Fashion Studies - (Dress, Body, Culture) by Heike Jenss & Joanne B Eicher (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The study of fashion has expanded into a thriving field of inquiry, with researchers utilizing diverse methods from across subject disciplines to explore fashion and dress in wide-ranging contexts. With an emphasis on material culture and ethnographic approaches in fashion studies, this groundbreaking volume offers fascinating insights into the complex dynamics of research and fashion.

Featuring unique case studies, with interdisciplinary scholars reflecting on their practical research experiences, Fashion Studies provides rich and nuanced perspectives on the use, and mixing and matching of methodological approaches - including object and image based research, the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods and the fluid bridging of theory and practice. Engaging with diverse subjects, from ethnographies of model casting and street-style blogging, wardrobe studies and a material culture analysis of global denim wearing, to Martin Margiela's design and archival methods, Fashion Studies presents complex approaches in a lively and informative manner that will appeal to students of fashion, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and related fields.

Review Quotes

"With an emphasis on material culture and ethnographic approaches in fashion studies, this groundbreaking volume offers fascinating insights into the complex dynamics of research and fashion." --ADDRESS: Journal for Fashion Criticism

"For anyone teaching fashion from practice and theory perspectives, as well as those actively engaged in research and reflecting on their own research journeys and projects, this book is an invaluable addition to their library shelves." --Costume

"Never before has the diverse panorama of research methods in fashion studies been brought together in one volume. From object to image and from design to consumer, our field's leading scholars thoughtfully share the unique ways in which they collect and theorize data in fashion. This is the essential text for all fashion studies research methods courses and the latest addition to all of our personal reference libraries." --Ben Barry, Associate Professor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, School of Fashion, Ryerson University, Canada

"Heike Jenss has done an outstanding job in compiling an insightful and inspiring book that covers a range of important research on fashion as a material object and a practice. This book demonstrates the depth and the richness of the discipline and its creative methodological strategies. It is an invaluable contribution to the field and a must-read for all fashion scholars, practitioners, and students." --Yuniya Kawamura, Professor of Sociology at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, USA

"Focusing on research methods and practices in fashion studies, and demonstrating how both fashion and research are in fact situated practices, this much welcome collection will prove a necessity for anyone teaching fashion studies and/or doing fashion research. The rich array of case studies all elegantly manage to bridge theory and practice, and while outlining and exemplifying a variety of methodologies, they also ultimately prove the interdisciplinarity of fashion studies as a field." --Louise Wallenberg, Associate Professor and Establishing Director of the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden

About the Author

Heike Jenss is Associate Professor of Fashion Studies, Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York, USA.

Foreword by Christopher Breward, Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, UK and Vice Principal for the Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Edinburgh, UK.