[Commlist] CfP: The Languages of Fashion: Critical Reflections on Fashion Discourses

Call for paper Fashion Highlight Issue 7 (2026): THE LANGUAGES OF 
FASHION: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON FASHION DISCOURSES

Guest Editors: Benjamin Wild and Natalia Berger

Fashion has been personified as the younger sister of Death, a daughter 
of Caducity. It has been portrayed as a lifelong companion and described 
as capitalism’s favourite child. It has been conceptualised as a belief, 
a system, and an empire. These varied characterisations hint at 
fashion’s complexity as both cultural phenomenon and global industry.

As the global fashion industry and academic field of fashion studies 
have expanded and diversified, so has fashion-related discourse. The 
terms and concepts used within and beyond the academy to discuss what 
fashion was, is, could be, and should be are numerous and increasingly 
varied. This diversity of language and ideas reflects fashion’s 
widespread cultural and commercial presence as both daily practice and 
global industry. It also reflects how the academic field of fashion 
studies draws creatively from multiple disciplines. Additionally, it 
highlights the challenge faced by fashion scholars, advocates, 
journalists, influencers, and industry representatives who are 
increasingly expected to reassess and improve fashion’s planetary impact.

Whilst it may be premature to suggest fashion studies is at an 
inflection point, the challenges posed by its diverse range of 
conversations and perspectives will likely intensify as expectations 
grow for both the academic field and industry to contribute meaningfully 
to solving humanity’s most pressing problems: environmental destruction, 
social inequality, and political polarisation.

Does fashion need a new language to facilitate the industry’s shift 
towards a more environmentally friendly structure? Building on Lotman’s 
(1991) concept of the semiosphere, we can view fashion as a semiotic 
structure whose self-description has become crystallised in fashion 
media — what Barthes (1967) described as the fashion system perfected. 
However, this perfection presents a core issue: when systems reach full 
structural organisation, they gain coherence but lose the “internal 
reserves of uncertainty” that are crucial for flexibility and ongoing 
development.

Fashion journalism’s idealised self-description consistently excludes 
the lived realities of most fashion consumers: disability, illness, 
ethical concerns, and sustainability challenges. This creates an 
epistemological trap for fashion studies: relying mainly on fashion’s 
official self-description risks perpetuating its blind spots rather than 
exploring its full semiotic complexity.

The promise lies in what Lotman calls the “semiosphere’s 
periphery”—those marginal spaces where fashion’s ideal norm contradicts 
the underlying semiotic reality. In non-fashion and alternative fashion 
press, other media platforms, and industry margins, new languages are 
developed precisely where fashion intersects with broader societal 
challenges. These peripheral discourses may hold the linguistic 
resources fashion needs to move beyond self-referential perfection 
towards meaningful engagement with planetary and social realities.

At its core, this seventh issue of Fashion Highlight Journal seeks to 
examine both the theoretical foundations and practical implications of 
fashion discourse. We encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and 
research-driven discussions on topics including, but not limited to, the 
following:

Language and Design Practice: In what ways do language practices 
influence fashion design processes, business models, promotional 
strategies, and consumer engagement?
Disciplinary Boundaries and Methods: How does fashion studies’ 
interdisciplinary nature both enrich and complicate scholarly discourse? 
What are the implications of borrowing language, methods, and paradigms 
from multiple disciplines for collective action within the field?
Divergent Discourses: How do the languages and priorities of academia, 
industry, and consumers align or diverge in fashion discourse? What are 
the consequences of these disconnections?
Commercial Communication and Sustainability: How do commercially-driven 
communication strategies affect public understanding of sustainable 
fashion initiatives? Why do circular fashion efforts continue to face 
scepticism despite industry investment?
Global Language Hierarchies: How does the dominance of English in 
fashion discourse limit truly global conversations about fashion’s 
environmental and social impacts? What alternative approaches might 
foster more inclusive dialogue?
Mythological Constructions: How are new mythologies around fashion 
constructed through discourse, and what role do these narratives play in 
shaping contemporary fashion culture?


SELECT REFERENCES

Barthes, R. (1967). Système de la mode. Éditions du Seuil.

Barthes, R. (2009). Mythologies (A. Lavers & S. Reynolds, Trans.). 
Vintage Books.

Berger, N., & Blake, S. (2021). Fashion consumption and public 
discourse: Mechanisms of sales obstruction. In E. Paulicelli, V. Manlow, 
& E. Wissinger (Eds.), The Routledge companion to fashion studies (pp. 
338–347). Routledge.

Coccia, E., & Michele, A. (2024). La vita delle forme: Filosofia del 
reincanto. Harper Collins.

