Focusing on the incidence of the ‘Westerns’ film genre in the 120-odd years of Australian cinema history, exploring how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social, political and cultural contexts of their production, including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population.



The idea for the book came to the author while he was writing two recent articles. One was an essay for Screen Education on the western in Australian cinema of the 21st century; the other piece was the review of a book entitled Film and the Historian, for the online journal Inside Story . Between the two, he saw the interesting prospect of a book-length study of the role of the western genre in Australia’s changing political and cultural history over the last century – and the ways in which film can, without didacticism, provide evidence of such change. Key matters include the changing attitudes to and representation of Indigenous peoples and of women's roles in Australian Westerns.



When one considers that the longest narrative film then seen in Australia, and quite possibly the world was Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), it is clear that Australia has some serious history in the genre, and Kelly has ridden again in Justin Kurzel’s 2020 adaptation of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang.

What can post-catastrophe films tell us about our current real-world circumstances?

This book proposes that a new sub-genre of film called ‘post-catastrophe’ is emerging that displays narratives directly analogous to our current predicament of runaway climate disruption. Post-catastrophe film sits in the space between blockbuster disaster movies that use scenes of destruction to blow the world up and disrupt the flow of humanity and post-apocalyptic films where a version of society has formed in the ashes of the disaster.

In these narratives, the characters are thrown into a world of unsettling circumstances in which they have to adapt and strive for survival and reimagine the world as it changes around them. We face a similar predicament."

Decolonial Media Imaginaries (DMI) begins from the basic premise that imaginaries serve an important role in the articulation and elaboration of identity, sociality, collectivity, and solidarity, especially in terms of the co-fashioning of ways of life and living.



Imaginaries are designed to be inhabited and eventually to be lived in. The most dominant imaginaries of the industrialist past and late capitalist present have been most finely attuned to expanding the influence of colonial, capitalist, and neoliberal priorities and imperatives. One of the consequences associated with the circulation of these dominant imaginaries has been the marginalization and diminishment of other modes of representation that illuminate alternative ways of living that run counter to these powerful tools of worldmaking.



DMI lays the groundwork to examine the power and limitations of both dominant and marginalized imaginaries, suggesting that the work imaginaries perform is ongoing, longstanding, and deeply engrained in broader historical, political, and geographical currents. As such, this book offers a more speculative, albeit theoretically- and conceptually- engaged discussion surrounding the future viability and vitality of decolonial media imaginaries as instruments for decolonial worldbuilding.

Over the past decade, Tiny Housing has become something of a viral sensation in the US. From Instagrammable enclaves for young professionals to vast municipality-supported schemes seeking to address homelessness, tiny house sites are proliferating across the country.



This book takes a look at life inside the ‘Tiny House Nation’, shining an intimate light on a phenomenon widely celebrated in the mainstream media. The book presents textured narrative accounts from and striking images of Tiny Home residents, their homes and communities, while analysing the broader socio-economic structures shaping their lives. In so doing, it paints a compelling and complex picture of a trend at the crossroads of several key social, cultural and economic shifts, at a pivotal moment for America’s housing future.

Fundamentally, this is a book about paradoxes. The paradox of tiny housing offering freedom from the constraints of capitalism, whilst at the same time remaining embedded within capitalist systems. The paradox of those who ‘go tiny’ both choosing an alternative lifestyle, and those who are pushed into tiny housing as a consequence of limited choice. The paradox of Austin, Texas, as both a countercultural enclave and hyper-capitalist tech haven. And the paradox of tiny house ethoses in Austin, as both centring community and shared assets, and individualist libertarianism. These paradoxes do not necessarily sit in opposition to one another, but are all bound up in the complexity of what tiny housing has to offer as an alternative way of living.

