A case study into critical practice for fashion publishing: Taking an editorial position with Address

This research proposes a set of editorial approaches towards critical perspectives on fashion by addressing the research question: how does criticality manifest in a publication that operates in the commercial field of fashion publishing? This is addressed through a practice-led approach (Candy, 2006, 3) whereby Address - journal for fashion criticism, which existed as an independent print and digital platform between 2010 - 2019, was used as a site for developing editorial practice. During the course of running Address, 162 written and visual pieces were published. This body of content, along with the reflective writing undertaken during the course of this project and the documentation collected about the process, informed the results of the research project.

This research emerged from the momentum that existed in the independent publishing scene in the UK, the absence of English language publications taking a critical perspective on fashion, and the ‘crisis discourse’ (McWhirter, 2016, 21) that was taking place in fashion media about lack of criticality in the early 2010s. Due to the absence of field-specific frameworks to understand critical practice in the context of fashion publishing, the research is underpinned by a contextual review into how critical practice is understood in other creative fields such as industrial and fashion design. Drawing on this research, critical practice is defined as a relational position challenging field-specific orthodoxy such as dominant practices, value systems, prevailing aesthetics, and the role of commerce that governs a field. This is the position that was taken in developing Address.

Framed through Bourdieu’s notion of the field as a ‘structured space of positions’ (1995b, 72), whereby each position is reliant on the others who occupy the field, Address was located as an independent publication in the autonomous end of the field, as a counter-hegemonic critique towards the dominant end of fashion publishing epitomised by marquee titles such as Vogue. In a field where the market-logic is created by and in the service of the mainstream, distancing became the main editorial strategy for creating a negative relation and finding a space for autonomy through both the form and the content of Address. It was in this space where criticality as a relational position emerged against affirmative practices.