Fashion Theory: A Reader

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader brings together and presents a wide range of essays on fashion theory that will engage and inform both the general reader and the specialist student of fashion. From apparently simple and accessible theories concerning what fashion is to seemingly more difficult or challenging theories concerning globalisation and new media, this collection contextualises different theoretical approaches to identify, analyse and explain the remarkable diversity, complexity and beauty of what we understand and experience every day as fashion and clothing.

This second edition contains entirely new sections on fashion and sustainability, fashion and globalisation, fashion and digital/social media and fashion and the body/prosthesis. It also contains updated and revised sections on fashion, identity and difference, and on fashion and consumption and fashion as communication. More specifically, the section on identity and difference has been updated to include contemporary theoretical debates surrounding Islam and fashion, and LGBT+ communities and fashion and the section on consumption now includes theories of ‘prosumption’. Each section has a specialist and dedicated Editor’s Introduction which provides essential conceptual background, theoretical contextualisation and critical summaries of the readings in each section.

Bringing together the most influential and ground breaking writers on fashion and exposing the ideas and theories behind what they say, this unique collection of extracts and essays brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we all think and say about fashion. This second edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader is a timeless and invaluable resource for both the general reader and undergraduate students across a range of disciplines including sociology, cultural studies and fashion studies.

Editorial Reviews

„The clarity of Barnard’s introduction, which sets out the complex agenda of his subject with an elegance that never simplifies, together with the judicious choice of extracts and articles, must surely make this collection the ideal Reader for students and scholars studying fashion from whatever perspective.“ – Elizabeth Wilson is currently Visiting Professor London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.

„Fashion is about clothes, about time and about how the individual is linked to society; are they ‘with it’ or not? This collection brings together a range of views and ideas from very different perspectives about fashion in a way that will be of direct interest to students of design, cultural studies, sociology and the study of fashion itself. The book includes different styles of writing and approach, some of which are just now more fashionable than others, but all have been chosen for having something distinctive and important to say about fashion. The choice of articles will give any reader a broad overview of the theoretical and cultural significance of fashion in the twenty-first century. A ‘reader’ is something to dip into, to read different parts of at different times – in fact, if it is as well planned and put together as this one, it is a book that never goes out of fashion!

Malcolm Barnard’s ‘Fashion as Communication’ has become a standard text used on fashion courses all over the world, introducing difficult concepts and theories to students who are often most interested in designing, making and looking at things. His work on visual culture, design and fashion has made accessible to a wide audience key ideas from philosophy, sociology and social theory. Maclolm Barnard’s own writing in the introduction to ‘Fashion Theory’ is as engaging and clear as ever and he sets this collection of articles in a context that will be a continual point of reference for its readers.“ – Tim Dant, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of York.
– From the Publisher