Afterthought: Fashion, Feminism and Radical Protest

Abstract

We are currently witnessing an uncommon politicization of fashion as an expression of protest and dissent: fashion designers are making use of the runway as a site of resistance, and design clothes that communicate defiance against a global political climate characterized by the rise of far right, authoritarian and populist political movements.

As a brief postscript to this special issue dedicated to fashion, politics and dissent, this essay is an attempt to make sense of a development that influences contemporary fashion and to point out some of the conflicts and contradictions that arise out of the convergence of feminism, fashion and radical protest. In order to comprehend the contemporary vogue of feminist fashion and fashionable feminism respectively, and to understand the dialectic between these two phenomena, the essay reconstructs how feminism has become fashionable yet again, and which forms of feminism and feminist activism have entered the cultural and political mainstream.

Keywords:

• feminist fashion
• feminist activism
• radical protest
• political fashion
• postfeminism

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monica Titton

Monica Titton is a sociologist, fashion scholar and culture critic living and working in Vienna, Austria. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Vienna (2015) and currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Austrian Center for Fashion Research at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and as a Senior Scientist in sociological fashion theory in the fashion design department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her work develops a critical, sociological perspective at the intersections of fashion, culture, art, politics and identity. Concerns with the representation of place and otherness in fashion media, postcolonial critique and the spatial situatedness of the epistemology of fashion have become central to her most recent work. [email protected]