“In Hard Times, Fashion Is Always Outrageous”: The Political Challenges of Fashion in a Changing World

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past decade, the study of fashion has experienced a series of transformations across technology, culture, economy, society, and the environment, leading to a redefinition and reconfiguration of the priorities, needs, and motivations underlying fashion production, distribution, and consumption.

After a long period during which fashion was observed from the perspective of individual expression and identity affirmation, today fashion is called upon to respond to significant changes and enters the debate in its more collective dimension. With its ability to influence culture, economy, environment, and society, fashion is now expected to assume responsibility for global and collective issues in which it is deeply involved. This is happening in a context of global communication, where new technologies have, on the one hand, offered the possibility of reaching ever wider audiences; on the other hand, new technologies have allowed new voices to arise, shifting the balance of influence and power from the bottom up and bringing new priorities and needs to the forefront in a borderless communication arena.

Sustainability is one of the main issues shaping the fashion debate, explored from all angles, forming an articulated puzzle with so many knots to unravel contradictions and distortions. The collapse of Rana Plaza in Daqqa in 2013 not only raised awareness of the consequences of the proliferation of fast fashion, but also echoed demands for social and environmental justice, prompting a rethink and a redefinition of both production and consumption. Wider awareness and attempts to redefine the supply chain, suggesting new good practices, have been made possible by the possibilities offered by new technologies, innovations in the research and development of new materials, and the proliferation of platforms that promote reducing, recycling, and reusing.

Since the early 2000s, the Global Fashion Agenda reports have confirmed a change in corporate approach. Those on the consumption of used fashion show the strong growth of the sector. The wind started to blow strongly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of new digital platforms and marketplaces. At the same time, we are seeing the emergence of a consumer audience that is more aware and rightly concerned about the future of the planet and the next generations, but also more engaged, with less and more volatile purchasing power. In recent years, Millennials and Gen Z have advocated for a different relationship with fashion, although a contradictory one. It is more conscious and certainly requires brands to be more committed and transparent in their communications.

Sustainability is also a communication challenge. In a landscape where sustainability is becoming a key communication issue for all companies in all sectors, the risks to consumers and the need to protect them from unfair, confusing, or misleading communication practices are becoming clear. The treatment of greenwashing has become a priority for the European Commission, which has promulgated the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which requires companies to report on their economic, social, and environmental impacts from 2023. For large companies, but especially for small and medium companies, what will be the impact of this new legislation?

Fashion communication, too, has become an integral part of the process of change and redefinition brought about by new digital technologies, from the spread of the Internet and social networks to the advent of AI. From this point of view, over the last decade, all the means of fashion communication have had to adapt to an increasingly multichannel communication, capable of mixing the physical and the digital in an experiential narrative able to respond more and more accurately to the needs of the consuming public.

Since the early 2000s, the spread of the Internet and social media has also allowed for a diversification of the agents of fashion diffusion. This has made the relationship between producers and consumers more complex and given rise to forms of bottom-up production legitimized by horizontal processes of recognition. In this way, networks have enabled consumers/users to activate a mode of remixing references, different products, cultural influences, and new skills, as well as new narratives and representational patterns. Today, the advance of new Artificial Intelligence, which is once again rewriting not only modes of production and consumption but also professional roles and skills, is further challenging these new modes of producing communicative objects. Indeed, generative AI reopens the debate about the boundaries between reality and representation, authenticity and fiction, physical and virtual. What will be the impact on representations and the ability of these representations to define collective imaginaries? How will Artificial Intelligence lead to a redefinition of professional roles and competencies? What will be the consequences in terms of production and consumption?

The challenges of sustainability and digitization undoubtedly require fashion, as a media and cultural industry, to redefine its political perimeter, recognizing its role from an economic, social, and cultural point of view in the face of contemporary global challenges. Choices about values, words, references, models and canons, languages, production, and communication channels are now essential to positioning fashion in the process of redefinition of individual and collective identities, needs, and motivations. These choices, which affect how we produce and consume, require fashion to reflect its more political dimensions, environmental, community, and work implications. The growing inequalities between the North and the South of the world, to which the Fair Trade and Critical Consumption models have tried to respond since the 1980s, are still reflected in a production labor system that has not yet been able to redefine itself to guarantee social justice and decent living and working conditions. The issue of inequality also arises regarding the representation of communities that, until a few years ago, were on the margins of the fashion system. Today, these communities are demanding space and representation. In this sense, demands for inclusiveness for more pluralism arise in relation to the emergence of new fashion systems in geographical areas that are peripheral to the established West. Inclusion, diversity, and deracialization of meaning, language, and materiality are now key challenges for redefining the social and cultural sustainability of a system that has for a long time promoted canons and models that exclude a large part of the population. Today, however, the systems of global integration of production, consumption, distribution, communication, and the new tools at our disposal allow a circulation of ideas and influences that bring old and new demands and sensitivities into the same arena, allowing new voices to emerge and demand to be recognized and represented.

This Special Issue aims to collect contributions—case studies and research—reflecting on changes in fashion related to sustainability, digital, and demands for inclusiveness and representation of diversity. Contributions in the field of cultural and social studies should cover the following topics:

Fashion and Sustainability

- Sustainable production;

- Redefinition of the supply chain;

- New materials;

- Communication of sustainability;

- Greenwashing and regulations for communicating sustainability;

- Sustainable consumption.

Fashion and Digital

- Digital practices and sustainability;

- Digital tools and the redefinition of production processes;

- Online consumption;

- Redefining distribution processes;

- Digital media in fashion communication;

- Challenges and opportunities related to Artificial Intelligence;

- Creativity and Artificial Intelligence.

Fashion and Politics

- Languages of diversity;

- Representation and inclusion;

- Global North and Global South: Value Production Chains;

- Body narratives, beauty canons, and gender models;

- Deracialization of fashion.

Contributions have to follow one of the three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper or review) of the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue.

Dr. Michele Fontefrancesco
Dr. Eleonora Noia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.