New publication and symposium coming up on inclusive fashion dynamics

FASHION+ READER: Inclusive Articulations and Practices in Design, Communication & Development

THE URGENCY OF FASHION+

With this book, the editors Dirk Reynders and Marie Genevieve Cyr intend to contribute to the theoretical and practical framework of inclusive fashion dynamics and the role that it plays in the emergence and development of a new fashion industry of a relatively recent phenomenon in fashion discourse. Books about diversity in fashion usually focus only on the outward-facing stuff: The people featured on runways, magazine covers, and ad campaigns. There's a good reason for that. Models are the visible faces of brands. Customers demand that the brands they support reflect their own diversity and that pressure has helped.

As an emerging production and cultural system, inclusive fashion poses questions about how it has become rooted in, and developed within, society, as well as the extent to which it has been appropriated by the parties concerned. In this sector, each stage of the production process is based on a set of environmental and socially responsible criteria. As a result, it has led to the emergence of new, innovative working practices and a set of values that, until recently, were largely ignored by those in the fashion industry and, by association, those in the consumer goods production sector. This development of more inclusive and responsible fashion industry will inevitably lead to the emergence of new conceptual frameworks. Our aim herein is to present and illustrate new frameworks by questioning the codes that underlie the western-orientated fashion industry, as well as addressing new practices and new ways of representing inclusive fashion in more general terms.

For this publication, we invited international contributors that explore the intersection of inclusive fashion practices, critical applied research methodologies, interdisciplinary collaborative practice, (higher and informal) education, emancipatory pedagogy, and the commons. The reader will contain critical contributions and discussions by theorists, creative practitioners, programmers, designers, artists, activists, engineers and educators to address the transformative potential of such practices and inclusive cultures.

With this book, we aim to bring together a wide variety of contributions to interdisciplinary, collaborative making practices with a socially engaged and critical perspective. The goal of the publication is to illuminate the current state of theory, best practices, and case studies of critically engaged fashion practices in higher education and informal learning contexts, to make them accessible for students as well as educators and professionals, and to foster critical debate in the fashion community at large.

More info soon about the symposium!