Despite its unattainability for all but the most privileged, the American Dream - the home-owning society, the suburban bliss, the white picket fence - remains emblematic of the residential Good Life. But in the decades since the turn of the millennium the dream has been shrunk down, expectations of a decent home literally reduced. Whilst for some this has led to forms of freedom and fulfilment, it has also contributed to the normalisation of cities so outrageously expensive that all people can afford are miniature homes on the urban periphery. As this book shows, both impacts of tiny housing are equally true, and one does not cancel out the other. Tiny housing embodies an important societal crossroads. In some respects, it offers an alternative to the prevailing housing status quo. In others, it demonstrates what options have already been taken away from us.

from the Introduction



‘In the rest of this book, we’ll lead you through our exploration of tiny housing in Texas. We’ll start, in the next chapter, by introducing some of the places and people we encountered on our travels to set the scene. Then, the ‘pathways’ chapter examines the various conditions and journeys through which people end up living tiny. As you’ll see, our attempt to produce a diagram of pathways to tiny living escalated into the production of a fully blown board game. We describe this diagrammatic board game to show the complex and nuanced personal and structural circumstances that lead people into tiny housing. From there, we go into three empirical chapters, focusing on economies of tiny living, the materiality of tiny housing as domestic spaces, and community culture. We then draw the book to a close, and speculate about what tiny housing means for the future of domestic life, especially in relation to the American Dream.



‘Throughout the book our descriptions are accompanied by photographs taken by Cian Oba-Smith, who accompanied us on our first trip to Texas in 2022. The hype around tiny housing is undoubtedly driven, in large part, by the aesthetic cultures surrounding it. Tiny homes are the picturesque, boutique, upmarket cousin of mobile homes and trailers. They are distinguished from these other types of small housing, as we’ll argue in this book, specifically by their aesthetics. Anyone who ventures into the world of tiny housing for more than five minutes will see how thick this aesthetic culture is. From beautifully curated Instagram pages, to countless coffee table books, to Etsy shops dedicated to crafted tiny house merchandise, a key part of living tiny is enjoying and embracing its aesthetics. By working with Cian we were able to focus (literally) on these aesthetic dimensions of tiny housing. However, we were also able to capture some of what’s not presented in promotional tiny house materials; the constraints, the challenges and the complexities that come along with the joy and the freedom. We’re positioning this book as something of a disrupted coffee table book. On an initial flick through it might not look too different to the photography books that valorise tiny living, but you’ll already know, if you’ve read this far, that our approach is more nuanced. Our attempt has been to expose the ‘real’ Tiny House Nation. Not to attack it, not to deny its beneficial impacts for a huge number of people, but to inject some nuance into the debate so that we can take forward the positives of tiny living without normalising the negatives.’

Drawing on the principles of Diffusion of Innovations, this article examines Disney’s emphasis on public speaking through its various television programmes, during training sessions for employees and even at its theme parks. Introduced by Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations postulates that an innovation is initiated within a specific group of people. Then, it is diffused via specific channels across the larger cultural context. Stressing the importance of public speaking for Disney’s employees can be an innovation that matches Disney’s pre-existing system, which would require fewer changes and would be easy to adopt. Taken as a whole, what this conceptual and theoretical analysis demonstrates is that public speaking has emerged as a vital skill within The Walt Disney Company due to the innovative nature of its organizational environment, which emphasizes storytelling, transformation and global collaboration. At its core, Disney is a brand built on the power of stories that connect with audiences across cultural and generational boundaries. This narrative-driven focus extends beyond its films and theme parks to its internal and external operations, where public speaking plays a critical role in shaping the company’s image, inspiring employees and fostering meaningful stakeholder engagement.

Using YY, one of China’s earliest live-streaming platforms, as a case study, this article investigates the cultural logic of the attention economy in the context of streaming media. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and participant observation, I examine the everyday practices and dynamics that shape live-streaming on YY. I argue that live-streaming reconfigures our understanding of the attention economy through three conceptual dyads: attention and distraction, commodity and intimacy, agency and passivity. By analysing the hierarchical structures of attention and its commodification within the live-streaming sphere, this study offers new insight into the rapid expansion of live-streaming industry in China and its significance for global digital cultures.

