Introduction to Fashion Crimes: If the 'Devil Wears Prada', What does God Wear?

As the title implies Fashion Crimes is a book that addresses the relationship between clothing and crime and or criminal behaviour. Initially, this might seem like a rather odd pairing; how can clothes be considered criminal? Surely, criminals don’t still wear hooped sweaters and carry bags labelled ‘swag’ as they did in early twentieth century movies? Yet, clothes and criminality are well ensconced into our everyday language, i.e. the recent fashion trend for ‘brothel creeper’ shoes worn by Teddy Boys in the 1950s, clearly linguistically and visually link soft crepe soles with illicit behaviour that needs to be hidden or kept quiet. Likewise, hoods and capes conceal identity, whilst simultaneously simulating the excitement of the mask, or the potential thrill of the reveal. In these examples, the need for anonymity is paramount, part of the performance even, and clothes become props or costumes for behaviour/s that transcend mere body dressing or articulating concepts of the individual. Clothing becomes a metaphor that goes beyond the personal, speaking of something that goes beyond words. The relationship between clothing and behaviour as a site of social acceptance or rejection has long been discussed by fashion theorists , particularly those adopting an anthropological approach to dress and its wearing . Likewise, notions of clothing as means of materialising the psyche or emotional self have been addressed by fashion theorists adopting a psychoanalytical model . These established discourses rarely overlap, and one might conclude that the fusion of the personal, the social and the institutional offers a site for an investigation into the way clothing is recognised, used and worn, as expressions of wider socio-cultural and political concerns in contemporary everyday life .