Volume 5

To celebrate the launch of Fashion Studies special issue, Unravelling Fashion Narratives, we invited two of our brilliant authors as well as two student editorial board members for a panel discussion.

Fashion Studies Co-Editor Nigel Lezama moderates this discussion with Adil Boughlala, Amber Kim, Aneri Shah, and Justine Woods.

By Justine Woods

Indigenous fashion encompasses the aesthetic plurality of Indigenous material brilliance, innovation, and resilience. Because of this, Indigenous fashion cannot be singularly defined, nor should it be. Situated within this frame of thought, this article tells a story informed by the author’s own relationship to Indigenous fashion practice within the context of Turtle Island (North America), alongside and in conversation with the words, ideas, and inquiries of decolonial and Indigenous fashion thinkers, makers, and dreamers. […]

by Mia yaguchi-chow

The gender binary is constantly weaponized against queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming individuals, limiting their self-expression and risking their safety—but transphobia affects more than just queer people. Dear Diary, This is My Gender Today is both an active dialogue and expanded discourse of gender identity expressed in everyday dress. […]

by peigi anna urquhart

This essay explores how dress is utilized as a way of shaping and representing the Asiatic body constructed in Western video games to create an idea of the techno-Orientalized “Other.” In the new age of Orientalism, the West now seeks to maintain its ideological dominance in the future and therefore must manufacture an “East.” […]

by Nikita shah

I spent a decade across textile clusters in India as Head Designer for an influential textile-focused fashion brand before I came to the Fashion Institute of Technology to study fashion design. In India, I learned over 13 different craft-based techniques of weaving, dyeing, embroidery, and beading. More importantly, I learned the traditions of it. Among the artisans who work with natural dyes that require time in between processes, a common saying is, “Let it be for today.” This has come to inform my artistic and community practice, Fursat (a South Asian term embodying leisure, reflection, and wisdom). […]

by philippa nesbitt

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the use of visibly disabled models in the global fashion industry, with New York’s fashion industry leading the charge. In tandem with this increased representation of disabilities in fashion media, major American fashion brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Skims, and Victoria’s Secret have begun offering adaptive collections that aim to cater to the needs of a disabled clientele. […]

by aneri shah

This paper examines the role of the traditional Indian garment, the Saree, as a site of both patriarchal control and feminist subversion. Drawing on postcolonial feminist theory, gender studies, and fashion anthropology, this research argues that the Saree operates as a cultural artifact embodying contested narratives of womanhood, gender identity, and political resistance. […]

by Julia Wilmott

This study examines the impact of language on objectively interpreting the tactility of different broad-wool fibres, aiming to provide a clearer understanding of their texture for those who perceive them. These fibres, already present in our ecosystem, are often underutilized due to negative perception of their handle. Previous studies by Sneddon et al. (2011b) and McGregor et al. (2015) have shown that consumers view woollen garments negatively, using terms like “coarse,” “prickly” or “itchy” to describe them. […]

by Lilly COmpeau-Schomberg

In queer women’s fashion literature there is a tendency to focus on the utilization of masculinity to communicate a divergence from expectations of heteronormative femininity. Despite this focus on masculinity, expressions of queer femininity through dress are of equal importance. In 2020 the “lesbian earring trend” emerged on social media platforms. Earrings within this trend typically forgo the ideals of “good taste” and lean into the kitsch, the camp, and the absurd. […]

by cora harrington

When people think about the cost of goods and commodities over time, it is normal to compare prices in the past to prices in the present. Often, this is accompanied by the phrase “in today’s dollars." But what exactly are “today’s dollars?” Is it inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, or is there a more nuanced way to interpret buying power over time? Historical price conversions are a core area of concern and interest in costume studies. […]

By Charlotte Little & Kirsten Mann

This project consists of Material Intimacies, a research creation project by Kirsten Mann and an accompanying paper written in collaboration with Charlotte Little, a subject/participant of Mann’s creative research. Material Intimacies consists of a series of editorial photographs representing specific materials used by designers from the TMU MA Fashion class of 2025. […]

by Nico Frederick

This article explores the representations of cross-dressing and male impersonation in one specific New York-based queer periodical, Female Mimics, from its premiere issue in 1963 through to 1970, including the publisher’s shift to Female Impersonators in 1969. Visual and text analysis of the variety of dress shown in the magazine shines a light on members of the LGBTQ+ and cross-dressing community in the 1960s, and their subscription to, or refusal of, contemporary fashion trends and gender roles. […]

BY Thu Ngoc-Ha Le & Hieu Minh Le

This paper places new and changing practices of mending within cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts in Vietnam. From its very origins as an economic hardship necessity under colonial rule and the subsidy economy to its current role in the global sustainability movement, mending holds a critical role in Vietnamese society. […]

BY Jonathan Lee

This study offers a methodological exploration of integrating Chinese philosophy into arts-based inquiry through fashion curation and exhibition. In-betweenness and a heterogeneous sense of belonging have long been recurring themes of despair among postcolonial Hongkongers (from 1997 to the present). […]

BY Sephra Lamothe & CamiLLA Leonelli Calzado

Prison labour still exists. Captive labour, defined within the article as the labour completed by incarcerated people within the Penitentiary System, continues to be a pillar of the Canadian Penitentiary system. This research, displayed as an exhibition in November 2022 co-curated by Camilla Leonelli Calzado and Sephra Lamothe, highlights the historical and contemporary impacts of incarcerated labour within North America. […]

BY ULVI ALIYEV

This article examines Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons x Nike Premier Heels (Fall/Winter 2021) as a critical intervention that queers the ideological foundations of sportswear. While athletic attire is often celebrated under the modernist dictum "form follows function," this study argues that sportswear is a cultural system deeply entangled with gendered norms and disciplinary codes. […]

BY REGAN LOGGANS

For years, there has been a legacy of the appropriation of Mayan textiles by Western designers, stylists, and tourists. Since the CIA-backed coup in 1954, which resulted in civil war and genocide of Maya peoples, scholars, academics, tourists, and missionaries have participated in continued resource extraction of Mayan traditional textiles. […]