Migrant wives on spouse visas find themselves in a state of transition. The conditional and temporary nature of their legal status positions these women precariously, with their wait for permanency causing legal limbo. Although research into the insecurity and precarity of women on spouse visas is increasing, we know little about how power imbalances between these women and their sponsor husbands are enacted and sustained through quotidian family practices. Responding to this gap, this article analyses the everyday experiences of 39 wives who, after migrating with a type of spouse visa to Hong Kong (n = 20) and Melbourne, Australia (n = 19), faced significant pressure from their husbands to perform ‘good wifeliness’. Although highly diverse and residing in two different social contexts, these women are connected by how these expectations can be traced to their visa status, specifically its purpose (for an intimate partnership), transitional and probationary nature and underlying sponsorship arrangement. Ideas of good wifeliness imposed by the women’s husbands are further underpinned by pressures to demonstrate legal deservingness as migrants seeking to move from a transitional legal status to permanent residency. Remnants of this dynamic continue even after separation, pointing to the long-lasting effects of arriving by spouse visa.

Review of: The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, Karen Lemmey, Tobias Wofford and Grace Yasumura (2024)

Washington, DC, Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Smithsonian American Art Museum and Princeton University Press, 292 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-69126-149-2, h/bk, USD 65.00

ISBN 978-0-69126-151-5, e-book, USD 32.50

This research investigates the role of activewear as a representation of modern masculinity in urban Indonesia. The study used qualitative research methodologies, including interviews with ten Indonesian men who actively include activewear in their wardrobe choices. Such exploration will look into the dynamics at play at the nexus between fashion, fitness and masculinity within this setting. The findings indicated that activewear is a multidimensional signifier of contemporary masculinity, signalling a movement away from the stoicism associated with traditional masculinity towards a health-and-fitness-emphasized, modern and active lifestyle. Overall, participants showed an overwhelmingly strong association between the concept of healthy lifestyle and activewear, where sportswear was seen as wearing an image of fitness and discipline, a desirable life. It illustrates that globally and locally relevant constructions of male identity intertwine, as most of the ideals of athleticism and masculinity depicted through the western media get appraised by participants with consideration towards Indonesian cultural logic focused on harmonious coexistence and community bonding. Additionally, when choosing clothing, comfort and usefulness work together to enhance the brand’s image. They preferred brands with images they would like to portray and those offering high-quality, functional clothes. Sustainability was an increasingly important consideration, but high prices barred most from choosing such options. This research develops the understanding of how fashion and consumerism shape masculine identities in contemporary Indonesia. By placing activewear in this context, the study places a valuable insight into the changing dynamics of masculinity in the fast-changing urban landscape.

This article examines perceptions of LGBTQIA+ expression of their identities through dress. The research utilizes intersectionality theory that encompasses additional identities an individual may have to understand how LGBTQIA+ individuals express their gender through dress and the impact of other identities on the expression of gender identity. This study is significant because it contributes to research on gender identity and dress by examining it within the context of intersectionality theory. In-depth interviews were conducted with LGBTQIA+ individuals from two regions in the United States. The results revealed that in addition to gender, participants actively portrayed their profession, personality/lifestyle, social group, religious group, sexual orientation and financial status through dress. They also discussed biased treatment due to additional identities such as ethnicity, financial status, profession and age. While gender was important to express, other identities impacted their experiences as part of the LGBTQIA+ community and their dress selections. This research has practical applications for human resource managers and teachers in post-secondary education to interact with employers or students as a whole individual with many intersecting identities.

