The Fashion Businessonly one author has ever practiced as a designer.^6 Of the fourteen titles listed
in the School of Architecture’s biography, seven were written by practising
architects or landscape architects.
Fashion Theory was inaugurated in 1997, described by its editor as ‘the
first journal to look seriously at the intersection of dress, body, and culture’.^7
It has published contributions by distinguished academics in the fields to
which it relates, its contribution to the understanding of the subject is
undeniable and yet it has never to date featured an article written by a
designer, nor indeed by anyone with an active role within the fashion industry
or its related spheres. Architecture, by comparison, has a much longer
tradition of refereed academic journals. Examination of a single issue of the
AA Files, The Annals of the Architectural Association^8 reveals that of the
fourteen contributors, eight are listed as having current practices or having
been engaged on design projects within the last five years. Similarly,
Architectural Design’s ‘Millennium Architecture’ edition features contribu-
tions by Stephen Bayley, Nigel Coates, Zaha M. Hadid, Eva Jiricna, Nicholas
Grimshaw and partners, Renzo Piano and Charles Jencks, who was co-editor
of the issue.^9
Of course, fashion designers produce books but although their publications
are much consulted by students of fashion, they carry little or no academic
gravitas. In the self-laudatory style established by Paul Poiret, with his claim
to have single-handedly brought about the demise of the corset ‘in the name
of Liberty’,^10 books by, or sponsored by designers do little to realistically
describe the mechanisms of fashion. Colin McDowell refers to the endless
designer picture books of the 1980s as ‘the bimbos of the publishing world,
beautiful but dumb’.^11 The literature of fashion has no counterpart to, say,
the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen’sExperiencing Architecture which claims
as its object ‘to endeavour to explain the instrument the architect plays on,
to show what a great range it has and thereby awaken the senses to its music’
and does so by giving examples of work by other architects, rather than a
promotion of the author’s own.^12 Similarly, Bill Riseboro’sThe Story of
- Colin McDowell.
- Steele, V., ‘Letter from the Editor’Fashion Theory vol. 1, issue 1, Oxford: Berg, 1997,
p. 2. - AA Files 39, The Annals of the Architectural, Association School of Architecture (Autumn
- London: Architectural Association.
9.Architectural Design vol. 69, Millenium Architecture, London: Academy Editions, 2000.
- Poiret, P., translated by Stephen Haden Guest, My First Fifty years London: Victor
Gollancz, 1931, p. 73. - McDowell, C., The Designer Scam, London: Hutchinson, 1994, p. 52.
- Rasmussen, S. E., Experiencing Architecture, Cambridge (Mass): M.I.T. Press, 1964, p. 8.