Fashion: The Key Concepts

Fashion is everywhere. It is now one of the main ways in which we present ourselves to others, signaling what we want to communicate about our sexuality, wealth, professionalism, subcultural and political allegiances, social status, even our mood. It is also a global industry with huge economic, political and cultural impact, from the impact of the catwalk on mainstream retail to sweatshop production to celebrity branding.

Fashion: The Key Concepts presents a concise overview of this complex phenomenon--the meanings of clothes, the different cultural and fashion systems around the world, how fashion uses the media to reach its markets, how fashion shapes global culture and is replicated or challenged in various subcultures, how fashion operates as a political system of its own and also serves as a tool of politics, how the fashion industry is structured and how it "thinks" and behaves. Illustrated with a wide range of images and case studies, the aim throughout is to present a comprehensive, but also accessible and provocative, analysis of fashion.

Jennifer Craik is Research Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies in the School of Creative Communication at the University of Canberra and Adjunct Professor in Fashion at the School of Fashion and Textiles at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Melbourne. Her seminal publications in fashion theory including: The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion and Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression.