Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture
Special Issue: Exploring Fashion as Communication
Guest Editor: Elizabeth Castaldo Lunden, Ph.D.

The editors of Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture invite submissions for a special issue on the topics of Fashion Journalism and Fashion as Communication.

With the consolidation of fashion studies as an academic field, the study of fashion, dress, and costume has become a fertile ground for interdisciplinary research for scholars from communication and media studies. Media studies scholars have considered fashion, dress, and costume in relation to film and other visual media formats. Fashion journalism remains a less- explored territory under media studies as an umbrella discipline. This special issue offers a unique opportunity to look at the role of journalism as a profession and as an industry key player in the context of fashion, popular communication, and consumer culture.

The function of fashion and dress as language and communication has been observed for over a century (Veblen 1899; Barthes 2006; Barnard 2013). Fashion journalism as a cultural mediator for encoding and decoding, however, has generally been neglected. Historical studies of the development of fashion journalism have predominantly focused on the United States press or have rested uncritically on dated secondary sources. The global circulation of fashion discourses, as well as the cultural specificities of local practices that trigger the dialectic nature of globalization, remain neglected. With the increasing digital access to primary sources, broader up-to-date analyses of the cultural construction of fashion “language” become possible. The combination of aesthetic and commercial elements of fashion provide a broad set of contexts in which to analyze its presence in mediated spaces. The global fascination with celebrity culture has enabled fashion to transgress the boundaries of niche publications to become part of popular communication, permeating many other journalistic genres and challenging hegemonic discourses of expertise in the process.

We welcome critical approaches to fashion journalism, ranging from new media, television, cultural studies, media and communication studies, fashion studies, and allied fields. We seek manuscripts that examine the history, politics, practices, and aesthetics of fashion journalism, engaging critically with questions of the role of fashion journalists, their function in communication and consumer culture. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Historical approaches to the development of fashion journalism
• Audiences and fashion media
• Fashion media in relation to class, race, and/or gender perspectives
• Fashion photography
• Fashion journalism and editorial storytelling
• Fashion and cable television as a practice of audience segmentation
• The politics of global and local fashion discourses
• Social media and influencers as alternative opinion leaders to fashion media establishments
• Ethical issues of fashion journalism and consumer culture
• Conflicts between the journalistic profession and industry practices
• Countercultural fashion movements and alternative communication channels
• Comparative studies of fashion magazines in their adaptations to national discourses. (i.e., Vogue vs. British Vogue)

We strongly encourage papers that illustrate cultural practices outside the United States.

Submitted papers should be 6,000-7,000 words in length (inclusive of all elements). The deadline for submission is February 28th, 2019. For further questions before submission, contact Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén at elizabeth.lunden@gmail.com

Papers should be submitted using ScholarOne. Instructions for authors and full guidelines for the APA 6th Edition style guide can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hppc20/current


Popular Communication provides a forum for scholarly investigation, analysis, and dialogue on communication symbols, forms, phenomena and systems within the context of popular culture across the globe. Popular Communication publishes articles on all aspects of popular communication, examining different media such as television, film, new media, games, print media, radio, music, and dance; the study of texts, events, artefacts, spectacles, audiences, technologies, and industries; and phenomena and practices, including, but not limited to, fan, youth and subcultures, questions of representation, digitalization, cultural globalization, spectator sports, sexuality, advertising, and consumer culture. The co-Editors in Chief are Patrick Burkart and Miyase Christensen.