Fashion and Politics

Taking a multi-faceted look at a topic of widespread fascination, this pioneering book presents new research on the intersection of fashion and politics through incisive essays by the field’s leading voices, including both renowned and emerging fashion scholars. The texts unpack fashion between the mid-19th century and today as expressions of nationalism, terrorism, surveillance, and individualism, as well as a symbol of capitalism. The first section explores the political potential of fashion despite its immutable status as a commodity. The second section offers a historical account of the political nature of dress, such as the fashion of dissent within Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the Black Panther movement. The ways bodies are defined by dress—the entanglement of oppression and expression—is the theme of the third section. A fourth and final section explores some of the contemporary burning issues in the practice and theory of dress, from the processes of decolonizing museum collections to the recent sartorial styles of Europe’s political Left, and to an activist cry, arguing for a new model that would comprise the interaction between textile workers and academia. The book’s engaging and beautifully illustrated essays provide a timely investigation of an underdeveloped topic through a variety of historical and current formats, including public and personal archives, fashion magazines, political newspapers, museum displays, art and social media.