The Four Elements of Fashion

The book is the result of an international conference, held at the Università Iuav di Venezia. It offers an innovative take for fashion studies by focusing on the new prism of the four archetypal elements of earth, water, air, and fire. In the era of ecological crisis, the book aims to investigate new paradigms of fashion cultures through those elements of matter as they are intertwined in the clothes we wear. The research papers shift the attention towards the material and sensory aspects of fashion. This approach fits in with the ‘material turn’, inspired by a re-centring of matter and the materiality of things, objects, technologies, and bodies. In readdressing fashion and its histories through the lens of new materialism, the authors envision possible future fashions in multiple ways: from contributing to an environmentally and socially aware fashion to disseminating good practices in the field of fashion design.