Welcome to this week’s Magazine of the Week!
Catwalk, the Journal of Fashion, Beauty and Style, is a new global interdisciplinary research studies journal with a focus on matters of the idea of “fashion”, broadly defined. It was published 2x/year by the Interdisciplinary Press in the U.K. Several FIT alumna and faculty sit on the magazine’s advisory board. Unfortunately, this title hasn’t established enough of an audience. The September 2016 issue is the last.
“Fashion studies” has recently become an important topic of academic focus, in part because of the drive and research of several noted British scholars of fashion and dress*, and university programs that evolved to further these scholarly visions**. The focus on clothing and fashion parallels the development of scholarly research in such “everyday” topics as food and foodways, daily life in history, and the lives of the creators of art objects (as opposed to connoisseurial studies so popular in the past).
The journal was published by the Fashion Research Network, begun by a group of students from the Courtauld Institute and the Royal College of Art, who wanted a discussion space for their research and career concerns. The journal is aimed specifically at students and academics in early career: either just finished graduate school, or at their first jobs.
The title had expensive production values, printed on heavy paper with a glossy, well designed cover and color images within, but the content was largely scholarly and text-based. Besides blind-reviewed scholarly articles the magazine also presented the usual scholarly array of exhibition reviews, book reviews, and editorial commentary on the field at present.
Come take a look!
http://fashionresearchnetwork.co.uk/
*e.g. Janet Arnold, Gale Owen-Crocker, Stella Mary Newton, Aileen Ribeiro,and Lou Taylor.
**e.g. The Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of Brighton, the University of Manchester, and the School of Historical Dress.