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[Commlist] Call for Papers: 'Theorizing Fashion Beyond Sustainability'
Fri Oct 30 15:42:17 GMT 2026
Call for Papers: International Journal of Fashion Studies
Special Issue: ‘Theorizing Fashion Beyond Sustainability’
Guest Editors
Dr Harriette Richards, RMIT University, Australia
Associate Professor Rimi Khan, RMIT University, Australia
To view the full call click here>>
https://www.intellectbooks.com/international-journal-of-fashion-studies#call-for-papers
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/international-journal-of-fashion-studies#call-for-papers>
As fashion’s sustainability discourse has grown in mainstream awareness
and acceptability, it has lost its critical edge. The rise of
sustainability as a market niche, a corporate responsibility framework
and a consumer identity targeted by greenwashing, have diluted the
concept’s potency. Industry roadmaps and policy agendas – including
recent directives for a circular economy (eg. EU 2022) – present
sustainability as a problem to be solved through measurement, evaluation
and ‘techno-managerial’ adjustments (Manieson et al. 2021), still bound
by dominant economic frameworks. The language of ‘regeneration’
potentially brings a more holistic and restorative approach to
supporting living systems (Brown and Vacca 2022; Minney 2022; Korhonen
and Niinimäki 2024), although regeneration too, is being subsumed into
existing industrial logics (Taveras-Dalmau et al. 2025). Much of the
scholarship on these topics has focused on the practical applications
and impacts of circularity and sustainability frameworks, both in the
fashion and textiles industry and in wider policy contexts (Bousgas et
al. 2024; Choudhry et al. 2026; D’Itria and Aus 2023).
This Special Issue seeks to move beyond instrumentalist and
impact-oriented approaches to sustainability by inviting critical,
theoretical engagements and reframings of the sustainability agenda. It
asks whether ‘sustainability’ still offers useful theoretical resources
for addressing the interconnected problems of ecological crisis, climate
injustice and corporate accumulation. Do newer concepts such as
‘regeneration’ offer meaningful alternatives? How do sustainability
questions need to be reimagined to respond to fashion’s decolonial
projects and transnational inequalities?
We are interested in critical, humanities-informed contributions that
are ‘beyond’, ‘against’ or ‘post-’ sustainability. The focus is on
conceptual papers rather than policy or industry-oriented articles.
Discussions of sustainability and related concepts should position these
within a distinct intellectual paradigm that brings to light specific
assumptions, possibilities and limitations. We are especially interested
in how thinking ‘beyond sustainability’ might address fashion’s diverse
cultural and geographical contexts, and what these contexts demand from
sustainability thinking. The issue will include five to seven articles
of between 6000–8000 words as well as shorter (non-peer-reviewed)
submissions, visual essays, creative and/or reflective works and reviews
(which will be featured in the journal’s ‘Open Space & Reviews’
section). Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following
questions:
*
How is the field of ‘sustainable fashion’ scholarship evolving and
how might adaptations and alternatives to sustainability be theorized?
*
How do the concepts of sustainability, circularity and regeneration
translate across different cultural, geographical and community
contexts, and how do these contexts demand a reframing of
sustainability agendas?
*
How do Indigenous or non-western knowledge systems inform or
challenge paradigms of sustainability, circularity or regeneration
in fashion?
*
How can we theorize fashion within the broader ‘poly-crisis’, in
which climate crisis is intertwined with rising inequality,
democratic failure, wars, pandemics and economic instability?
*
As sustainability and regenerative thinking become increasingly
corporatized, can these ideas still be mobilized for post- or
degrowth fashion futures?
*
In what ways do theoretical approaches to fashion beyond
sustainability reconfigure relationships between fashion, land,
labour and more-than-human life?
*
What new questions, vocabularies or ways of thinking become possible
when we move beyond sustainability?
