Introduction: Fashion and Feminist Politics of the Present

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the special issue on fashion and features an analysis of the current state of the relationship between the fashion system and feminist scholarship. Important points of convergence are identified, including the link between the so-called democratisation of fashion and the recent resurgence of feminism in mass culture, fashion’s introduction of complex models of identity, embodiment and materiality, its foregrounding of class, and its ability to shed light on the relationship between feminism and neoliberal capitalism. Altogether, fashion emerges as an ideal diagnostic tool for the feminist politics of the present.