Fashion
Fashion Education
The Systemic Revolution
Fashion Education explores how the classroom can transform the fashion industry towards body inclusion and social justice.
The book is a collection of 17 essays by fashion educators from Australia, Canada, the US and the UK who recount their experiences, struggles and strategies of reimagining the exclusive foundation of fashion pedagogy and redesigning fashion curricula to centre Indigenous, Black, brown, fat, disabled, trans and queer worldviews, histories and bodies.
This is the first book to explore the relationships between fashion pedagogy and social justice, and to map out new pedagogical frameworks and tools to redistribute power through fashion education. It shares the teaching practices of fashion educators implementing radical pedagogies and offers practical case studies that engage with a number of intersectional positions.
Fashion Education engages with current pressing concerns for educators and is a valuable teaching resource for fashion educators – both theory and practice – working in art and design schools in Europe, the US and the UK.
With chapters covering fashion theory, history, business, communication and design curricula to centre Indigenous, Black, brown, fat, disabled, trans, queer worldviews, histories and peoples it will appeal directly to the many disciplines within fashion. The discussions are also relevant to educators in other art, design and creative fields also looking to centre inclusion in their courses and the strategies presented will apply to them.
Contributions from Tanveer Ahmed, Kevin Almond, Avalon Acaso, Ben Barry, Mal Burkinshaw, Johnathan Clancy, Robin J. Chantree, Deborah A. Christel, Brittany Dickinson, Greg Climer, Bianca Garcia, Denise Nicole Green, Alicia Johnson, Lucy Jones, Grace Jun, Carmen Keist, Riley Kucheran, Michael Mamp, Krys Osei, Lauren Downing Peters, Alexis Quinney, Kelly L. Reddy-Best, Austin Reeves, Joshua Simon, Colleen Schindler-Lynch, Brandon Spencer and Sang Thai
Canadian Critical Luxury Studies
Decentring Luxury
Canadian Critical Luxury Studies: Decentering Luxury is a dynamic new contribution to the study of luxury. The essays in this collection challenge Euro- and US-centric perceptions that bind luxury to either a colonial past or a consumerist present. The book announces a new collective of thinkers who focus on Indigenous and Canadian instances of luxurious production, experiences and sites to propose a new definition of luxury that includes a plurality of regional practices highlighting that Canadian luxury centres on community and connection.
Each of the interdisciplinary contributions analyse luxury from different vantage points to understand why luxury has succeeded or failed in the Canadian context. From the history of the fur trade to the latest Indigenous fashion movement, from the T. Eaton Co.’s 1920s Made-in-Canada campaign to the on-again-off-again Toronto Fashion Week, from Vancouver public art commissions to Montréal’s future-forward fashiontech sector, the essays in this volume explain what makes and breaks Canadian luxury.
These original case studies redefine luxury for Canada – a former colonial possession and contemporary second-tier cultural market – and lay the foundation for the critical study of luxury in other historically secondary geographies that produce, consume and circulate material and symbolic luxuries. The collection ultimately challenges old myths and the mystique surrounding European luxury to give it a new lustre that shines light on those actors who have been historically excluded from its privilege: Indigenous peoples, immigrants, the working classes. It sheds light on the reasons that conventional expressions of luxury may fail in secondary markets and offers guidance for fashiontech innovations that invest in the individual without imposing dehumanizing values of efficiency and rational measurement.
Although focused on the Canadian context, the book will appeal to an international audience of scholarly and industry readers. Its interventions about broadening the focus of luxury studies beyond traditional sites in Western Europe make it an important text for global audiences. It offers an alternate reading of conventional luxury histories, sites and practices; in doing so, it models a national approach to luxury that can be applied to alternate national markets.
Jessica P. Clark is a historian of Britain and empire, with a focus on gender, consumption and labour, and an associate professor of history at Brock University, Ontario, Canada. Nigel Lezama is an associate professor of French studies at Brock University and works at the intersection of fashion, luxury, literary and cultural studies.
Contributions are drawn from a number of fields including, but not limited to, Indigenous studies, museum studies, business management, cultural studies, fashion studies, technology and industry. Contributors include Kathryn Franklin, University of Toronto; Rebecca Halliday, Toronto Metropolitan University; Riley Kucheran, Toronto Metropolitan University; Valérie Lamontagne, Concordia University; Marie O'Mahony, Ontario College of Art and Design; Julia Polyck-O'Neill, York University, Ontario.
This is a primarily an academic book. It is of great relevance to scholars within the subfield of critical luxury studies, as well as scholars of consumer and commodity cultures more broadly, and those working or interested in Canadian studies, media studies, critical studies, and historians.
Researchers and postgraduate students studying luxury as well as those studying the history of the development of Canada, its colonial past and the marginalization of Indigenous people, and with the development of fashion technologies will also find it useful.
Academics and practitioners concerned with the development of city and nation branding will find the book of value.
Heavy Metal Armour: A Visual Study of Battle Jackets
The first of its kind – original, unique and beautifully illustrated by the author. Engagingly written, it will appeal to fans and academics alike.
A lavishly illustrated study of the heavy metal battle jacket in a historical and cultural context, with a unique approach to analysis and interrogation of form and style through painting practice and theory.
Since the 1970s, customized denim 'battle jackets' have been worn by heavy metal fans to signify their devotion to the music and subcultures of metal. Embellished by the wearers with patches, badges and studs, these jackets are works of art that communicate the values of metal to the world at large. This book features a series of detailed paintings that visually document examples of jackets alongside photographic portraits of the fans that wear them.
