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- Volume 5, Issue 1, 2018
International Journal of Fashion Studies - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2018
Volume 5, Issue 1, 2018
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How to do humans with fashion: Towards a posthuman critique of fashion
More LessAbstractSince the publication of Li Edelkoort’s Anti Fashion Manifesto (2015), fashion scholars are increasingly asking what will become of fashion in the third millennium. Has fashion ended, like Edelkoort claims, or, should we understand fashion differently? The article sees Edelkoort’s manifesto as representative of a moment when fashion scholarship entered a self-critical stage that aimed to redefine fashion beyond consumerism. Recent critiques of fashion have specifically focused on the lack of sustainability and have called for a more ecological and ethical production of fashion. The article argues that while this is a positive development, it is not enough. Alongside the changing landscape of manufacturing, a new definition of fashion beyond the commodity is also needed. The article shifts focus from understanding fashion as a means of constantly reconstructing one’s identity through hectically changing trends (commercial self-fashioning) to understanding fashion as a form of critical thinking and as a sustained process of conceptualizing, defining and contesting the limits of the human and humanity (fashioning the human). The article argues that this shift needs new theoretical frameworks. It therefore tests posthumanist theory to rethink what fashion can mean. It explains the theoretical points through examples where the act of becoming human is negotiated: evolutionary theory, the Bible, childhood and pet dogs. In doing so, the article aims to reconceptualize fashion as an act of hominization and as a theory of the human.
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New materialism: A theoretical framework for fashion in the age of technological innovation
More LessAbstractWorking from the case study of Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, this article proposes a new-materialist framework for fashion studies. The ‘material turn’ has gained substantial recognition in social and cultural research in the past decade but has received less attention in fashion studies. At the same time, fashion hardly ever figures in scholarship on new materialism. This article connects the two fields, surveys the literature, foregrounds key concepts and points to possible directions for fashion studies. The interdisciplinary field of new materialism highlights the role of non-human factors in the field of fashion, ranging from raw materials (cotton) to smart materials (solar cells) and from the textility of the garment to the tactility of the human body. New materialists work from a dynamic notion of life in which human bodies, fibres, fabrics, garments and technologies are inextricably entangled. The context of new materialism is posthumanism, which entails both a decentring of the human subject and an understanding of things and nature as having agency. The key concept is thus material agency, involving a shift from human agency to the intelligent matter of the human body as well as the materiality of fabrics, clothes and technology. The insight of material agency is important for acknowledging the pivotal role of technology in fashion design today, allowing greater attention for the material aspects of high-performance fibres and smart fabrics. From a new-materialist perspective, Iris van Herpen’s designs can be understood as hybrid assemblages of fibres, materials, fabrics and skin that open up engaged and meaningful interconnections with the human body.
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Entanglement, affect and experience: Walking and wearing (shoes) as experimental research methodology
More LessAbstractWearing is fundamental to our experience of cloth and of clothing; though we experience our garments through other senses it is a relationship predicated on touch. It is through the tactile experience of our garments that we come to know them; to comprehend texture, fit and form. Drawing upon both a phenomenological and a psychoanalytic approach to touch and wear this article examines the possibility of wearing as a methodology for practice and performance based research, wearing as a means of ‘doing’ research. This article presents the act of wearing, the embodied experience of clothing and the body together, as a tool for developing knowledge, of ‘being in’ or ‘being with’ rather than observing from outside. Building on the work of phenomenologists Schilder and Merleau-Ponty, it proposes a methodology of entanglement – a methodology that draws upon and abstracts the idea of participant observation. This article explores the possibility of a wearing-based research, as an addendum or adjunct to the more widely understood practice and performance based research. It asks if wearing as a research practice might open up new avenues in fashion and textile knowledge, uncovering different aspects of our lived experience of cloth and clothes. What might the parameters of wearing as performance practice be and how might it differ from wearing as a habitual embodied experience.
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The idea of fashion: Fashion discourses in France – towards a critical historiography
More LessAbstractThis article explores the intersection of the history of fashion in France and the history of ideas. The historiographical issues raised by this discussion shed light on established canons pertaining to the field of fashion history in France and lead to the identification of methodologies and their variable attention to visual or textual sources. Focusing first on the dominance of visuality in the writing of French fashion history, from its early authors to the mid-twentieth century, we then consider the perspectives offered by a history of the idea of fashion, voluntarily removed from a history of the objects and images of fashion. Drawing from the Foucauldian concept of discourse, we finally seek to understand how scholars and historians have forged definitions of ‘fashion discourses’ and how these have informed their own practices of the writing of history.
The last part of this article attempts to apply the theoretical tools identified previously to a specific case study. Looking at a pivotal moment in France’s cultural, social and political history, we try to grasp the epistemological evolution of the idea of fashion from the 1820s to the 1840s.
