Crisscrossing through critical fashion studies: Inclusive and interdisciplinary intersections

In this introduction to the 12.2 issue of Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, the editors preview and consider several crisscrossing themes across the articles and reviews: affect, the body and gender, as well as class, race, nationality and other subject positions. The articles and reviews also represent a range of places and times. Diversity and heterogeneity of themes and objects of enquiry are distinctive characteristics of critical fashion studies today. The crisscrossing of themes reflects an equal amount of crisscrossing of theories, methodologies and epistemologies in our highly interdisciplinary field. Crisscrossing can be described as intersecting paths that diverge in different directions at each crossroad or intersection. Imagine for example an irregular embroidery cross-stitch pattern: while emphasizing intersections, there may be differences in the lengths of the stitches and the ways in which they are arranged. The cross-stitches may be shaped in nonlinear formats, even more so when they are not so tidy and – instead – are random, abstract or ambiguous. The editors argue that the importance of ambiguity has long been a theme in critical fashion studies.