Includes articles from the first volume of the journal 'Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty' with an additional editorial on the auction prices of fashion collectibles.

Includes articles and reviews from the second volume (numbers 1 & 2, 2011) of the Journal Critical studies in fashion & beauty.

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"Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty" focuses on issues of power, social positioning, ideologies and practices within the web of relationships between creators, producers, practitioners and end-users of fashion. This book explores the contemporary meanings of masks, masking and masquerade. The editors argue that these concepts have been transformed over the centuries but they continue to serve as useful tools for critical cultural analysis. The history of fashion is a story of codification of visual appearance as a measure of rank and power. Historically it has been expressed in ways that secure a hegemonic reading of fashion signification as follows: 1) controlling what one can wear: Powerful agents (parents, pedagogues, religious leaders) or institu-tions (schools, army, religious institutions, civil service, health service, private enterprises) prescribe uniforms or ways of dressing and set rules for appropriate dress (manners and etiquette regarding what materials and styles are suitable for particular times and places). 2) controlling the gaze: Powerful agents (in homes and institutions, people with elected or appointed authority, celebrities) are usually the ones controlling the gaze in the sense of surveillance. But they are also the focus of the gaze in the sense of being in the public eye, and being publicly visible). What counters these forms of hegemonic control is masking in its various forms as a conscious or unconscious form of behaviour. Masking provides a strategy for deconstructing meaning by reclaiming control over the construction of meaning. This it achieves by creating a space for resistance that is independent from either social prescriptions or the controlling gaze. It is in this sense that masking is deployed in this volume by the various authors. Masking operates in two ways: (1) by adding ambivalence to dress codes, and (2) by increasing the gap between dress as a signifier and the social reality it signifies. Ambivalence is the result of blurring the clear unambiguous links between fashion and the social reality it indexes. It introduces a contextual and negotiated element to the meaning of clothing symbols over time (as in the shift in attitudes to fur from a sign of opulence to a sign of animal cruelty), or across increasingly fragmented social groups with their distinctive and fast-changing codes (Davis 1992; Tseelon 1989, 2012). The second way in which masking resists the hegemonic meanings of fashion is captured in my analysis (Tseelon [1995] 2000a) of fashion signification inspired by Baudrillard s concept of simulacra. Using a linguistic analogy to analyse commodities, Baudrillard outlined a genealogy of sign structures consisting of three orders. The first order, founded on imitation characterizes the pre-modern period and presupposes a dualism where appearances reflect reality. In the second order, founded on production, appearances conceal reality. In the third order, founded on simulation, appearances deconstruct reality. No longer concerned with the real, the visual code is subverted from a language to a playful spectacle. It is this lack of a reference point that threatens the distinction between true and false. "Fashion and Masquerade" showcases the articles from the third volume of Intellect s journal "Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty." "

Different theories, models and narratives of innovation compete for both legitimacy and authority. However, despite the variations, they all offer a consistent pro-innovation bias, dismissing resistance as irrational, and overlooking the value of non-users and collateral impacts. This book looks at innovation from a different perspective and asks, what has been left out? It offers a reflexive view and invites researchers to consider new avenues of research, through a critique of current representations of innovation.

There is a new form of design practice within the contemporary fashion industry which is active in complex forms of social commentary and critique. While fashion in the modernist era has shown signs of criticism and subversion, these were either in the form of subcultures or perversions, such as punk or BDSM styling. Today, however, these genres have been absorbed into the fashion industry itself, meaning that “critical fashion” is now far from limited to the subcultures from which it came. This book explores this new space for criticism within the popular fashion sphere to demonstrate how designers are disrupting conventions, challenging beliefs and stirring change from within the system itself. Critical Fashion Practice considers a range of contemporary designers across the globe, from the US to Japan, whose conceptual designs embody this critical language, including case studies such as Rei Kawakubo's deconstructive silhouettes for Comme des Garçons and Walter Van Beirendonck's sadomasochistic menswear collections, amongst other key players such as Miuccia Prada, Vivienne Westwood and Viktor & Rolf. Arguing that the rise of critical fashion coincides with a noticeable decline in the criticality of art, Geczy and Karaminas go beyond slotting fashion into previously established art theories. Conceiving a new cultural role for fashion that affords insight into identity, class, race, sexuality and gender, this book shows how fashion can not only reflect and comment on, but can also be a part of social change.

This volume presents a collection of the most recent knowledge on the relationship between gender and fashion in historical and contemporary contexts. Through fourteen essays divided into three segments--how dress creates, disrupts, and transcends gender--the essays investigate gender issues through the lens of fashion. Crossing Gender Boundaries first examines how clothing has been, and continues to be, used to create and maintain the binary gender division that has come to permeate Western and westernized cultures. Next, it explores how dress can be used to contest and subvert binary gender expectations, before a final section that considers the meaning of gender and how dress can transcend it, focusing on unisex and genderless clothing. The essays consider how fashion can both constrict and free gender expression, explore the ways dress and gender are products of one other, and illuminate the construction of gender through social norms. Readers will find that through analysis of the relationship between gender and fashion, they gain a better understanding of the world around them.

Bridging theory and practice, this accessible text considers fashion from both cultural studies and fashion studies perspectives, and addresses the growing interaction between the two fields. Kaiser and Green use a wide range of cross-cultural case studies to explore how race, ethnicity, class, gender and other identities intersect and are produced through embodied fashion. Drawing on intersectionality in feminist theory and cultural studies, Fashion and Cultural Studies is essential reading for students and scholars. This revised edition includes updated case studies and two new chapters. The first new chapter explores religion, spirituality, and faith in relation to style, fashion, and dress. The second offers a critique of “beauty” and considers dressed embodiment inclusive of diverse sizes, shapes and dis/abilities. Throughout the text, Kaiser and Green use a range of examples to interrogate the complex entanglements of production, regulation, distribution, consumption, and subject formation within and through fashion.

Changing trends in fashion have always reflected large-scale social and cultural changes. Changing Fashion presents for the first time a multi-disciplinary approach to examining fashion change, bringing together theory from fashion studies, cultural studies, sociology, psychology and art history, amongst others.Ideal for the undergraduate student of fashion and cultural studies, the book has a wide range of contemporary and historical case material which provides practical examples of trend analysis and change, from the art deco textile designs of Sonia Delaunay to the chameleonic shifts in Bob Dylan's appearance over time. Key issues in fashion and identity, such as race, gender and consumption are examined from different disciplinary angles to provide a critical overview of the field. Changing Fashion provides a concise guide to the main theories across disciplines that explain how and why media, clothing styles, and cultural practices fall in and out of fashion.