Learning how to think through fashion is both exciting and challenging, being dependent on one's ability to critically engage with an array of theories and concepts. This is the first book designed to accompany readers through the process of thinking through fashion. It aims to help them grasp both the relevance of social and cultural theory to fashion, dress, and material culture and, conversely, the relevance of those fields to social and cultural theory. It does so by offering a guide through the work of selected major thinkers, introducing their concepts and ideas. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and is devoted to a key thinker, capturing the significance of their thought to the understanding of the field of fashion, while also assessing the importance of this field for a critical engagement with these thinkers' ideas.This is a guide and reference for students and scholars in the fields of fashion, dress and material culture, the creative industries, sociology, cultural history, design and cultural studies.

First 'how to' guide to the ideas of key thinkers for fashion students.

ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction to Thinking through FashionAgnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik2. Karl Marx: Fashion and CapitalismAnthony Sullivan3. Sigmund Freud: More than a Fetish: Fashion and PsychoanalysisJanice Miller4. Georg Simmel: The 'Philosophical Monet'Peter McNeil5. Walter Benjamin: Fashion, Modernity and the City Street Adam Geczyand Vicki Karaminas6. Mikhail Bakhtin: Fashioning the Grotesque BodyFrancesca Granata7. Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Corporeal Experience of FashionLlewellyn Negrin8. Roland Barthes: Semiology and the Rhetorical Codes of FashionPaul Jobling9. Erving Goffmann: Social Science as an Art of Cultural ObservationEfrat Tseëlon10. Gilles Deleuze: Bodies-without-Organs in the Folds of FashionAnneke Smelik11. Michel Foucault: Fashioning the Body PoliticJane Tynan12. Niklas Luhmann: Fashion between the Fashionable and Old-fashionedAurélie van de Peer13. Jean Baudrillard: Postmodern Fashion as the End of MeaningEfrat Tseëlon14. Pierre Bourdieu: The Field of FashionAgnès Rocamora15. Jacques Derrida: Fashion under ErasureAlison Gill16. Bruno Latour: Actor-Network-Theory and FashionJoanne Entwistle17. Judith Butler: Fashion and PerformativityElizabeth WissingerNotes on ContributorsIndex