Academic writing in the fashion studies

The theme of writing has particular importance in the context of fashion studies. Roland Barthes noted already in the middle of the last century that ‘as soon as we observe Fashion, we discover that writing appears constitutive’ (1967: 15). He was referring to the paradoxical phenomenon whereby words play a central role in constructing the meaning of fashion as it is produced and experienced. His consideration can be applied a fortiori to social studies on fashion. Like all the other disciplines in the system of western academic knowledge, fashion studies too makes claims to a theoretical and empirical rigour that should be reflected in how knowledge is communicated through writing in books and articles. Like other objects of study, fashion requires the capacity to analyse and write about it in accordance with established criteria. This is a principle that is beginning to spread in our sector as well. Particularly current, for example, is the debate on fashion criticism, its forms, and the process of legitimacy that it has undergone in recent decades (Granata 2013; McNeil and Miller 2014). The theme of writing acquires special importance when fashion is addressed at academic level because the field of fashion studies is structurally interdisciplinary and is effectively multicultural.