The Four Elements of Fashion

The Four Elements of Fashion brings together international scholars to rethink fashion through the prism of the archetypal elements of earth, water, air, and fire. Emerging from a conference held at the Università Iuav di Venezia and curated by Anneke Smelik and Alessandra Vaccari, the volume offers a new perspective on fashion studies at a time of profound ecological and cultural change. The Book aims to investigate new paradigms of fashion cultures through those elements of matter as they are intertwined in the clothes we wear. The research papers shift the attention towards the material and sensory aspects of fashion. This approach fits in with the ‘material turn’, inspired by a re-centring of matter and the materiality of things, objects, technologies, and bodies. In readdressing fashion and its histories through the lens of new materialism, the authors envision possible future fashions in multiple ways: from contributing to an environmentally and socially aware fashion to disseminating good practices in the field of fashion design.