Creating resonance between an audience and brand identity is often a long-term process but can be made instant through proper music implementation. This research explored music listening behaviours and their effect on inducing fantasy/daydreaming within fashion spaces (domestic, retail and runway) and specifically if fantasy strengthens garment self-association. Creating this connection between music, a garment and a physical space could result in an elevated visitor experience and signals a preference for curated experiences. The study undertook a phenomenological approach through surveys, wardrobe interviews and Mirror Time (using a mirror to pull on subconscious thoughts). The short-form survey and long-form interview had sample sizes of fifteen and four, respectively, covering several age groups from 21 to 35. Results showed that genre, task, music agency and desire mitigated fantasy/daydreaming. Additionally, music listening behaviours split into two audience groups: one using music for fantasy and the other for focus. Fashion spaces were mapped on a Store–Space (x), Object–Product (y) continuum to assess their properties, which, in conjunction with the audience groups, provided a framework for organizations to develop accurate music strategies. By integrating curated music experiences into a marketing strategy, a more consistent and meaningful brand–consumer resonance can be created.

This article explores how changing textile fashions and evolving consumer tastes reshaped handloom production in North India between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. British imperialism and industrialization transformed the social practices of textile design, production and consumption in colonial India. The implications of these new fashion arrangements – often overlooked – led both consumers and producers to engage, consciously or not, with the modernizing colonial project. The article argues that responses to European industrial fashion were not merely imitative or passive but marked by selective appropriation and strategic revival of Indigenous styles. These sartorial choices reflected deeper social negotiations, expressing class, hierarchy, nationalist sentiment and evolving identities. The handloom industry, far from being obsolete, adapted to new fashion regimes, making cloth a powerful site of cultural expression and social change in the material world of colonial India.

This article critically examines the emerging role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of fashion trend forecasting, focusing on how machine-learning technologies reshape the aesthetic and commercial dimensions of predicting style. Drawing from fashion studies, philosophy and management studies, this article interrogates the shift from qualitative, expert-led trend forecasting to data-driven, predictive systems that claim to map and anticipate consumer taste at scale. It explores how these systems function not only as tools of prediction but also as producers of cultural meaning, taste hierarchies and aesthetic norms. The article offers a new perspective on AI forecasting in the academy, which has thus far focused on its technical aspects. By analysing AI fashion trend platforms, I explore a critical framework for understanding the implications of AI-driven trend forecasting in both commercial and cultural contexts.

This article explores the use of technology to provide hospitality at high speed. The requirements of economic competition and achieving profitability underpin the need for speed. Speed, in this article, is viewed as a function of Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of liquid modernity but also points to evidence of solid structures. Solidly positioned corporations set the pace of the speed agenda. Trade journal articles offer insight into the corporate-managed push for technology-driven speed. Themes are noted that relate to ‘fast hospitality’: an overarching concept that blends the desire for speed and liquid relations with the profit-seeking practices of ‘solidly’ entrenched corporate entities. The interplay between Bauman’s notions of solid and liquid is presented as one of contemporaneous connection rather than historical transition. Rather than representing a shift from the liquid to the solid – a notion more consistent with Bauman’s work – ‘fast hospitality’ would appear to be deployed in a way that weaves them together strategically. Such actions help corporations avoid uncertainty as well as address an absence of focus and clear direction: conditions typically associated with liquidity. ‘Fast hospitality’ is a function of solid organizational structures that aim to preserve a rationalized economic order, thus minimizing uncertainty, during liquid modern times.

This book explores the consequences of unbridled expansion of neoliberal values within India through the lens of popular film and culture. The focus of the book is the neoliberal self, which, far from being a stable marker of urban, liberal, millennial Indian identity, has a schizophrenic quality, one that is replete with contradictions and oppositions, unable to sustain the weight of its own need for self-promotion, optimism, and belief in a narrative of progress and prosperity that has marked mainstream cultural discourse in India. The unstable and schizophrenic neoliberal identity that is the concern of this book, however, belies this narrative and lays bare the sense of precarity and inherent inequality that neoliberal regimes confer upon their subjects.

The analysis is explicitly political and draws upon theories of feminist media studies, popular culture analyses, and film studies to critique mainstream Hindi cinema texts produced in the last two decades. Rele Sathe also examine a variety of other peripheral ‘texts’ in her analysis such as the film star, the urban space, web series, YouTube videos, and social media content.

