The Fashion Studies Manifesto - May 2025 by Jennifer Rossi https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0 Respond to at least one of the points from Christopher Breward's manifesto for fashion studies, considering its resonance with your own research topics and related issues - or with the methods you plan to use en-us 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC 2025-05-07 11:42:00 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f4a1.png 6. Fashion can be about confirmation, of self and others. But it is also about anxiety, ambiguity and worry. As an aid to understanding psychological complexities it is unsurpassed. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407351 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407351 9. Fashion is so all-encompassing and encyclopedic in its terrain that it seems tailor-made for the era of big-data. The old antiquarians used it to map national customs and habits. We have the tools to put it to the service of as yet unimagined projects, of even greater scope and impact. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407352 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407352 7. Fashion studies has always thrived, as many disciplines do, by positioning itself between borders and at the periphery. Its apparent lack of respectability provided energy. Now there are many journals and conferences to serve its purposes. They give more space for multiple points of view, but the field must strive to avoid co-option and exhaustion. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407355 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407355 4. Fashion moves in space and time. It shares in the complexity of physics and mathematics, making patterns and networks, forming mazes and constellations. Through its forms we have an opportunity to re-unite art and science and to heal the rift of the two cultures. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407356 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407356 1. Fashion is made manifest in material forms. It demands study in the same way that ancient artifacts are made meaningful by archaeologists: through careful excavation. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407359 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407359 2. Fashion has a tendency to construct its own canons. Like every cultural form these should be documented and then subjected to debate and challenge. Art historians are expert creators and destroyers of these canons, as surely as modernism follows romanticism. Like art historians, fashion scholars need to look and question. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407361 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407361 Fashion is not necessarily spectacular (though it often conforms to the theory of the society of the spectacle), it can also be demotic, ordinary, mundane, routine and humble. It is the stuff of the ethnographer and the anthropologist. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407363 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407363 5. Fashion is gossip. Never underestimate the power of gossip. Semiologists are driven into ecstasies of supposition by its whispers. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407364 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407364 8. Fashion is intensely personal, in the same way that poetry is intensely personal. It is a medium through which personal stories can be told, memories re-lived and futures foretold. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407365 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407365 10. Fashion does not define. It is instead a term that demands definition. jmrossi4 https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407368 2025-05-05 12:58:16 UTC https://padlet.com/jmrossi4/om267tlfqkikqqv0/wish/3436407368