International Journal of Fashion Studies - Current Issue

The semiotic methodology of reading fashion, however well established, has tended to maintain a gap between corporeal reality and aesthetic appearance, ensconced in the idea that fashion is a set of signifiers to be added to or removed from the body like an exo-skeleton of fabrics, accessories and cosmetics. By building on the history of semiotic spectacle through a feminist media studies sensitive to materiality, this article aims to read fashion as not being on but of the body, here understood as a set of kaleidoscopic surfaces, or skins. With a focus on skin as a mediating tissue between body and fashion that bears signification, the article advocates a methodology of reading skin-deep, which is called ‘skimming’ in order to draw attention to a dynamic of looking that moves across the surface, in a departure from traditional theories of the gaze. By paying attention to shapewear, second-skin looks, ‘naked dressing’ and tattoos, reading skin-deep takes skin literally as an element of fashion in order to illuminate the social codifications of gender, race and visibility that accompany the aesthetics of skin-as-fashion. At the heart of this analysis is Kim Kardashian, whose celebrity has become synonymous with fashionable yet controversial modes of self-exposure, especially in her annual appearances at the Met Gala.

This article presents my reflections on a method that attempts to bridge a methodological divide in fashion studies by blending garment analysis and wardrobe interviews. In doing so it presents the ways in which we can consider evidence from the subject, the object and the subject–object assemblage. Garment analysis is a method rooted in dress history and fashion curation, whereas wardrobe interviews grew out of anthropology and sociology. While wardrobe interviews do to some extent offset the preference for language in interviews, what is missing was a systematic way of encouraging a deeper engagement with that garment. Interview techniques can provoke the wearers or owners of clothes to narrate their garments. With one method we consider the object, the other method the subject. My research gathers evidence from both the subject and the object by blending garment analysis with wardrobe interviews to uncover the meanings entangled in objects and memories, to interrogate what we can consider evidence from the subject, the object and the subject–object assemblage. My study explores how this methodological pluralism can allow movement between material, semiotic and affective interpretations of garments. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of both the physical garment and the embodied experience of wearing to fashion research and argue that ‘turns’ in the discipline should instead be considered as expansions that allow the coexistence of multiple approaches.

This article explores the innovative method of patchwork ethnography, which was first introduced by Günel, Varma and Watanabe in 2020, and its applicability to the area of fashion studies. It elaborates on the features, qualities and limitations of the method. The article does so by reflecting on the ethnographic research I conducted for my Ph.D. thesis. In March–August 2019 and January–July 2021, I used a patchwork ethnography approach to participant observation, interviews, digital ethnography and visual analysis to study the trade and retail of Chinese-made garments and textiles in Mozambique. The article puts a special focus on the difficulties and restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these can be offset by the specific characteristics of patchwork ethnography. Apart from discussing the issues relating to my positionality and privilege as an educated white female researcher in a cross-cultural Global South context, it also hopes to further push the ongoing decolonization of fashion studies. It therefore aims to show that the applicability and relevance of patchwork ethnography go beyond periods shaped by pandemic restrictions. More generally, this article emphasizes the necessity and benefit of an interdisciplinary mindset and creative, flexible, multi-method approaches to understand and tackle the great challenges of our time that relate to the production, trade and consumption of fashion products.

Cripistemologies are ways of knowing that emerge from the embodied experiences of disabled bodyminds, while multi-sensory methods value knowledge produced through haptic, visual, auditory and other sensory forms. Drawing on these approaches, this article proposes a crip methodology for fashion studies by exploring the value of combining research methods to honour the knowledge of disabled people and their sensory engagement in the world. We reflect on the four phases of our project, ‘Cripping Masculinity’, and its entangled methodologies and methods. The project engaged 50 disabled, D/deaf and neurodivergent men and masculine people – who we refer to as collaborators – to examine how they produced masculinity and disability through their engagement with fashion and dress. Collaborators took part in wardrobe studies where they shared their experiences with their clothing; fashion hacking where they worked with design students to deconstruct and remake one of their existing garments to better support their bodyminds, and a fashion exhibition and fashion show where they co-produced events to disseminate their dress experiences and hacked clothing. Our analysis demonstrates that combining multi-sensory methods in one project recognizes the different ways that people inhabit the world as sources for generating and disseminating knowledge about the relationship between disability and fashion. While a crip methodology poses challenges for producing research in legible scholarly forms, it also urges fashion studies scholars to intervene into academic ableism through inclusive and expansive research methodologies and methods.

