About

This Special Issue of Fashion Studies interrogates twentieth-century histories of dress and fashion through the concept of ‘sustainment/The Sustainment’ (2003), articulated by design theorist Tony Fry as a practice of sustaining life and the material world in a way that challenges the entanglement of sustainability with Eurocentric modernity, economic growth and a techno-functionalist understanding of the world. Our goal for this issue is to explore dress and fashion histories that can make critical contributions to sustainable futures, which we understand as futures that can be sustained. Thus, we focus our attention on practices that have taken place before the development of the concept of sustainability, alongside or outside of established sustainable industry practice, and at the periphery of and beyond the West and the Global North.

The contributions in this Special Issue explore overlooked histories of, and new perspectives on, resourcefulness, reuse, creative ingenuity, remaking, repair, mending, and sharing in the twentieth century, and consider how these intersect with histories of global modernity, urban development, policy, craft, class, cultural identity, gender, sexuality, and body politics. Contributions by historians and theorists, makers and curators offer critical insights into the politics of sustainment in fashion and dress history across different contexts and examples, and, we hope, show the importance of attending to historical knowledge to create truly sustainable fashion futures.