International Journal of Fashion Studies: Most Cited Articles http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/infs?TRACK=RSS Please follow the links to view the content. The power structure of the fashion industry: Fashion capitals, globalization and creativity http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.1.1.39_1?TRACK=RSS Abstract Geography plays a crucial role in the fashion industry. For example, clothing brands are readily associated with specific countries and cities, and the apparel value chain is globalized in ways that have generated a lot of attention from social scientists, for example regarding outsourcing. In this article, the geographical perspective on fashion is extended and analysed through a power angle. In other words, the origins of the current ‘oligarchic’ structure of fashion - around New York, London, Milan and Paris - are explored in order to (1) better understand how power is shared in fashion; and (2) determine whether this structure actually has a future. More specifically, can the current fashion oligarchy make room for a fully democratized industry or a polyarchical structure that would include additional players, in Brazil, Russia, India or China among others? Frédéric Godart Sun Jun 05 16:06:00 UTC 2022Z New materialism: A theoretical framework for fashion in the age of technological innovation http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.5.1.33_1?TRACK=RSS Abstract Working 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. Anneke Smelik Sun Jun 05 19:52:40 UTC 2022Z Solar fashion: An embodied approach to wearable technology http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.3.2.287_1?TRACK=RSS Abstract Using Pauline van Dongen’s ‘Wearable Solar’ project as a case study, the authors argue that materiality and embodiment should be taken into account both in the design of and the theoretical reflection on wearable technology. Bringing together a fashion designer and scholars from cultural studies, this interdisciplinary research aims at advancing the design and academic study of wearable technology. The interdisciplinary framework involves a mixed-method approach: a combination of research through design; interviews with wearers during fittings; and theoretical reflection. A theoretical and methodological focus on materiality allows for a sustained analysis of embodiment and embodied experience, while it also enables attention to the materiality of the textile and the technology involved. This ‘embodied approach’ is situated in ‘new materialism’ and more specifically in a of reappraisal Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Through the exploration of ‘embodied design’, the lived experience of the wearer is incorporated into design practice, research methods and theoretical analysis. The relevance of wearable technology for potential future users can only be advanced when new meanings and values are created through interaction with the design. Working through a phenomenologically driven research through design, solar technology is better integrated into fashion so as to make ‘solar fashion’ more wearable in the near future. Anneke Smelik, Lianne Toussaint and Pauline Van Dongen Sun Jun 05 18:03:59 UTC 2022Z Storytelling and the making of a global luxury fashion brand: Christian Dior http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.6.1.83_1?TRACK=RSS This article discusses the storytelling strategies adopted by luxury fashion companies to build global brands from the 1990s onwards. Using the example of Christian Dior, it is demonstrated that heritage is a social construction based on strong narratives rather than the mere outcome of the history of a brand. Storytelling is a powerful instrument used in the context of creating global luxury brands over the last two decades. This makes it possible to emphasize the timelessness of a brand while disregarding the contradictions resulting from a change in its identity over time. As a consequence, this article argues that, although the use of heritage through storytelling is a useful tool for the practice of brand management, it is not an academic concept and should be avoided by scholars. Pierre-Yves Donzé and Ben Wubs Sun Jun 05 20:43:47 UTC 2022Z From the physical to the digital and back: Fashion exhibitions in the digital age http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.3.2.225_1?TRACK=RSS Abstract The discipline of curating fashion has experienced a cultural turn in the last decades. What were controversial approaches are now recognized as pioneering and significant in having encouraged debates and opened the discipline through rethinking existing paradigms. This contribution analyses the challenges and criticisms surrounding fashion displays, with the aim to address the centrality of interpretation and performativity in relation to key fashion exhibitions. The article explores ‘the power of display’ (Staniszewski 1998; 2000) through mediums and spaces, whether physical, digital or both. Within museum studies, the focus on the visitors’ experience and on the narrative has been identified as a key feature of a ‘new museology’ (Vergo 1989; Hein 2000; Henning 2006), which ultimately leads us to question the purposes of museum and gallery displays. With references to museum studies, fashion curation and philosophy, and drawing from insightful conversations with fashion curators, the article examines the exhibition’s potential to provide a context for visual and material experiences, as well as for a new understanding and articulation of knowledge. The contribution embraces Foucault’s reflection on heterotopia (1986 [1967]; 1992 [1966]), arguing that the content of the museum as a space of difference is the interpretation itself. Reflecting on exhibition design as a medium in its own right (Celant 1996a), the article highlights performativity as a fundamental feature of the exhibits, of the installation and, more broadly, of the museum space. Flavia Loscialpo Sun Jun 05 18:04:09 UTC 2022Z The puzzle of the ethical fashion consumer: Implications for the future of the fashion system http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.3.2.249_1?TRACK=RSS Abstract Ethical fashion consumers who assess the environmental and social aspects of products before purchasing them are relatively rare because fashion consumption is a complex activity and tends to occur under conditions that tend to discourage ethical considerations. Standard criteria for evaluating ecologically sound or safe products or services are lacking. The ethical fashion market is a niche market, constituting about 1 per cent of the global fashion industry. Two-thirds of ethical fashion producers are located in the United Kingdom