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 intellectualisation 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 theorisation of fashion and the ways in which fashion offers a useful landscape in understanding the current state of critical theory today.
Edited by:
Marco Pecorari
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 240mm,
Width: 170mm,
Spine: 19mm
Weight: 689g
ISBN: 9781526175069
ISBN 10: 1526175061
Series: Studies in Design and Material Culture
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 01 November 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction Fashion in theory – Marco Pecorari I Historicising and translating 1 Sensitive theory – Emanuele Coccia 2 Fashion-Théorie: a theory of practice by Alexis Lavigne – Marléne Van de Casteele 3 The making of Fashion Theory: A conversation with Valerie Steele and Peter McNeil 4 Theorising contemporary fashion and historical time: A conversation with Caroline Evans 5 Anti-spectacular fashion: from Guy Debord’s to Karl Lagerferld’s dialectics – Maxime Boidy II Subjectivity and positionality 6 Notes on theorising from the personal – Carol Tulloch 7 Theatre of the self: between self-fashioning and self-theorisation – Andrea Kollnitz 8 Men’s wear / woman’s work: the issue of positionality when researching and curating menswear – Marta Franceschini 9 Holding space, creating changes – Erica de Greef and Sarah Cheang 10 Unmaking Western epistemologies with Indigenous fashion – Sariah Park and Antoinette Alba 11 ‘Their bodies, my body’: posing the modern Singaporean female as a decolonial method – Angelene Wong III Practices and making 12 What kind of activism is theorising? – Otto Von Busch 13 Donna Haraway’s threads: textile metaphors for earthly survival – Morna Laing 14 Theory as a toolbox: unmaking fashion and creative industries – Angela McRobbie and Giulia Mensitieri 15 Fashion, capitalism and the difficulty of reparation – Serkan Delice 16 Teaching theory for fashion designers in arts and design universities – Caroline Stevenson and Saul Marcadent -- .
Marco Pecorari is Associate Professor in Fashion Studies and Associate Dean for Liberal Arts and Research in the Department of Art and Design History and Theory, The New School Parsons, Paris.
