Guest Editors: Khaya Mchunu and Nirma Madhoo

The amplification of right-wing, fascist rhetoric in 2025 is manifesting material effects on the lives of women, trans and queer communities, disabled persons, and Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC). The 5th Issue of Fashion Highlight uses fashion to ask, how can we mobilise to challenge the negative effects of these global changes? Are there instances and examples of fashion making, worldbuilding, archiving and other forms of fashion praxis that speak of joy, love, pain, beauty, brutality, pleasure, precarity etc.? Are these forms of fashion praxis generated in ways that allow BIPOC bodies and other bodies not only to resist but also to allow affective passage for their generative being and becomings?

Full papers deadline: 15 June 2025

Guest Editors: Alice Payne and Anneke Smelik

The 4th issue of Fashion Highlight invites reflections, provocations, and speculations on fashion's future, focusing on the tiny strands of fibre that are aggregated by the tonne, traded as commodities, spun into yarns, branded as products, and wrestled over in the marketplace. We invite papers on individual fibre stories of all forms, from viscose, cotton, wool, silk, polyester, nylon and beyond, on the role of fibre in a circular economy, the governance of fibre, the ethics of fibre, the cultural histories of new and old fibre technologies, fibre and place, and provocations on fibre’s agency and materiality. This call aims to stimulate a dialogue about fibre as the fundamental element of fashion, shaping its present and future.

Full papers deadline: 20 September 2024

Guest Editors: Valeria M. Iannilli and Alessandra Spagnoli

The 3rd issue of Fashion Highlight intends to investigate the dynamics, practices, and impacts of fashion consumption in the light of the transformations taking place, questioning the role and potential that creative communities, players in the - long and complex - fashion value chain, consumers and education can express. Authors from different disciplinary fields are invited to propose critical and theoretical reflections and applied contributions using different approaches and methodologies.  to provide an original perspective on the proposed topic. 

Full papers deadline: 14 April 2024

The 2nd issue of Fashion Highlight aims to encourage reflection on the relationship between fashion, artificial intelligence and rights, investigating how fashion, in this rapidly changing panorama, is questioning itself on privacy, intellectual property, inclusion, skills and responsibilities. One of the most relevant issues, in fact, is the possibility that AI preserves diversity, acts inclusively and protects individual identities.

Full papers deadline: 30 November 2023