and the United States. Consumers tend to be poorly informed about ethical aspects of products and services. Fashion companies are moving towards responsible production but consumers are less likely to engage in responsible consumption due to higher prices, lack of readily available ethical goods and misleading information about products. Ethical hardliners, strongly committed to eco-fashion, are a minority. Diana Crane Sun Jun 05 18:04:15 UTC 2022Z The scenographic, costumed chorus, agency and the performance of matter: A new materialist approach to costume http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs_00001_1?TRACK=RSS This article presents the performativity of costume as generated through materially discursive iterative processes that embed meaning in the production itself through the analysis of the chorus costumes for the 2018 Opéra du Rhin production of Eugene Onegin. It argues that a new materialist approach can reveal the ethical concerns, around gender, toxic masculinity and compliance to reactionary social conventions, that lie at the core of this costuming of an opera chorus, particularly when perceived through the multiple forms that shape its distinct materializations over three successive acts. In addition, a focus on the agential actions of materials will draw attention to the work of the costume department, which to date has remained largely unaddressed by analytical approaches that are solely based on spectatorship, semiotics or phenomenological perspectives. Identifying the agential actions that materials perform enables the articulation of the costume specialist’s response to the performativity of materials. Adopting a new materialist approach, ‘costuming’ is found to be an evolving and relational form that emerges from a complex process of meaning-making that addresses, through a distribution of agency, how materials connect to wider concerns. Donatella Barbieri and Greer Crawley Sun Jun 05 21:15:49 UTC 2022Z Evolution versus entrenchment: Debating the impact of digitization, democratization and diffusion in the global fashion industry http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.5.2.365_7?TRACK=RSS Abstract In the report The State of Fashion 2017, written by Business of Fashion and the McKinsey Institute (2016), industry executives used three words to describe the current state of the fashion industry: uncertain, changing and challenging. Indeed, the fashion industry is undergoing dramatic transformations, from digitization and the rise of ‘see now, buy now’ fashions, to brands redefining the function and timing of fashion weeks, and increasing levels of global integration and competition (Crewe 2017). As such, the fashion industry has been recognized as a valuable lens through which to explore significant and ongoing changes to the production, curation and consumption of goods, services, and experiences (Brydges et al. 2014; Brydges 2017; D’Ovidio 2015; Hracs et al. 2013; Lavanga 2018; McRobbie 2016; Pratt et al. 2012). Drawing inspiration from this stream of scholarship, we organized four sessions titled Trending Now: The Changing Geographies of Fashion in the Digital Age at the Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) conference in London, 30 August – 1 September 2017. In these sessions, researchers and practitioners from a wide range of locations and disciplines – including fashion studies, media studies, cultural economics, business and geography – came together to share research related to the structures, labour dynamics, spaces, value propositions and practices of the contemporary fashion industry. While a range of issues were discussed, the sessions were connected by an overarching theme. Namely, the extent to which power in the fashion industry is expanding or consolidating. While there is a prominent discourse that states that structures, systems and spaces within the global fashion industry have been (and will continue to be) disrupted by new actors, technologies, practices and cities, we collectively questioned whether the fashion industry has really entered an era of democratization, or if established power structures remain entrenched. Through empirical case studies from a variety of geographic contexts – from India to Italy – about different actors and activities within the industry, each presentation contributed new evidence and perspectives to this debate. The discussion below distils some of the key themes that emerged. Taylor Brydges, Brian J. Hracs and Mariangela Lavanga Sun Jun 05 20:04:11 UTC 2022Z On the issue of sustainability in fashion studies http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.1.2.139_1?TRACK=RSS Abstract In recent years sustainability has been at the forefront of some of the most stimulating reflections on fashion. It is also the main topic of the second issue of the International Journal of Fashion Studies. This had not been planned and is the fortuitous result of the peer reviewing process. But this coincidence is symptomatic of a significant trend in contemporary fashion studies. This editorial gives an overview of the current state of studies on sustainable fashion and identifies some of the most pressing issues. Emanuela Mora, Agnès Rocamora and Paolo Volonté Sun Jun 05 16:25:09 UTC 2022Z The internationalization of fashion studies: Rethinking the peer-reviewing process http://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/infs.1.1.3_2?TRACK=RSS Abstract The International Journal of Fashion Studies argues that the reception of contributions from countries with less visibility in English-language academic publications has been long overdue. This is why it has set as its main aim the dissemination of the work of non-anglophone scholars who write in their first language by publishing their writings in English translation. To do so, the journal has put into place a peer-reviewing process whereby it reviews submissions written in the authors’s chosen language, whether English or not. The paper discusses the socio-cultural and epistemological issues related to the operationalizing of such a peer-reviewing process. It first looks at the development of fashion studies to situate the journal’s approach. It then discusses its linguistic project in relation to the cultural issues pertaining to the internationalization of fashion studies. Finally, it engages with the epistemological issue of being a journal that welcomes contributions by scholars situated outside the Anglophone world and western regions whilst also being embedded in a form of scientific publishing that originates from the West and is informed by, and reproduces, ‘western’ norms and values. Emanuela Mora, Agnès Rocamora and Paolo Volonté Sun Jun 05 16:05:54 UTC 2022Z