Fashion, Performance, and Performativity : The Complex Spaces of Fashion

In the first comprehensive study of the interactions between fashion, performance and performativity, a group of international experts explore fashion as the ideal ‘complex space’ – or, in other words, the ideal space where performance and performativity come together, according to the works of seminal theorists Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Andrew Parker. Bringing together western and non-western, historical and contemporary case studies and theories, the book explores the magazines, photography, exhibitions, global colonial divides, digital media, and more, which have become key markers of the fashion industry as we know it today. Using existing literature as a springboard and incorporating perspectives from fashion studies, art history, media studies and gender studies, as well as from artists and practitioners, Fashion, Performance, and Performativity is an innovative and essential work for students, scholars and practitioners across multiple disciplines.

Andrea Kollnitz is professor of Art History and head of the Art History Department, Stockholm University, Sweden. Her current research is focused on the self-fashioning of the avant-garde artist; nationalist visual and textual fashion and art discourse, fashion photography and caricature. She is co-editor, with Marco Pecorari, of Fashion, Performance and Performativity (2021), and, with Louise Wallenberg, of Fashion and Modernism (2018).

Reina Lewis is Emerita Professor of Cultural Studies at London College of Fashion, UAL, UK.

Marco Pecorari is Assistant Professor at Parsons Paris, The New School, France.

Elizabeth Wilson is a pioneer in the development of fashion studies, and has been a university professor, feminist campaigner and activist. Her writing career began in the 'underground' magazines of the early 1970s, (Frendz, Red Rag, Spare Rib, Come Together) before she became an academic. She's written for the Guardian and her non-fiction books include Adorned in Dreams (1985, 2003), The Sphinx in the City (1992) (shortlisted for the Manchester Odd Fellows Prize), Bohemians (2000) and Love Game (2014) (long listed for the William Hill sportswriting prize), as well as six crime novels, including War Damage (2009) and The Girl in Berlin (2012) (long listed for the Golden Dagger Award).