Fashion Studies Journal looks like a resource to keep in mind and possibly contribute to.
It is not yet a publication, but I like that it promotes and engages with fashion in a pragmatic way. The mission statement reads that FSJ ‘has one foot in academia and one foot in the more joyful, fun side of fashion. Have an idea for a fashion-related project but want to pool your skills with someone from a different aspect of the industry? We want to help these connections get made and take shape.’
Contributors are Kim Jenkins (Pratt Institute), Rachel Kinnard (Pratt Institute), Anya Kurennaya (Parsons The New School for Design), Lauren Downing Peters (Stockholm University), and Laura Snelgrove.
Since academia promotes individualism and competition also through publishing, we definitely need more ways to practice inspiring networking that is aimed not just at collecting citations and scoring h-index points, but at experimenting across different systems of production and creation. In spite of all the ethnographic and anthropologic work that brings together scholarly institutions and the fashion industry, the outcomes of researches on dress and costume are compartmentalized and governed by academic norms that tie cooperation and reserach potential to quantifiable results.
FSJ seems likely to operate outside of these norms. ‘Feeling tired of cocktail receptions that never have enough to eat or a place to sit, we’re launching a supper club that pairs conversation and laughter with good food and drink, all with a fashion theme’. I am looking forward to learning what will come out of this unlikely pairing of fashion and food.
Also, I am looking forward to reading Kim Jenkins’s upcoming book Fashion & Race, forthcoming with Intellect in 2016.
Afrosartorialism 