Fashion thrives on fame and success, capitalism and culture. But beneath the luster and hype, fashion is also inevitably about failure – an essential part of its history and evolution. In his contribution to the Fashion in Action series of short books rallying readers to tackle pressing issues in fashion, Nick Rees-Roberts unravels the relationship between forms of creative and commercial failure to consider how we might begin to address the systemic failings of the fashion industry today.

Positing failure as a speculative way to rethink fashion and focussing on the checkered histories of a number of designers and brands, Rees-Roberts explores how forms of commercial failure within a capitalist framework might actually be productive, enabling designers to retain independence and balance by potentially opting out of the fashion establishment, if not of the system altogether. He then goes on to look at the broader systemic failures of the 21st-century fashion industry, arguing that rather than keep focussing on doing and making, we should be undoing and remaking the idea of fashion itself in order to rethink design outside of the framework of a hyper-globalized industry.

By applying failure as a critical mode of inquiry, this book invites readers to consider a new direction for the future of fashion – one that values resilience and reinvention over the relentless pursuit of the next big success.

About the Authors

Nick Rees-Roberts is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, France. He is the author of French Queer Cinema (2008) and Fashion Film: Art and Advertising in the Digital Age (2018), co-author of Homo exoticus: race, classe et critique queer (2010) and co-editor of Alain Delon: Style, Stardom and Masculinity (2015) and Isabelle Huppert: Stardom, Performance, Authorship (2021).

Regina A. Root is Full Professor of Modern Languages & Literatures at William & Mary, USA. She is an international expert in participatory design and cultural production, having authored, edited and co-edited works like The Latin American Fashion Reader (Bloomsbury, 2005), Couture and Consensus (2010), The Handbook of Fashion Studies (Bloomsbury, 2013), among others. She is co-editor, with Hazel Clark, of the Bloomsbury Fashion In Action series.

Hazel Clark is Professor of Design Studies and Fashion Studies, and Research Chair of Fashion at Parsons School of Design, New York, USA. Her books include the co-edited Old Clothes, New Looks (Berg, 2005) and Design Studies: A Reader (Berg, 2009).

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