Timeline
Deadline for abstracts: 19 February 2027
Notification of selected contributors: March 2027
Submission of full manuscripts: August 2027
Peer review: September–November 2027
Revisions due: January 2028
Publication: 2028
Guidelines
Please submit an abstract of 250–300 words, along with an author bio of
50–100 words, to the two guest editors of the Special Issue: Harriette
Richards ((harriette.richards /at/ rmit.edu.au)
<mailto:(harriette.richards /at/ rmit.edu.au)>)and Rimi Khan
((rimi.khan /at/ rmit.edu.au) <mailto:(rimi.khan /at/ rmit.edu.au)>). Authors of the
selected abstracts will be invited to submit their full papers for
double-anonymous peer review via the journal's submission system, Pubkit.
References
Bousgas, Annastasia, Street, Paige, Payne, Alice and Maguire, Rowena
(2024), ‘Taking responsibility for clothing circularity: Learnings from
a global scan’, International Journal of Fashion Studies, 12:1, pp. 17–42.
Brown, Sass and Vacca, Frederica (2022), ‘Cultural sustainability in
fashion: Reflections on craft and sustainable development models’,
Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 18:1, pp. 590–600.
Choudhry, Nauman, Islam, Saniyat, Van Amber, Rebecca, Quintero
Rodriguez, Carolina, Underwood, Jenny and Panwar, Tarun (2026),
‘Regenerative fashion systems: Redefining circularity in the fashion and
textiles industry’, Circular Economy and Sustainability, 6, 129.
D’Itria, Erminia and Aus, Reet (2023), ‘Circular fashion: Evolving
practices in a changing industry’, Sustainability: Science, Practice and
Policy, 19:1, 2220592.
European Union Commission (2022), Communication from the Commission to
the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social
Committee and the Committee of the Regions(EU Strategy for Sustainable
and Circular Textiles).
Korhonen, Aino and Niinimäki, Kirsi (2024), ‘Reframing regenerative
fashion’, in A. Schramme and N. Verboven (eds), Sustainability and the
Fashion Industry: Can Fashion Save the World?, London: Routledge, pp.1–18.
Manieson, Lydia A., Payne, Alice and Ferrero-Regis, Tiziana (2021),
‘Unravelling the media representation of circular economy for fashion
education’. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and
Education14:3, pp. 338–47, https://doi:10.1080/17543266.2021.1950846.
Minney, Safia (2022), Regenerative Fashion: A Nature-Based Approach to
Fibres, Livelihoods and Leadership, London: Laurence King Publishing.
Taveras-Dalmau, Vanessa, Becken, Susanne and Westoby, Ross (2025), ‘From
paradigm blindness to paradigm shift’, Ambio, 54.
Editor biographies
Dr Harriette Richards is a senior lecturer in the School of Fashion and
Textiles at RMIT University and global leader in the field of critical
fashion studies. She is a cultural studies scholar whose work sits at
the intersection of fashion, ethics and cultural politics. Most
recently, her work has investigated ethical accreditation in Australian
fashion social enterprise and practices of cultural sustainability in
the fashion of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. Her monograph,
Unsettling Fashion: Dress Cultures in the Settler Colonial Imagination,
will be published in the Dress Cultures series by Bloomsbury in 2027.
Associate Professor Rimi Khan is vice chancellor’s principal research
fellow in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University. Based
in Melbourne, her work draws on research with artists, designers,
entrepreneurs, sustainability advocates and policymakers in Vietnam,
Bangladesh, Singapore and Australia. Rimi has published extensively in
the fields of fashion, creative labour, youth studies and diversity
politics. She is the author of four books: Fashion for Other Worlds:
Value, Power and Enterprise in Asia(Manchester University Press, 2027),
Dây/dó (here/there): Cross-Cultural Craft and Design Exchange(RIT Press,
2026), Youth Arts: Creative Production and Skills for Work(Bristol
University Press, 2026) and Art in Community: The Provisional
Citizen(Palgrave, 2016).
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