The accompanying chapters describe the significance of battle jackets in metal scenes and trace a lineage of customized clothing starting in the Middle Ages. Connections are made with a wide range of historic and contemporary artworks, suggesting a broad context within which to more fully appreciate the significance of the jackets. The methodology spans a range of disciplines from art theory to ethnography and subcultural studies, and the discussion is informed by responses from a series of interviews conducted over the years with metal fans.
The book has a highly original focus and the author’s approach to the subject is unique. It reaches across a range of fields: the history and cultural context of heavy metal music, style and dress; art history and practice, particularly painting; subcultural studies; fashion and dress; music graphics, branding and marketing.
Tom Cardwell is an artist and researcher specialising in contemporary painting, customized clothing and heavy metal subcultures. He is senior lecturer in painting at Camberwell, University of the Arts London.
It will appeal to readers with an interest in metal subcultures; fashion, style and dress; music branding and identity; contemporary art theory and practice. The writing style and content is relaxed, engaging and will be of interest to a wider casual readership with an interest in popular culture and the arts.
A useful resource for academics and students interested in heavy metal, customized clothing/DIY subcultures, painting and visual arts. Could appeal to undergraduate as well as postgraduates and scholars in these fields, and a broader interest in visual culture.
Crafting Luxury
Craftsmanship, Manufacture, Technology and the Retail Environment
The idea of luxury has secured a place in contemporary western culture, and the term is now part of common parlance in both established and emerging economies. This book explores the many issues and debates surrounding the idea of luxury.
This new research addresses contentious issues surrounding perceptions of luxury, its relationship to contemporary branding as created by the marketers, and the impact this has on the consumer and their purchasing habits.
Crafting Luxury considers work within the field of luxury and luxury brands, encompassing established companies with a long heritage: from conglomerates and small independents to 'new' luxury and emerging models with innovative practices. It examines the industry structures with respect to production, as well as the hierarchies that exist, and the impact these have on both internal and external perceptions of luxury, from the makers to the sellers and consumers alike. Attention is also given to the working structures of the ateliers, production facilities, origin of materials, manufacture and the impact of technology on consumption, the retail environment and sales, all providing a true insider’s view of this complex world.
The authors – a designer of product and jewellery, a brand strategist and a fashion designer, an architect, and a sociologist and specialist in business management – are practitioners and academics. Their approach to dissecting the complex world of luxury brings distinct viewpoints to the debate, offering different perspectives, thoughts and interpretations of luxury.
Crafting Luxury will appeal to academics and educators, industry specialists and anyone interested in luxury as a concept. It will appeal to those in a variety of academic and industry disciplines: art history, history, social sciences and humanities with an interest in luxury, fashion studies, design, business, cultural studies and textiles. It will also be valuable to students and researchers in social sciences, humanities, business, design, branding, consumption, retail, architecture, cultural studies, fashion studies and textiles.
May also appeal to industry practitioners in retail, design, technology, marketing, the supply chain and manufacture, as well as design professions including architecture, fashion and interior design.
Fashion Knowledge
Theories, Methods, Practices and Politics
This new edited collection assembles academic essays and intellectual activism equally next to visual essays and artistic interventions and proposes a different concept for fashion research that eschews the traditional logic of academic fashion studies. It features acclaimed designers, artists, curators and theorists whose work investigates the multi-faceted debates on the rise of practice-based research in fashion.
The book sets out to explore current issues in fashion research with a particular focus on both methodology and expansion of the field to encompass overlooked voices and narratives. It has a particular concern with the relationships between theory and practice and with how knowledge is created and disseminated in fashion studies. It is an excellent and really valuable contribution to the field at a point both when fashion studies is expanding and when the fashion industry is at a crucial point of change.
Some of the contributions were originally presented at a symposium hosted by the Austrian Center for Fashion Research ‘TALKSHOW: The politics of practice-based fashion research’ at Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts, curated by Wally Salner. The symposium brought together a group of fashion scholars, designers, educators and practitioners to explore critical contemporary fashion (research) practices, and to investigate critical fashion knowledge between theory and practice, beyond assumed disciplinary and epistemological boundaries. Many contributions in this volume were initially presented at that symposium, while others are testimonies of international debates that were part of the research activities of the Austrian Center for Fashion Research, a research project funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science Research and Economy, led by Elke Gaugele.
The book is structured into three sections: Fashion Knowledge, Practice-Based Fashion Research, and Sites of Fashion and Politics. Contributions look at new forms of fashion knowledge that are forming with and along shifting fashion practices, practice-based fashion research, and sheds light on different sites and entanglements of fashion and politics in distinctive contemporary and historical moments of de/colonization, anti/racism, and anti/globalization.
Elke Gaugele is cultural anthropologist and professor of fashion, styles and contextual design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria. Monica Titton is a sociologist, fashion theorist and senior scientist at the fashion design department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. Other contributions are from Elke Bippus, Astrid Engl, Jojo Gronostay, Ruby Hoette, Bianca Koczan, Priska Morger, NCCFN, Wally Salner, Andreas Spiegl, José Teunissen, Lara Torres, Carol Tulloch and Maria Ziegelböck
Readers will be academics, practitioners, designers, artists, curators, museums, theoretical scholars, lecturers, practice-based researchers, students and practitioners at all levels in the fields of fashion, textile, art and design.
This new book with its original focus on practice-based research will be useful for a general and academic readership alike, and to all those working within the field of fashion studies, including those with a theoretical focus, fashion practitioners and those working within innovative pockets of the fashion industry.