Introduction: ‘Affiliative Fashion, Relational Analysis and Power’

This Special Issue introduction reflects on the tendency, in fashion studies, to focus on fashion and dress mainly as forms of personal expression. We argue that, to counter this trend, fashion studies needs to orient itself to fashion and dress as primarily relational domains, which affiliate wearers and makers with other people, networks and institutions and implicate dress in flows of power. This will enable fashion studies to better realize its aims of equity and decolonization. The introduction offers some examples of the ways that fashion and dress are affiliative practices, at levels ranging from the intimate to the transnational, and describes how the articles gathered in the Special Issue illuminate fashion’s relational qualities.