This chapter presents three iterations of mosque architecture in Chile: As-Salam Mosque in Santiago, Bilal Mosque in Iquique, and the Mohammed VI Center for Civilizational Dialogue in Coquimbo. During certain periods of time—especially in the 1980s and 1990s—Muslims in Chile were afforded a degree of political independence from foreign influence. I argue that this independence allowed Islamic architecture in Chile to develop on its own terms and to acquire unique valences within Chilean society. More recently, mosque architecture in Chile has been overtly instrumentalized by foreign influences for political and decidedly non-religious means. The case of Chile's mosques allows us an architectural lens through which to examine the diversity of actors who employ, often via novel means, Islamic architecture for their own ends. A close examination of the planning, construction, and operation of these mosques reveals Chile's particular position within in the broad network of global Islam.

The early studies on Ibero-American, so-called colonial art, focused on key questions such as the nomenclature of its historic styles, the descriptions of its visual language, and the legitimacy of American art under Spanish rule. Hispanic culture, as a strong cultural model in the Americas, set the caste system as a rule to measure cultural production value and purity. Within that frame, Spanish scholars conceived the category Mudejar, defined as the visual heritage of Islamic culture in the Iberian Peninsula. But the problem of Mudejar arrival in the Americas remains due to the prohibition for Arab descendants to travel to the New World and the Spanish struggles as a Catholic nation with Islamic traditions. This essay addresses this issue from a historiographic standpoint, seeking to show how an art historical debate reflected many ideas tied to religion, race, and cultural identities in studies of New Granada—roughly modern Colombia.

The space of emplacement for the first purpose-built urban mosque in Washington, D.C., was developed by Italian-born architect Mario Rossi ‘with an ensemble of relations that makes them appear as juxtaposed, set off against one another, implicated by each other – that makes them appear, in short, as a sort of configuration.’ In a penetrating critique of space, such architectural encounters have featured prominently in the essay ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’, where Foucault has classified ‘other spaces’ to encode them in his analysis according to their function, fragmented arrangement, and the relation among sites.

The sixteenth century chapel of San José de los Naturales, in Mexico City and others in Cholula, Toluca, Etzatlán and Jilotepec all followed a unique hypostyle plan. They were built with more than three naves and had open façades, both foreign elements to Spanish Catholic architecture, and closer to Andalusian mosques. Recently it has been suggested that the reason for the construction of these buildings in such a fashion was to accommodate the perceived ‘Islamic’ identity of the indigenous population. This paper rejects that claim and examines other possibilities related to the character of the religious institutions that operated at the time of construction. It examines the importance of the plagues of the sixteenth century and their impact in building campaigns, as well as the experimental character of early colonial architecture in Mexico to explain the rationale behind the construction of these rare buildings.

In this text, I examine a particular connection between Latin American and Islamic architecture– specifically, the balconies closed with latticework frequently found in several colonial cities of the Americas, but predominantly in Lima, Peru, and their parallelism with the mashrabiya, so frequently observed in the Islamic world. This Latin American version of mashrabiya was associated with medieval Islamic Iberian architecture, whose visual heritage arrived in the Americas with colonial settlement in the 16th century. Lima adopted this particular kind of balcony as one of their most important local symbols. Since then, we have known them as ‘balcones limeños’ (balconies of Lima). This topic has been profusely developed in Latin American literature. I will discuss here the current explanations about the origins of this structure, how this Islamic-inspired architecture arrived in Peru, and why it was so frequently constructed in Lima. Then, I will propose a new interpretation of this singular case, understanding that it is not a foreign or exotic oriental influence, but a typical Latin American feature based on an interest in privacy in architecture– a legacy of the Islamic tradition that ultimately became an internal component of Peruvian societies.

