Time in Fashion: Industrial, Antilinear and Uchronic Temporalities

This is the expanded English-language edition of Il Tempo della Moda (2019). It is twice the length of the Italian edition, and contains a rewritten and enlarged introduction of 10,000 words which includes a new discussion of the Eurocentric nature of so-called international time. With several additional authors included, the anthology’s coverage has been widened to incorporate the concepts of colonial time, gendered time and queer time.

Rather than considering time in a conventional sense, the book explores three alternative ways to think about fashion and time. The first section, on industrial time, identifies the seasonal nature of fashion as an industry, and shows how this has impacted on workers and wearers alike. The second, on antilinear time, looks at fashion design as a ceaseless process of adaptation, reconstruction and recombination of motifs, in which nostalgia and revivals play their part. The third, on uchronic time, construes fashion’s 'imaginary', with its capacity for fantasy and myth-making, as a form of alternate history that asks 'what if?'

Within this framework, academic and non-academic texts are juxtaposed in an interdisciplinary approach that includes philosophy, history, literature, media and fashion design, ranging from the 18th century to the present. Among the authors included are Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, Elsa Schiaparelli, Roland Barthes, and leading contemporary scholars.