I reflect upon working on diverse fashion(-related) cases in the context of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. Drawing on Mieke Bal’s understanding of cultural analysis (characterized by interdisciplinarity, among others), I refer to some fashion and material objects I have looked at (e.g. a contemporary video by a Dutch designer, a wardrobe-suitcase of 1919 or the pandemic mask), while insisting on considering them as theoretical objects through the practice of clothes-reading. Rather than establishing programmatic grids to study fashion, I share my observations and interrogations on working with and through fashion. What follows resembles an ongoing inventory of my fashion interests, aspirations and inspirations as well as choices and doubts that altogether echo the performative gesture of research.

This article is presented as a methodological proposal for the field of fashion studies based on the interpretive model Somatheque (2013) of the theorist and activist Paul B. Preciado. Through this theoretical model, which draws lines of feminist post-structuralism and queer phenomenology, this study argues that the enunciation of the body as an archive is divided into four layers of analysis: (1) the biological body as a medical discourse, (2) power practices, (3) body techniques and (4) apparatus of verification. This study will provide a detailed analysis of the CK One advertising campaign called ‘Altered States’, launched by Calvin Klein in 1995. Specifically, it will assess the applicability of the Somatheque model in fashion studies by considering perfume as a central object of study within the fashion system. Thus, the study of this campaign serves as an example that illustrates how perfume not only plays a pivotal role in fashion studies but also acts as a significant element in the shaping, producing and encoding of the body within its context and allows for the exploration of fashion as a cultural and biopolitical practice influenced by privilege, asymmetrical power relations and colonial institutions.

The T-girl is a trans feminine subject whose trans-ness is embodied sartorially in controlled environments for a short amount of time. Her trans-ness is not socially visible, her existential possibilities have accompanied the imbrication of digitality in everyday life and she escapes well-acknowledged trans feminine categories such as the Latin American travesti or the trans woman writ large. The T-girl is yet to be rigorously theorized. In this auto-theoretical psychoanalytic inquiry I propose to theorize her alongside her lovers by placing the sartorial as the de facto object of desire between them. The methodology involves culling from personal sartorial-sexual experience as well as the language around clothes found in private messages sent by trans-attracted and straight-identified men to the author, a T-girl. What does such an intimate archive tell us about the way the trans subject negotiates her desire with and through the other? Their sartorial exchanges serve as unprecedented insight into the intrapsychic mechanisms a trans subject deploys to forge a position for herself where the sartorial all but replaces the anatomical as the slippery guarantor of gender. I articulate the function of clothing in conjuring a trans-ness addressed to a ‘other’ interpellated to ratify the (trans-)gendering process. This turns out to be a rather primary dynamic that founds the speaking subject as such. And yet, the T-girl and her lovers may end up getting more than what they bargained for from their sartorial-sexual encounter. What becomes clear is the fundamental function of clothes not just to render the T-girl girl, but as exhilarating signifiers in the written and oral exchanges between the T-girl and her lovers. Particularly for the lovers themselves, who can be quick to slip from the position of the subject who enjoys feminine clothing in the other to that of the subject who enjoys wearing such clothing themselves.

Exploring the interplay between fashion and architecture, this article introduces architectural fashion analysis method, an original methodology for analysing fashion shows through an architectural lens. Focusing on the works of Prada and OMA/AMO, the study delves into the narrative power of space in fashion presentations, informed by theories from Roland Barthes and Adrian Forty, as well as the theoretical model of fashion spaces by McQuillan and Hansen. This approach highlights the underexplored but crucial role of architectural thinking in fashion critique. The article posits that employing architectural principles not only enriches the understanding of fashion but also paves the way for an insightful exploration of fashion’s digital dimension.