Architectural expressions resonant with Islamic traditions appear in diverse modes across the Americas, from Andalusian-inspired colonial patios in Peru to the modern and contemporary patronage of immigrant communities in the United States and Canada. This volume examines the multiple manifestations of Islamic architecture that permeate the region’s built environment to invite an expanded framing of this architectural legacy via a hemispheric consideration of aesthetics, narrative, and patronage.

Chapters consider a broad range of topics from the migration of aesthetic traditions and construction techniques tied to the architectural forms of the Islamic world in the colonial “New World,” to the direct contributions of modern and contemporary migrants in shaping a collective identity and the built environment.

By placing in productive dialogue sites that represent Islamic and Islamicate architecture across North and South America – two areas outside of the traditional conceptions of the Islamic world– this volume bridges transregional and transcultural gaps in the current literature.

This collection was written by educators who are engaging in multi- and interdisciplinary education and are led by curiosities encompassing the collaborative nature of cognitive and kinesthetic engagement and awareness.

The chapters are designed as sources for inspiration, replication, and adaptation. They are a place to start or continue. Each chapter, in varying modalities, addresses interdisciplinary course development and implementation in institutions of higher education. The common themes that emerge in the collection include navigating administrative systems and solving the challenges encountered when crossing departments or colleges, whether it be regarding listing of courses or the intricacies of course load on each professor.

Many chapters also provide detailed information on the nuts and bolts of the specific course or courses taught, including syllabi, lesson examples, and both formal and informal assessments implemented. Multiple case studies are included in this collection, with many chapters providing specific examples of students’ work.

Contributors candidly offer discussions of failures and successes of their interdisciplinary collaborations, be it in course design, lesson planning or complications brought in by unforeseen pandemics. Most chapters end with a section entitled ‘Lessons learned’, where experiences from the field provide opportunities for growth and continued exploration.

Readers can follow the book from cover to cover or dip in, finding the chapters that serve a particular project or teaching endeavour. The varying writing styles and topics are in direct relationship with the exact nature of the inspiration for this text. The over-arching themes of collaboration (diverse backgrounds, ideas, and skill sets, multidisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity) are the consistent touchstones that create a thematic self-guided journey of exploration through the book.

The chapters offer readers guidance and encouragement to implement some of the approaches described, and inspiration to forge their own paths in the world of multi- and interdisciplinary teaching and research. The depth and breadth of collaborative possibilities are exciting, and the editors’ goal is to spark further experimentation.    

An excellent and practical resource for any educator hoping to teach his or her subject matter through an interdisciplinary approach and for all courses revolving around topics of pedagogy. The key audience will be graduate students, and teachers in all stages of education from primary to higher education. 

In 2017, various conservative, far-right and alternative-right (alt-right) groups banded together in Charlottesville, Virginia at the Unite the Right rally in efforts to protest the removal of a Confederate era monument in the city and to demonstrate unity among these activist factions. The rally served as a nucleation point for the examination of a new trend of political fashion as images of mostly white males dressed in white polos, button-front shirts and variations of khaki trousers decorated headlines. This shift into a seemingly bland smart-casual style marked a contemporary intrigue into how right-wing activists engage with fashion. Yet, the selection of such an aesthetic amid the increased US political turmoil of the time was neither random nor a fashion faux-pas, rather a reflection of far-right ideological perceptions of Americanness. In this article we explore a critical conjuncture of fashion and far-right political activism by examining the smart-casual uniforms of two contemporary far-right groups, the Patriot Front and the Proud Boys. Through a lens of cultural memory, this article demonstrates how the curated smart-casual style of far-right groups reifies their ideology through the presentation and abstraction of the myths and histories of American national identity.

This article examines the Swiss writer Peter Stamm’s New York stories as a case study of the relation between city space and the short story form. Drawing on the theories of Michel de Certeau, for whom walking and telling stories opens up routes through the city in analogy to the linguistic speech act, it shows how Stamm’s stories open out New York as a kaleidoscope of experienced, imagined and remembered spaces and also offer the basis of an approach more widely applicable to the city-based short story.

