Feeding the imaginary

The imaginary that has dominated the fashion system since the mid-twentieth\r\ncentury seems, in recent years, to have been challenged by empirical\r\nphenomena.\r\n‘Imaginary’ is a complex notion that can be addressed from many\r\nperspectives. Here, we refer to the stock of images, values, practices and rules\r\nthat dominate the western fashion system and that its participants take for\r\ngranted in their relationship with fashion. Of course, different participants\r\nbase their understanding of fashion on different imaginaries, and different\r\nimaginaries may be shared by different communities, but a hegemonic imaginary\r\nhas underpinned the western fashion discourse for some decades now.\r\nFor example, pertaining to this imaginary is the ideal of the female body’s\r\nthinness (Bordo 1993); the positive value attributed to the youthful body; and\r\nthe aspiration to the beautiful-and-new as a source of distinction (Lipovetsky\r\n1987), as well as the sur-representation of Caucasian ethnic groups in images\r\nof fashion (Entwistle and Wissinger 2006). Also pertaining to this imaginary\r\nof fashion are usually implicit assumptions about human life. For instance,\r\nassumptions about the temporal organization of the day and the week into\r\nwork time (office), leisure time (in the countryside) and social time (evening),\r\nor the belief that the possession of certain consumer goods certifies\r\nsocial status. These are fragments of representations of the world consistent\r\nwith the project of western modernity to achieve the ideal of a world in which\r\ntechnology and science enable humans to fulfil themselves as independent\r\nadults with the capacity to choose. This, in fact, was the promise of the\r\nEnlightenment, with industrial capitalism and the bourgeoisie embodying\r\nits. values and assuming the task of realizing it. Fashion as an institution of western\r\nmodernity (Wilson 1985; Lehmann 2000) has contributed significantly to\r\nthis project – and is an explicit manifestation of it. Recently, however, the western fashion system seems to have been able\r\nto include meanings that it had thus far marginalized. A number of factors are\r\naltering the ordinary metabolism of this system; new ways to do things and\r\nnew representations (discourses, visual contents, values) appear that seem to\r\nprovide the dominant fashion imaginary with new contents and avenues.\r\nThe need to take stock of these new developments prompted the conference\r\nentitled Fashion Tales 2015: Feeding the Imaginary, organized in June 2015\r\nby Centro Modacult of the Catholic University of Milan, in collaboration with\r\nthis journal. The conference – of which this issue of the International Journal of\r\nFashion Studies collects some contributions – identified three main directions\r\nalong which innovative experiences occur. Two of them have to do with the\r\nimpact of new technologies on the structure of the fashion system itself; in\r\nparticular, the technologies arising from advances in chemical research, and\r\ndigital technologies. While the former are transforming the fashion industry\r\nunder the banner of sustainability, the latter are leading to the widespread\r\nmediatization of fashion (Rocamora 2016). The third direction concerns nonwestern fashion