Eco, U. (1983). Travels in hyper reality. Harcourt.

Ermer, C. (2022). Critical design: A new vision for fashion design 
studies. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 
36(4), 673–696.

González, A. M. (2010). On fashion and fashion discourses. Critical 
Studies in Fashion & Beauty, 1(1), 65-85.

Jansen, A. (2020). Fashion and the phantasmagoria of modernity: An 
introduction to decolonial fashion discourse. Fashion Theory, 24(5), 
659-686.

Lipovetsky, G. (1987). L’empire de l’éphémère: La mode et son destin 
dans les sociétés modernes. Gallimard.

Lotman, Y. M. (1991). Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture 
(A. Shukman, Trans.). I. B. Tauris. (Original work published 1990).

Mazzarella, F., Storey, H., & Williams, D. (2020). Counternarratives 
towards sustainability in fashion: Scoping an academic discourse on 
fashion activism through a case study on the Centre for Sustainable 
Fashion. The Design Journal, 22(1), 821-833.

Oliveros, N. (2024). “Fashion forward”: Fashioning sociocultural 
narratives through multimodal critical discourse analysis of fashion 
editorials. Journal of English and Applied Linguistics, 3(2), 86-99.

Pilyarchuk, K. (2024). In/exclusion in fashion discourse: Are we in or 
out? Discourse & Society, 35(5), 606-624.

Postlethwaite, S. (2024). Discourse: Designing a fashion practice 
research methodology. In P. Rodgers (Ed.), Design education in the 
Anthropocene (pp. 99-111). Routledge.

Rita Sedita, S., Crespi Gomes, K., & Pellegrin, V. (2025). The evolution 
of the academic discourse on sustainability in the fashion industry: 
Insights from a bibliometric analysis. Consumption and Society, 4(3), 
476-499.

Rocamora, A. Fashioning the city: Paris, fashion and the media. Bloomsbury.

Shaw, M. L. (1992). The discourse of fashion: Mallarmé, Barthes and 
literary criticism. SubStance, 21(2), 46–60.

Thompson, C. G., & Haytko, D. L. (1997). Speaking of fashion: Consumers' 
uses of fashion discourses and the appropriation of countervailing 
cultural meanings. Journal of Consumer Research, 24(1), 15-42.

Wild, B. (2024). Hang-ups: Reflections on the causes and consequences of 
fashion’s ‘Western’-centrism. Bloomsbury.

ABOUT THE GUEST EDITORS

Dr Benjamin Wild (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

Benjamin is Reader in Fashion Narratives. He leads the F/fashion 
Narratives Research Group within Manchester Metropolitan University. A 
cultural historian, his research is underpinned by a belief that history 
is a dynamic agent in people’s lives, informing their values and 
behaviours. He seeks to understand how people’s engagement with the past 
shapes the stories they tell about themselves, their communities and 
cultures, and the form these narratives take when expressed through 
material culture, particularly dress. Recent and forthcoming work 
includes Thom Browne (Anthem Press 2025) Appropriation (Bloomsbury 2026).

Dr Natalia Berger (Inholland University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands)

Natalia is a Senior Researcher at the Applied Research and Creativity 
Research Centre (ARC) at Inholland University of Applied Sciences. She 
is a philologist specialising in public discourse analysis from both 
historical and contemporary perspectives. Over the past decade, her 
research has examined fashion discourse at the margins of the fashion 
industry, analysing how fashion language functions beyond traditional 
fashion journalism. Her work explores how mainstream and social media 
construct fashion narratives that influence public understanding, 
focusing on the ‘non-native’ contexts where wider audiences encounter 
and interpret fashion’s meaning in their everyday lives. Forthcoming 
book: Public Discourse and the Fashion Industry (Routledge 2026).

INSTRUCTION FOR THE AUTHORS

We welcome full papers in English with a range length of 4000-6000 
words, footnotes and bibliographical references excluded. It is highly 
recommended to use the template and APA STYLE as a formatting guideline. 
We also welcome the following formats:

Fashion mythologies – Cultural reflections and critical commentaries in 
the spirit of Roland Barthes’ Mythologies and Umberto Eco’s Travels in 
Hyper Reality (1500-2000 words max. Captions, footnotes and 
bibliographies excluded; tables included).
Fashion Lexigraphy – A focused and critical study of the historical 
development and ongoing debates surrounding key terms and ideas in 
fashion (1500-2500 words max. Captions, footnotes and bibliographies 
excluded; tables included).

The deadline for submitting the full paper (saved in .doc or .docx 
format) via the platform is 10 January 2026. Issue 7 will be published 
in 2026. No article processing charge is required.


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