Review of: From Sleepwear to Sportswear: How Beach Pajamas Reshaped Women’s Fashion, Janine D’Agati and Hanna Schiff (2024)

London: Bloomsbury Academic, 272 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-35023-192-4, p/bk, USD 39.95

Review of: Elio Fiorucci, curated by Judith Clark, Triennale Milano, Milan, 7 November 2024–16 March 2025

Individuals are exposed to viral fashion trends daily on social media channels. This study focuses specifically on Generation Z (Gen Z) and their purchase intentions regarding viral fashion trends on the popular social media channel TikTok. Specifically, the study aims to better understand how the virality of a video on TikTok impacts the purchase intention of Gen Z through examining parasocial interaction (PSI), perceived interactivity, loyalty, openness and willingness to share information with the content creator. An online experiment was conducted wherein 280 Gen Z participants saw a viral or non-viral video of the same product being featured. Findings indicate that participants’ perceived loyalty, willingness to share and perceived openness of the influencer had significant positive effects on their PSI, which in turn impacted their purchase intention. In addition, virality of the video directly impacted their purchase intention as well. The results identify the current questions surrounding Gen Z’s purchase intentions with viral fashion trends viewed on TikTok. The results suggest strategies to create viral marketing content that is critical for marketers to reach large audiences and build brand awareness.

This study explores the principles of zero-waste and minimal-waste design within historical Persian garments from the pre-Islamic period, examining how these ancient techniques can inform contemporary sustainable fashion practices. Through qualitative analysis of historical texts, visual materials and an expert interview, the research identifies key characteristics of garments from the Medes, Persians, Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassanids that align with modern sustainability principles. The findings reveal that these garments employed simple geometric patterns, minimal cuts and innovative construction techniques – such as draping and pleating – that significantly reduced fabric waste while enhancing garment longevity and visual appeal. This article emphasizes the importance of integrating historical insights into current fashion design education, proposing that these ancient practices can inspire contemporary designers to create sustainable garments that align with zero-waste principles. Ultimately, this research contributes to the broader discourse on sustainable fashion by highlighting the relevance of historical design practices in addressing today’s environmental challenges.

This study analyses how the Carats (Seventeen fans) and Nctzen (NCT 127 fans) communities construct the reality of daily life related to their idols based on the communication between fans to create a common understanding. Every individual K-pop fan usually tries to build communication and interact with fellow fans in the same fandom in order to exchange views related to their favourite idols. Social media is used to interact because social media reaches its users regardless of time and place, making it easier for users to interact without any difficulties. This research uses a qualitative approach with a constructivism paradigm, also using netnography research methods including observation and interviews. The informants consisted of one Seventeen fan and one NCT 127 fan. This research found that social media is very important for K-pop fans to interact and provide information about their idols. The symbols commonly used by fans in a fandom and also equal enthusiasm for their idols provide shared meaning for fans in the fandom. In addition, this research also reveals that there are some fans who can easily invite other fellow fans to meet, but there are also K-pop fans who take a long time to finally decide to meet directly with online friends who are fellow idol fans.

Social media platforms have a lot of opportunities that can take fashion brands to the next level by using different social media features to market their products and services. With the new technologies available nowadays, the use of social media platforms increased all around the world; people are aware of using social media platforms to read the news, play games, be in touch with family and friends, buy products and more. This research will investigate the effectiveness of social media marketing and how it affects fashion consumers’ purchase decisions with the newly developed technologies in the social media platforms and explore most social media platforms used in the Kingdom of Bahrain, as well as investigate the role of social media influencers and how they affect the consumers purchase decisions with their marketing skills. This research consists of both primary and secondary data; primary data come from a questionnaire conducted with fashion consumers of Bahrain, interviews with social media influencers and a site visit to clarify most of the points regarding the influence of social media marketing on fashion consumers.