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The centre of the periphery in fashion studies: First questions
More LessAbstractMost studies of fashion in the West emerge from theories that have taken shape and have been formulated in a European and North American context, because these theories have been given an impetus in geographic places where fashion has been endowed with political, economic and social significance – the so-called ‘central’ places. This means that not only fashion but also the grounds for studying it have always been (and continue to be) extensively reproduced in the regions that are regarded as peripheral to the field, such as Brazil. As Arjun Appadurai (1986) argues, although the meaning of peripheral refers to something that is geographically remote and, in particular, everything that is seen as morally and culturally different, it also has a hierarchical sense in fashion. This is because it is embedded in the principle of subordination to a model that is regarded of central importance. Over the course of time, these concepts have become key features for interpreting fashion within or emerging from Brazil so far as studies in the field tend to polarize the ways it can be understood: either they lay stress on its exoticism and independence, or they recognize that fashion involves imitation and subordination – or arguments that make it difficult to adopt any alternative position to support these studies. Setting out from these underlying assumptions, this article supports the idea of undertaking studies of fashion (i.e. historical, sociological, design-based, etc.) which employ methods that include peripheral configurations that can provide a more balanced approach to this field. Globalization requires a new way of reflecting on this question.
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Beyond the in-between: Rei Kawakubo at The Met and the clash between eastern and western concepts in fashion studies
More LessAbstractThe 2017 exhibition Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons – Art of the In-Between at the Metropolitan Museum in New York exposed the rich work of the iconic Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo to a larger western audience. As the title of the exhibition indicates, Kawakubo’s work does not fit well within some of the classic conceptual assumptions around fashion, but can be placed as something ‘in-between’. The show and printed museum guide were arranged around a series of conceptual dichotomies that Kawakubo’s work transgressed. Yet these transgressions also exposed the arbitrariness of central distinctions in fashion and questioned how universal key concepts in fashion really are. In examining the printed guide to the Kawakubo show, this text challenges the intercultural applicability of concepts such as ‘fetish’ and ‘copy’ across cultural spheres in fashion studies, and questions the universal application of such concepts to unpack meanings and practices in fashion.
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Thinking fashion photographs through queer affect theory
More LessAbstractIn this article, I suggest that the commonly used approaches to the study of fashion photographs could be fruitfully enriched by juxtaposing them with affect theory. I conduct a theoretical investigation of the benefits that affect theory, and in particular the strand articulated by queer theorists, may bring to the reflections on fashion photographs. I do so in a twofold way: by intertwining traditional visual analysis with an affective reading grounded in corporeal experience; and by illustrating how the queer affects circulating in fashion photographs might foreground issues of gender and sexuality and unfold possibilities of queer attachment. Two very different case studies, a photo spread by Corinne Day for The Face and the Gucci Pre-Fall 2016 advertising campaign, are chosen to explore how a specific affective register, i.e. ‘flat affect’, embedded in the images, might open up possibilities for envisioning queer aesthetic futures.
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Looking back and moving forward: The MLitt in Dress and Textile Histories at the University of Glasgow
Authors: Sally Tuckett and Rebecca QuintonAbstractFashion studies and dress and textile histories are increasingly popular avenues of study at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the United Kingdom, and as such there is continuing debate both on how to engage in general with these fields, as well as how institutions in particular can interpret and deliver courses relating to these subjects. This article outlines how the postgraduate MLitt in Dress and Textile Histories at the University of Glasgow developed from previous incarnations at Winchester School of Art and the University of Southampton. It explores some of the challenges faced by institutions and students engaging with fashion studies and dress and textile histories, using the Glasgow MLitt programme as a case study.
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A decade of challenges and possibilities: Establishing fashion studies at Stockholm University
More LessAbstractThis article offers a recount of the establishment and the development of the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden, inaugurated in 2006. The centre, which was initially located in conjunction with the Department of Art History and later at the Department of Media Studies, has often been referred to as the very ‘first’ fashion studies institution ever to be positioned within the university (and not within a design school context). The article reflects on the possibilities, challenges and difficulties that creating and developing a space for a ‘new’ field have entailed – both within the local context (in this case, a rather traditional university context) and within a larger scholarly context (which, to a large extent, is dominated by Anglo-American institutions). Where does one look for inspiration? With whom does one create alliances to be able to offer a solid fashion studies ground (when there is none)? Also, how does one create curricula that both include and deviate from the ‘canon’ of previous fashion studies so that the Anglo-American dominance becomes less prominent?
