What kinds of things do fashion and clothing say about us? What does it mean to wear Gap or Gaultier, Milletts or Moschino? Are there any real differences between Hip-Hop style and Punk anti-styles? In this fully revised and updated edition, Malcolm Barnard introduces fashion and clothing as ways of communicating and challenging class, gender, sexual and social identities. Drawing on a range of theoretical approaches from Barthes and Baudrillard to Marxist, psychoanalytic and feminist theory, Barnard addresses the ambivalent status of fashion in contemporary culture.

On fashion as a means of communication

These conference proceedings are the output of one of the first academic events of its nature happening globally, targeting fashion from a communication sciences perspective, including, in a broad sense, cultural heritage studies and marketing. The chapters present theoretical and empirical interdisciplinary work on how various communication practices impact the fashion industry and on societal fashion-related practices and values. The special focus of this volume is how digital transformation is changing the field and its utility to practitioners. Using these academic insights, practitioners can understand the core causes and reasons for trends and developments in the field of fashion communication and marketing.

This second volume in the Palgrave Studies in Practice: Global Fashion Management series focuses on core strategies of branding and communication of European luxury and premium brands. Brand is a critical asset many firms strive to establish, maintain, and grow. It is more so for fashion companies when consumers purchase styles, dreams and symbolic images through a brand. The volume starts with an introductory chapter that epitomizes the essence of fashion brand management with a particular emphasis on emerging branding practices, challenges and trends in the fashion industry. The subsequent five cases demonstrate how a family workshop from a small town can grow into a global luxury or premium brand within a relatively short amount of time. Scholars and practitioners in fashion, retail, branding, and international business will learn how companies can establish a strong brand identity through innovative strategies and management.

Some of the usual obstacles to modern teachings of marketing are ethnocentricity, the limitation of creative thought by conformity to existing theories, lack of questioning of ethics, and a disconnection from historic events or sociological discourse. This book, in contrast, draws together interdisciplinary approaches from marketing, branding, promotion and critical media studies as tools for understanding the way in which fashion works today, and re-evaluates what makes certain fashion marketing tactics fashionable. Offering a combination of theory and practice, Fashion Marketing and Communication is full of international case studies, practice-based examples and interviews with scholars and practitioners in the fashion and communications industry. Covering subjects including the history of consumerism, fashion marketing, the creative direction of the fashion brand and the use of bloggers and celebrities as marketing tools, this book delineates the opportunities and challenges facing the future of fashion media in the twenty-first century. Examining the last 100 years of marketing and communications, current theory and practice, as well as questions on the ethics of the fashion industry, this broad-ranging and critical text is perfect for undergraduate and postgraduate students of fashion marketing, branding and communication.

Fashion Theory: An Introduction explains some of the most influential and important theories on fashion: it brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we think and say about fashion everyday and shows how they depend on those theories. This clear, accessible introduction contextualises and critiques the ways in which a wide range of disciplines have used different theoretical approaches to explain – and sometimes to explain away – the astonishing variety, complexity and beauty of fashion.

This book is a modern exploration of how we engage with fashion today. Through a series of articles this book shows the ‘ways’ through which we can approach fashion. The articles are organized around the following six sections: marketing, consuming, educating, communicating, embodying and positioning - each with a mix of research approaches and strategies. From sustainability and consumerism to street-style and street-food. From how fashion is taught across the globe to how fashion is communicated through photography and the media. We invite the readers to be curators themselves, and to create their own ‘augmented knowledge’ of fashion, by reading the varied themes in this book. Contributors are Claire Allen, Deidra Arrington, Naomi Braithwaite, Jill Carey, Federica Carlotto, Karen Dennis, Doris Domoszlai, Linsday E. Feeny, Nádia Fernandes, Jacque Lynn Foltyn, Alessia Grassi, Chris Jones, Lan Lan, Peng Liu, Mario Matos Ribeiro, Natalie C. McCreesh, Alex McIntosh, Alice Morin, Nolly Moyssi, Maria Patsalosavvi, Laura Petican, Jennifer Richards, Susanne Schulz, Ines Simoes, Helen Storey, Steve Swindells, Stephen Wigley, Gaye Wilson and Cecilia Winterhalter.