About the Book
A vital update to the definitive guide to fashion and cultural theory, featuring four new chapters and essential revisions throughout in light of key developments in fashion and fashion studies.
Across 19 major thinkers from the 19th to the 21st century, the second edition of this comprehensive collection introduces readers to the process of thinking through rich cultural fields such as fashion with the help of social and cultural theory, and thinking through social and cultural theory with the help of fashion. Each chapter guides you through the work of a major thinker and considers their historical context, the role of fashion within their theory, how their theoretical frameworks apply to contemporary fashion studies, and the strengths and limitations of their approach.
Featuring new chapters on key theorists Edward Said, bell hooks, Frantz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois, this new edition prepares readers to question and diversify the field of fashion. A revised introduction resituates theories in relation to each other and reflects on changing approaches to fashion studies, while revisions to existing chapters equip readers with the most up-to-date critical perspectives and developments in fashion and fashion theory.
Table of Contents:
Preface to the Second Edition
1. Introduction to Thinking Through Fashion, Agnès Rocamora, University of the Arts London, UK and Anneke Smelik, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands
2. Karl Marx: Fashion and Capitalism, Anthony Sullivan, University of the Arts London, UK
3. Sigmund Freud: More than a Fetish: Fashion and Psychoanalysis, Janice Miller, Kingston University, UK
4. Georg Simmel: The 'Philosophical Monet', Peter McNeil, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
5. W.E.B. Du Bois: Fashion through the Veil, Luciana Scrutchen, Parsons School of Design, USA
6. Walter Benjamin: Fashion, Modernity and the City Street, Adam Geczy, University of Sydney, Australia and Vicki Karaminas, Massey University, New Zealand
7. Mikhail Bakhtin: Fashioning the Grotesque Body, Francesca Granata, Parsons School of Design, USA
8. Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Corporeal Experience of Fashion, Llewellyn Negrin, University of Tasmania, Australia
9. Roland Barthes: Semiology and the Rhetorical Codes of Fashion (Paul Jobling, Parsons Pairs, France)
10. Erving Goffmann: Social Science as an Art of Cultural Observation, Efrat Tseëlon, University of Leeds, UK)
11. Frantz Fanon: Fashion and Decolonisation on a Planetary Scale, Serkan Delice, University of the Arts London, UK
12. Gilles Deleuze: Bodies-without-Organs in the Folds of Fashion, Anneke Smelik, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands
13. Michel Foucault: Fashioning Power and Resistance, Jane Tynan, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
14. Jean Baudrillard: Postmodern Fashion as the End of Meaning, Efrat Tseëlon, University of Leeds, UK
15. Pierre Bourdieu: The Field of Fashion, Agnès Rocamora, University of the Arts London, UK
16. Jacques Derrida: Fashion under Erasure, Alison Gill, Western Sydney University, Australia
17. Edward Said: Orientalism, Fashion, and the Cultures of Imperialism, Reina Lewis, London College of Fashion, UK
18. Bruno Latour: Actor-Network-Theory and Fashion, Joanne Entwistle, King's College London, UK
19. bell hooks: Cultural Differences and Racial Justice in Fashion, Tanveer Ahmed, University of the Arts London, UK
20. Judith Butler: Fashion and Performativity, Elizabeth Wissinger, City University of New York, USA
About the authors
Index
About the Author :
Agnès Rocamora is a Professor in Social and Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. She has published widely in the field of fashion.
Anneke Smelik is Professor Emerita of Visual Culture at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. She is co-editor of Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty.
Review :
Rocamora and Smelik have done an outstanding job in compiling an enlightening and insightful book that covers a wide range of important thinkers and explores their theoretical and conceptual relevance in fashion research. The second edition includes scholars, such W.E.B. Du Bois, Edward Said, and bell hooks, whose works have been key to theories of race and postcolonialism, and their analytical frameworks on diversity, inclusion, and social justice, help us deconstruct the Eurocentric viewpoints of fashion. This book is an important resource and essential reading for professors, researchers, and students who are interested in 'thinking through fashion' critically and theoretically.
This new edition is a must-read book; it offers an outstanding update and a more inclusive reach to an already excellent work. The new introduction melds social movements with theory in a conceptually rich, accessible, and contemporary yet historically grounded way. The addition of thinkers such as DuBois, Fanon, hooks, and Said highlights the importance of anti-racist and decolonial theory in critical fashion studies.
I am so pleased to have a copy of this revised version in my hands. It underlines how postcolonial studies, critical race theory, Black studies and decolonial theory have all had a profound influence on the field of Fashion Studies in the last 30 years, helping to challenge Eurocentric colonial systems of power and knowledge.
The second edition of Thinking Through Fashion cements its status as an indispensable guide to understanding how key social and cultural theorists can enrich the thinking-research-practice of fashion and dress. With the addition of crucial new chapters, this edition moves readers beyond the field's dominant white Eurocentric assumptions to cultivate a more progressive and inclusive foundation. Undoubtedly, Thinking Through Fashion will become a well-worn, frequently referenced staple on the bookshelves of every fashion educator and student.
Rocamora and Smelik have rethought their original intervention and augmented this important volume with key thinkers, like hooks, Du Bois, and Said, whose works can decentre and decolonize fashion. This second edition redresses the gaps the editors acknowledged when the book was published in 2015. A must-read for students and educators seeking tools for a more inclusive field of fashion!
A welcome reedition of an essential fashion reader, this already diverse collection has been refreshed with chapters that foreground decolonial, postcolonial and intersectional viewpoints. Examining histories of fashion through a wide range of theoretical lenses, it provides vital context for any student making, styling or writing about clothes. An indispensable introduction to fashion thinking.
Useful to anyone making their first foray into the world of academic theory, and also for those needing to refresh their memories on the various theoretical approaches key to the study of western fashion.
An important pedagogical contribution to the field of fashion studies ... Thinking Through Fashion offers a very accessible guide as to how to use social and cultural theory to analyze fashion in its 'many manifestations'.
While there's no shortage of useful fashion studies readers and reference books for fashion studies students ... none have gone so far as to systematically provide suggestions for the application of key western theorists and philosophers to fashion studies so comprehensibly and concisely.
