Thinking Through Fashion

The second edition of Thinking Through Fashion cements its status as an indispensable guide to understanding how key social and cultural theorists can enrich the thinking-research-practice of fashion and dress. With the addition of crucial new chapters, this edition moves readers beyond the field's dominant white Eurocentric assumptions to cultivate a more progressive and inclusive foundation. Undoubtedly, Thinking Through Fashion will become a well-worn, frequently referenced staple on the bookshelves of every fashion educator and student. * Ben Barry, Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA *
I am so pleased to have a copy of this revised version in my hands. It underlines how postcolonial studies, critical race theory, Black studies and decolonial theory have all had a profound influence on the field of Fashion Studies in the last 30 years, helping to challenge Eurocentric colonial systems of power and knowledge. * Elizabeth Kutesko, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK *
Rocamora and Smelik have done an outstanding job in compiling an enlightening and insightful book that covers a wide range of important thinkers and explores their theoretical and conceptual relevance in fashion research. The second edition includes scholars, such W.E.B. Du Bois, Edward Said, and bell hooks, whose works have been key to theories of race and postcolonialism, and their analytical frameworks on diversity, inclusion, and social justice, help us deconstruct the Eurocentric viewpoints of fashion. This book is an important resource and essential reading for professors, researchers, and students who are interested in ‘thinking through fashion’ critically and theoretically. * Yuniya Kawamura, Fashion Institute of Technology, USA *
Rocamora and Smelik have rethought their original intervention and augmented this important volume with key thinkers, like hooks, Du Bois, and Said, whose works can decentre and decolonize fashion. This second edition redresses the gaps the editors acknowledged when the book was published in 2015. A must-read for students and educators seeking tools for a more inclusive field of fashion! * Nigel Lezama, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada *
A welcome reedition of an essential fashion reader, this already diverse collection has been refreshed with chapters that foreground decolonial, postcolonial and intersectional viewpoints. Examining histories of fashion through a wide range of theoretical lenses, it provides vital context for any student making, styling or writing about clothes. An indispensable introduction to fashion thinking. * Philip Clarke, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK *
Useful to anyone making their first foray into the world of academic theory, and also for those needing to refresh their memories on the various theoretical approaches key to the study of western fashion. -- The Journal of Dress History (of the first edition)
An important pedagogical contribution to the field of fashion studies ... Thinking Through Fashion offers a very accessible guide as to how to use social and cultural theory to analyze fashion in its 'many manifestations'. -- Fashion Theory (of the first edition)
While there’s no shortage of useful fashion studies readers and reference books for fashion studies students ... none have gone so far as to systematically provide suggestions for the application of key western theorists and philosophers to fashion studies so comprehensibly and concisely. -- The Fashion Studies Journal (of the first edition)