Guest Editors: Alice Payne and Anneke Smelik

Fibre, the basis of fashion’s materiality, is experiencing rising demand year on year, reflecting the insatiable desire for ‘more’ that defines the dominant fashion system. With an annual consumption of 116 million tonnes in 2022, close to a doubling in 20 years (Textile Exchange 2023), humanity’s appetite for fibre has never been more voracious. 

Recent studies on fashion’s fibre are diverse: including comparative analyses of different fibres’ sustainability benefits or challenges, analysis of their material flows, value chains (Mellick et. al 2021) and cultural histories (Smelik 2023). In industry contexts there are calls for fibre to be traceable from all sources – whether from forests, oil fields, farms, or laboratories – and their impacts to be quantified and reduced (e.g., UNECE 2021; Changing Markets 2022). 

This Call for Papers proposes a planetary perspective on fibre, one in which fibre is viewed as material flows and forces on and of both human and non-human, the living and the technological, and the crowded continuum between them. Following Morton (2013), fibres such as polyester may be seen as ‘hyperobjects’: objects so vast, so planet-wrapping in their spatial impact and so long in their temporal lifespan (from ancient fossil fuel origins to eventual photo-degradation), that they resist comprehension.

Viewed through a planetary lens, fibres are unruly: no corner of the earth is free of microfibres, they persist in air, water and soil, coagulate in oceans. Fibres can be living technologies, in the case of genetically modified cotton plants, or blended combinations of biological and synthetic matter in stubborn melanges that resist easy separation. 

Fibres are traded: they are commodities hedged on the futures markets, travelling through global value chains and across national borders. Fibres are branded as products. As sustainability credentials continue to be fiercely contested, the eco-labels associated with varieties of cotton or wool (whether certified as ‘responsible’, ‘organic’, or ‘regenerative’) can command a premium.

A posthuman (Braidotti 2016) perspective on fibre recognises the vitality of fibres, or as a ‘world of active materials’ as Ingold puts it (2013), as well as the politics, power dynamics, exchanges and agency of the many kinds of humans, non-humans, more-than-humans that together create fibre as matter. This Call for Papers proposes that a posthuman perspective can support analysis of the dynamics, ethics and materiality of fibre at a planetary scale. This Call for Papers 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.

 

REFERENCES

Braidotti, R. (2016). Posthuman critical theory. Critical posthumanism and planetary futures, 13-32.

Changing Markets Foundation. (2022). Synthetics Anonymous 2.0: Fashion’s persistent plastic problem. https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Synthetics-Anonymous-2-online-reports-layout.pdf 

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge.

Mellick, Z., Payne, A., & Buys, L. (2021). From Fibre to Fashion: Understanding the Value of Sustainability in Global Cotton Textile and Apparel Value Chains. Sustainability, 13(22), 12681. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12681.

Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. U of Minnesota Press.

Smelik, A. (2023). Polyester: A Cultural History. Fashion Practice, 15(2), 279–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/17569370.2023.2196158

Textile Exchange. (2023). Materials Market Report 2023. https://textileexchange.org/app/uploads/2023/11/Materials-Market-Report-2023.pdf 

UNECE. (2021). Policy brief – Harnessing the potential of blockchain technology for due diligence and sustainability in cotton value chains. https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/ECE_TRADE_C_CEFACT_2021_12E-TextilePolicyBrief_0.pdf 

 

ABOUT THE GUEST EDITORS

Dr Alice Payne is a Professor and Dean of the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT. Her research focuses on environmental and social sustainability issues throughout the life cycle of clothing. Recent work has examined labour issues in the cotton value chain, as well as technologies to address the problem of textile waste. She is author of the book Designing Fashion’s Future, co-editor of Global Perspectives on Sustainable Fashion, and is an award-winning designer and educator.

Professor emerita Anneke Smelik was Professor of Visual Culture and Fashion Studies till 2023, in the Department of Cultural Studies at the Radboud University of Nijmegen (Netherlands). After years of research on visual media such as film, television and videoclips, she has shifted her focus to fashion studies and the creative industries. In 2018-19 Anneke Smelik was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam. She is co-editor of Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty.

 

INSTRUCTION FOR THE AUTHORS

We welcome full papers in English with a range length of 3000-4000 words, footnotes and bibliographical references excluded. It is highly recommended to use the template and APA STYLE as a formatting guideline. 

The deadline for submitting the full paper (saved in .doc or .docx format) via the platform is the 31 August 2024. The issue 4 will be published in December 2024.

 

DOWNLOAD THE CALL FOR PAPERS