Fashion in Theory - (Studies in Design and Material Culture) by Marco Pecorari (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book explores how we theorize about fashion, responding to a new increasing attention to critical theory and philosophy in the fashion industry.

Book Synopsis

For Spring Summer 2020, Gucci showed a collection questioning identity politics and capitalism. Rather than the usual explanation of the material, shapes or inspirations behind the collection, the press release handed out at the show quoted the philosopher Michel Foucault and questioned the very nature of fashion itself.

Gucci's press release reflects the popularization of critical theory in public discourse and fashion in particular. Philosophers, activists and academics are increasingly recruited to collaborate with luxury brands, and main-stream fashion brands have begun to adopt a discourse about politics and critical thinking using, in their communication, concepts such as "resistance", "gender fluidity", "national identity" or "cultural heritage" without accompanying these discourses with any form of political engagement or activism.

Based on this intellectualization of the fashion industry and the recent proliferation of critical theory in fashion education, this book stresses the importance of rethinking the relationship between fashion and theory. Drawing together eleven chapters and four conversations by and with philosophers, cultural theorists, historians, anthropologists, activists, performers and designers, the book investigates both the theorization of fashion and the ways in which fashion offers a useful landscape in understanding the current state of critical theory today.

From the Back Cover

Philosophers, activists and academics are increasingly recruited to collaborate with designers and luxury brands, being featured in campaigns, fashion shows, publications or special projects. Alongside this, communication strategies in brands are also widely adopting a discourse of resistance on politics and critical thinking using concepts in their statements such as 'phenomenology', 'resistance', 'gender fluidity' and 'commodity fetishism'.

This book starts from this new penchant for critical theory and theorists in fashion, exploring the relation between theory and fashion as both practice and discourse. Through different contributors from international leading figures in critical theory and fashion theory, the book investigates a multitude of meanings and contexts in which the term 'theory' and the action of 'theorizing' have appeared in relation to fashion. The contributions explore this mainly focusing on three perspectives: the historicization of the study of fashion and theory making as a translation practice; the issue of positionality and subjectivity; and finally, making and practice.

About the Author

Marco Pecorari is the Program Director for the MA in Fashion Studies in the Department of Art and Design History and Theory, The New School Parsons, Paris