LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Reader, We are delighted to share the first issue of Fashion Studies Journal with you. Two years of hard work in the making, this publication emerged from the scholarship that was produced by the first graduating class of the MA Fashion Studies Program at Parsons The New School for Design, which was launched in the fall of 2010. Though we and our fellow students in fashion and dress-related master’s programs across the country have produced work of which we can be proud, there is still much to be done as the field continues to take shape through scholarship like that which you are about to read. Here we address only a handful of the many aspects of culture in which fashion deserves to be considered, asking our contributors to answer the question, “What is Fashion Studies?” In truth, this was a somewhat unfair request, as fashion studies can be almost anything and everything. Long overlooked by the academy, scholars across many disciplines have only recently begun to deal with dress as image, object, and text, discovering the various ways dress and adornment can inform and enrich our understanding of the world around us. Our contributors answered this question in thoughtful and innovative ways of which we might otherwise have only dreamt, attesting to the vast potential of this area of study.
The recurrent columns devote space to the importance of the individual wardrobe, the ways in which subcultures cultivate style, and the intersections between fashion and film. In our feature essays, scholars examine topics as varied as the contemporary phenomenon of the named garment, fashion as body modification, the conspicuous consumption of hats at the turn of the century, and the potential of sound as a methodology for dress research. In a collaborative piece, the historical symbolism of the white wedding dress is considered alongside one woman’s personal experience of revising the tradition for her own ceremony. In two excerpts from graduating MA thesis projects, 1980s glam metal and Mormon undergarments are positioned side-by-side for perhaps the first (and likely the only) time ever. Interspersed throughout these written works, we highlight the exciting, dynamic, and cerebral creations of our colleagues in the Parsons MFA Fashion Design and Society program through spreads that remind us of the enduring power of the fashion image. We hope you engage with the ideas our contributors present and begin to ask your own questions about what fashion studies is and what it can become. Return for our next issue in the fall in which we will ask, “What happens when fashion and religion collide?” Until then, please visit us at fashionstudiesjournal.org or write to us at fashionstudiesjournal@gmail.com. All the best, The FSJ Team 3 >>