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Exploring the boundaries between theory and practice in Fashion Design at IUAV University of Venice: The case of U/U/U/
Authors: Gabriele Monti and Mariavittoria SargentiniAbstractStill today, in Italy, fashion design finds it difficult to relate to the dimension of university research, and this is perhaps the consequence of a lack of familiarity with the academic world: only rarely has fashion been taught in universities and it is not considered an autonomous academic discipline. Since its foundation in 2005, the BA programme in Fashion Design at IUAV University of Venice has been actively combining its design workshops with an attitude towards research in the field of fashion studies, with innovative work being carried out specifically in the field of teaching methodologies: students are asked to constantly question and discuss teaching practices and techniques – which tend to be taken for granted – as well as the concept of authorship in design. This approach – quite unique in the Italian academic field – is presented in this article through a discussion of a project originated by designer Mariavittoria Sargentini, founder and owner of the brand Marvielab, and course leader of the first-year Fashion Design Workshop at IUAV. Together with her students, Sargentini started a new collection called U/U/U/, which stands for ‘unconstrained, unisex, uniform’, after asking a group of students to redefine the concept of the daily uniform through their own interpretations. The result is a capsule collection, made of twelve looks, as the expression of a collective author. Thus, Sargentini’s U/U/U/ reflects an idea of fashion design that defies current concepts of authorship, and that questions our concept of the basic/daily uniform through an active design practice that fuses theory and object-based observations.
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The rise of historical and cultural perspectives in fashion studies in Japan
Authors: Yoko Fujishima and Osamu SakuraAbstractThis article seeks to clarify the historical process by which the study of western clothing developed in Japan, and to discuss how this has related to traditional Japanese clothing culture. From this perspective, the study of dress and fashion in Japan will be seen in conjunction with the processes by which the Japanese fashion industry adopted western clothes into its own fashion culture. In the 1970s, a strong desire to promote further development of the fashion industry fuelled the advancement of research that looked at clothing from a historical and cultural perspective. The symbolic event at the origin of this paradigm shift was a large fashion exhibition titled The Origin of Contemporary Fashion (held in 1975 at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto), and the 1978 establishment of the Kyoto Costume Institute (KCI) as mécénat (corporate patronage of the arts and culture) of a lingerie company. The KCI was strongly influenced by western museums and referred to accumulated knowledge in western academia. Thus, the exhibition and the establishment of the KCI will be seen in this article as the link between western and Japanese fashion studies. The fact that this significant transition in fashion studies was driven by the fashion industry has had both positive and negative effects. The KCI’s role as a mécénat organization made it possible to attract the newest forms of fashion exhibition from western countries and to establish a research institute promptly. On the other hand, the KCI’s role in promoting the study of fashion has complicated the relationship between academic research and the interests of the fashion industry, which they also stood for and were interested in developing.
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Looking at Brazilian fashion studies: Fifty years of research and teaching
Authors: Maria Do Carmo Teixeira Rainho and Maria Cristina VolpiAbstractThis article aims to examine academic output in Brazil in the field of clothing and fashion over the last 50 years with a focus on the humanities, especially history. Formerly an invisible or insignificant subject, fashion became a powerful key for researchers in Brazil to analyse social dynamics, hierarchies, class distinction, consumption and gender issues, among others. Currently in Brazil it is evident that a significant amount of fashion research is being conducted in both public and private universities. The expansion of undergraduate courses related to fashion, the organization of academic events focused on the object, the publishing of Master’s dissertations and Ph.D. theses, and the launch of academic journals on dress and fashion have contributed to this framework. The article also analyses the work of Sofia Jobim Magno de Carvalho, a high school teacher, illustrator, costume designer, journalist, feminist and collector who started teaching clothing in 1949. Sofia’s professional training and experience led her to favour the practices of creating, collecting and preserving, rather than engaging in theoretical, historical or aesthetic discussions. The article will conclude with an overview of recent Brazilian academic research around clothing and fashion. The aim is to analyse the reception and influence of French and Anglo-American historiography in Brazil and to identify under-investigated research areas around costume, fashion and appearance.
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The state of fashion studies in France: Past, present, future
Authors: Maude Bass-Krueger and Sophie KurkdjianAbstractThis article explores the paradoxical nature of the state of fashion studies in France. Despite France’s long history of fostering innovative theoretical research in fashion studies and its rich cultural fashion heritage, the current state of French fashion studies lags in comparison to its Anglo-American and Northern European neighbours. The institutionalization of fashion studies is just beginning to happen in France. Currently, French fashion studies denotes an ‘umbrella’ term used to cover the range of scholars working in France on the social, cultural, political, economic and theoretical studies of garments and their systems of production, consumption and representations. This article discusses the current state of fashion research in France and attempts to map the landscape in terms of the main researchers, universities, programmes, departments, and public and private initiatives. The authors look at the hurdles and challenges that the discipline faces in France and discuss potential trajectories, areas for improvement and promising new projects.
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Comparative book review: On thinking through and researching fashion today
By Bethan BideAbstractFashion Studies: Research Methods, Sites and Practices, Heike Jenss (ed.) (2016) London: Bloomsbury, 248 pp., ISBN 9781472583161, Paperback, £21.99 ISBN 9781472583178, 256 pp., Hardback, £85.00 ISBN 9781472583192, EPUB/MOBI e-book, £21.99
Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, AgnÈs Rocamora and Anneke Smelik (eds) (2016) London: I.B. Tauris, 320 pp, ISBN 9781780767345, Paperback, £16.99 ISBN 9781780767338, Hardback, £69.99
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