Constructing national fashion identities (Editorial)

This special issue of the International Journal of Fashion Studies features a selection of articles that were presented as papers during the second edition of the (Non)Western Fashion Conference, held at the London College of Fashion in November 2013. The conference provides a forum for scholars who focus on a wide variety of fashion systems throughout the world and who aspire to rectify a prevailing Eurocentric discourse in fashion studies. Although fashion is historically located everywhere, many fashion systems remain little known and therefore seem less important or influential. Many are misinterpreted due to a (Eurocentric) binary oppositional thinking which creates false dichotomies, like traditional versus fashionable, tradition versus modernity, western versus non-western, local versus global, and so on. The conference sets out to gather academics, curators, designers and industry professionals who are engaged in creative and critical thinking concerning (non)western fashion systems in a wide scope of geographical areas and from a wide variety of disciplines, targeting a true global perspective through cross-cultural comparisons based on extensive field research rather than ‘fashion globalization’. Fashion globalization is a popular concept that has been implying participatory narratives in recent years whereby especially new economies are included in fashion discourse in the light of their recent socio-economic achievements, their convergence with the West, and their successful engagement with fashion as consumers and producers. In order to understand fashion beyond Europe, the conference adheres to Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil’s argument that it is important to refrain from thinking that fashion in the non-West has only recently emerged as a result of globalization (2010: 4–5)