The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies

Abstract

In March 1985 the film scholar Charlotte Herzog sent a brief letter to the German film theorist Heide Schlüpmann, who was at this point preparing a special issue of Frauen und Filme (Women and Film) -the journal she edited -on costume in cinema. In the letter, Herzog expressed her desire to contribute to this, and, fearing she may be too late, resolved at least to share a preliminary outline for her own collection of essays on the subject, which she was planning with her colleague Jane Gaines. This volume, provisionally titled Fabrications: Body and Costume in Our Screen History, would eventually become something of a manifesto for a field yet to emerge, undoubtedly in part thanks to the forceful introductory text written by Gaines. 1 In the meantime, Herzog concluded her letter by writing: "It is reassuring to know there are other feminists interested in the same subject, and who recognize it is an important aspect of filmmaking and women audiences, etc." 2 Herzog's almost-conspiratorial note speaks volumes of how rare an alliance of kindred spirits this would have felt like. Equally eloquent is her qualifying the mutually shared interest as a feminist one, which suggests at least two things: one, feminist academics interested in problems of fashion, costume and the body were rather an anomaly in 1985; and two, Herzog believed that the subject needed a feminist approach in particular, presumably in order to break the silence on it in mainstream, largely male-dominated film theory.This anecdotal piece of evidence speaks to the uneasy development of fashion in cinema as a field. Indeed, problems of how cinema interacts with fashion and dress were routinely marginalized in the histories and theories of film -as well as fashion. 3 When the subject was pursued, it was often done so by individuals working alone or in discrete, isolated hubs. Largely considered an "interdisciplinary niche" within film studies, 4 the field evolved unevenly and unprogrammatically, from different disciplinary roots that were sometimes at odds with one another. Dress historian Lou Taylor, for example, observed that the study of fashion in film is "deeply divided" between theoretical and object-based approaches, pointing to a gap -and a sense of antagonism -between humanities scholars (such as Gaines and Herzog, presumably) who pursue nuanced intellectual arguments and museum curators who rely on object-based expertize in collecting and exhibiting costume. 5 Another major hurdle to the development of a bona fide field with a cohesive identity has been an underlying dilemma about what exactly constitutes its object of study: is it costume, or is it, rather fashion? -a dilemma that brings with

The Augmented Body: Technological Contamination in the Fashion-Tech Paradigm

“…At a first glance, the framework relies on a radical shift in focus compared to the approaches traditionally related to them. In fact, it seems that fashion design practice is undergoing a sort of relational turning point by not assuming the centrality of the human in the design processes but focusing on the complexity that surrounds human beings and things (Smelik, 2021). A plurality of interdependent relationships emerges, resulting in tangled lines influencing each other mutually.…”

Thrift Shopping and Indonesian Urban Youth Fashion Consumption

“…Many researchers have noted that fashion has always been about identity and individuality (Steward 2020; Park et al 2020;Breward 1995). Yangzom investigated that thrifting fashion or second-hand fashion has been around for centuries since the pre-modern era but has been made famous by the rise of the do-it-yourself culture (Paulicelli et al 2021). The popularity of DIY teachers on various channels such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok makes thrift culture synonymous with youth culture.…”