Time in Fashion

Few phenomena embody the notion of time as well as fashion. Fast-moving and rooted in the ‘now’, it’s constantly creating its own past through the process of rapid style change. Uniquely poised between the past and the future, fashion’s relationship with time is unorthodox. Rather than considering time in the conventional sense, this anthology explores three alternative ways to think about fashion and time: the first identifies the seasonal nature of fashion as an industry, and shows how this has impacted on workers and wearers alike. The second looks at fashion design as a ceaseless process of adaptation, reconstruction and recombination of motifs, in which nostalgia and revivals play their part. The third construes fashion’s ‘imaginary’, with its capacity for fantasy and myth-making, as a form of alternate history that asks ‘what if?’Within this framework, key classic texts are juxtaposed with lesser known ones, in an interdisciplinary approach that includes philosophy, history, literature, media and fashion design, ranging from the 18th century to the present. It will be of interest to anyone wishing to understand one of the most complex yet inescapable aspects of fashion, its relationship to time, and will be a critical resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the humanities and all those interested in fashion in all its creative, commercial and cultural aspects.