fashion design Contemporary challenges for post-modern industries and education models Universities in transformation and the rise of design education Breaking the Silo of fashion design education Fashion design education perspectives Authors' statement Notes 10. Abstract pattern cutting as a design tool: Accidental Cutting and Subtraction Cutting methodologies Liberation — freedom Formal abstraction, relativity, and randomness Thinking and making Abstract and conceptual thinking Relative matter and scale Relation with the human body Conclusions Notes 11. Changing the world, not just our wardrobes: a sensibility for sustainable clothing, care, and quiet activism Clothing as quiet activism in the time of COVID-19 The quietly activist wardrobe: method and methodology Through the wardrobe: affective journeys In and out of the wardrobe: spaces of quiet activism Conclusion Acknowledgment Notes 12. Fashion and technology: hand and machine in (high-end) fashion design Notes 13. Crafting care through childhood: education, play, and sustainable ethical fashion Introduction Connecting consumption and caring-about relationships Drawing on early-childhood practices Conclusion Notes 14. From ideation to inclusion: investigation in contemporary childrenswear in the global north Introduction Dressing up a specific user: the constraints of the children's fashion apparel Ideation in childrenswear: nostalgia Children's perception of fashion: an inspiration What do children think about clothing? The child as a partner: co-creation in contemporary fashion industry Conclusion Notes References Further readingBalut, Pierre-Yves. Théorie du vêtement. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2013: to understand the mechanisms of fashion as a socializing medium.Qvortrup, Jens. Studies in Modern Childhood: Society, Agency, Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005: to explore the child's agency and ability to interact with their environment. Part III: Fashion, body, and identity 15. Bullying and barren fashion: an affective perspective on the psychopolitics of dress Feeling a fashion Appearing: the allure of barren fashion Toward the barrenness of fashion: the social stigma of rejection Barren fashion and the inferno of the same Notes 16. Prosthetic aura: thinking about scent in fashion Notes 17. Tailoring the impenetrable body all over again: digitality, muscle, and the men's suit From omniscience to omnipresence: can the phallus survive visual inspection? Digital labor, the dreamwork, and the device Coming apart at the seams Patching up, plastering over Notes 18. The garment that unifies and differentiates: anthropological approaches and regulatory settings Research methodology The veiled body: legislative corpus The legislative context in Greece To a colorful Agora: the field study The dress of the "other": a garment that unites or differentiates? The interview results Conclusion Acknowledgement Notes 19. College students' fashion activism in the age of Trump Defining fashion and fashion activism College student fashion Using fashion as a tool for change Contemporary college student fashion activism To the 2016 presidential election and beyond Make America Great Again Pussyhats and protests Conclusion Notes 20. Fashion in the trenches: how the military shapes the fashion industry The birth of modern military institutions and the fashion industry Gendered fashion and the military: Elsa Schiaparelli Military and fashion post 9/11 and 11/9 Conclusion Notes 21. Violence and fragmentation within interwar fashion and femininity Notes Part IV: Fashion and place 22. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as fashion icon: addressing nationalism and feminism with style Introduction Adichie's love affair with fashion Fashion in Nigeria #Project Wear Nigeria: fashion, politics, (post)feminism Conclusions Notes 23. Transformation of the "Made in ..." label: countries as brands and the hidden global relations of production Introduction: "Made in ..." as a guarantee of quality? The global commodity chain of fashion and the neoliberal order Made in Italy: regulation and labor Eastern Europe: an invisible tailor shop Conclusions Notes 24. The Italian look, or the democratization of fashion The birth of Italian fashion Textile production The industrial districts The fashion designer Notes 25. Hybrid fashion patterns: the construction of a contemporary Brazilian fashion image Introduction The construction of Brazilianness in Brazilian fashion: elements and associations Brazilian lifestyle Aesthetical applications Artisanal applications Ethical fashion applications Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Further Reading 26. Globalized identities in the fashion trade Fashion trade shows in the global textile production cycle Textile fairs as "tournaments of values" Value and international hierarchy Notes 27. The labor of fashion, transnational organizing, and the global COVID-19 pandemic Introduction The spotlight approach of transnational labor organizing: a brief historical overview The 1990s anti-child-labor campaign The corporate codes of conduct The "social clause" The Accord and the Alliance Brands vs. suppliers: the conflict between transnational and local priorities Organizing during the COVID-19 pandemic: spotlight on global brands and an appropriation of survival of garment workers Conclusion Notes 28. From rag trade to thrifting: the cultural economy of secondhand clothing Introduction Secondhand clothing in the premodern era Research on contemporary secondhand clothing Secondhand in the global market Old clothes, new directions Notes Part V: Fashion and print media: literature and magazines 29. Fashion etiquette and fashion ethics: rules and values in Italian turn-of-the-century etiquette books Fashion ethics in conduct books Etiquette books Fashion etiquette: rules and values Fashion errors Conclusion Notes 30. Fashion and the English novel Critical debates: fashion as imagery and fictions of consumption Fashioned surfaces: the Gothic inheritance Writing of consumption: the fashionable novel Fashioning realism Conclusion Notes 31. "Selling Themselves Piecemeal": The Economics of Beauty and Power in Four Representative Texts Representing the ruthless machine of late-nineteenth-century capitalism Shopping-as-sex in Shopaholic and Sex and the City Conclusion Notes 32. Fashion in literature based on Margaret Thatcher's The Autobiography (1995) Notes 33. Lovers, legends, and looms: Persian narrative poetry depicted on figural silks in the early modern period Introduction: Persianate silk textiles in the early modern world Poetry, painting, and textiles Silk, sufism, and self-image Patrons, designers, and consumers King and dervish: garments as piety and power Conclusion Notes 34. The morality of the middlebrow: fashion in American and Canadian mass-market women's magazines of the 1920s Middlebrow magazines and fashion "Fashions," the Ladies' Home Journal and the American context "Dress," the Canadian Home Journal, and the Canadian context Conclusion Notes 35. Fashion consumption and public discourse: mechanisms of sales obstruction Discourse- and media-effects studies Research design and corpus-building Anti-fashion campaigns Mulesing of merino lambs Plucking of angora rabbits Discursive practices and texts Triggering events Stereotyping Monophony versus polyphony in discursive practices Conclusion Notes Part VI: Fashion and film 36. Fashion in cinema: reframing the field Popular publications and film criticism Film and visual studies Fashion studies Fashion industry and fashion film Exhibitions Conclusion Notes 37. From stardom to celebrity culture and beyond: fashion, costume, cinema, and change Cinema and its past Change and reconfiguration Stardom and the new "celebrity" Cinema appropriated Endnote: academic literature and further reading References 38. The master narrative: authorship, fame, and failure in the designer fashion film Fictionalizing fashion: desire and deception Documenting fashion: fame and failure Documenting fashion: celebrity and invisibility Notes 39. Fashion and gender in superhero comics and films History of early comic book costuming and media Early gendered costuming Later costuming trends Increasing representation in comics The challenges of translating between in-print and on-screen costuming Contrasting case studies: Superman and Catwoman Conclusion Notes 40. Sartorial politics from street to screen: female leaders in India and Bollywood design Political clothing in Raajneeti Indu, Kaif, and other women Concluding thoughts Notes Part VII: Branding, media, and television 41. Mediatization of fashion: an approach from the perspective of digital media logic Introduction Digital media logic and fashion Living in a high-speed society Digital production logic: attention economy Digital distribution logic: affordances and digital architecture of platforms Digital use logic: social connectivity Fashion in (speedy) times of mediatization: a conclusion Notes 42. From bag to "it bag": a case study of consecration in the field of fashion Introduction Intermediaries and mediations: between Bourdieu and Latour The figure of the fashion agent and the curious case of Sophie Hulme The disavowal of the economy in the field of fashion The store as an institution of legitimation and consecration Spatial actants and knowledge spillovers in fashion mediation Conclusion Notes 43. Industrialized inspiration: reassessing the osmosis between fashion and art through the work of trend forecasters Four ways of interpreting the fashion/art nexus Inspiration versus trends Coolhunting The Industrialization of Inspiration Notes 44. Audience for fashion: digital touch points, brand circulation, and the new consumer experience The audience for fashion: an introduction Fashion and/in the media Making sense of (media and fashion) consumption The fashion consumer as media content producer (and vice versa) The audience for fashion: new perspectives in media and fashion consumption Conclusion: a journey called fashion Notes References 45. Media convergence, fashion, and TV series Media convergence and fashion Fashion discourse: a part of the storytelling Television series, social network, and fashion Instagram as a research tool The analysis of the television series and their use on Instagram Conclusion Notes 46. Branding daily life: fashion influencers as market actors in the social media economy Introduction Influencers and value creation in the social media economy Influencers as market actors displaying cultural and economic calculations Methods Fashion influencers displaying cultural and economic calculations Fashion influencers targeting content to reach audiences Concluding remarks Notes Part VIII: The future of fashion and its challenges 47. The future of luxury fashion: insights from industry experts Notes 48. Fashion's future in biodesign Notes 49. Fashion and race: translating cultures in Dapper Dan and Gucci Introduction Gucci and Dapper Dan: the catwalk and the street in translation The Gucci story and the Dapper Dan story merge: politics of style Conclusion Notes Index