Instead of the logic of representation of fashion in the light of modern society and postmodern culture, this book argues that contemporary fashion should be regarded as a performative-conceptual turn in the very core of body iconograms. The text presents a theoretical perspective of the phenomenon of fashion within fashion theory as establishing a new approach from visual semiotics. Through this lens, fashion, therefore, emerges as a visual code of contemporary societies and cultures in the networked matrices of hyperreality and visions of that coming time that will determine the combination of cybernetics, fetishism and transgression.

This is an open access book. The biennial Conference of Language, Linguistics, and Literature (Colalite) always attempts to accommodate intriguing themes. This year, the 5th International Colalite presents "Dressed to Kill: Fashion, Body, and Identity" as a theme to accommodate the growing interest in fashion and lifestyle in the fields of language, literature, cultural studies, translation, and business communication. For this reason, the 5th Colalite encourages researchers, authors, academic practitioners, and those who are interested in exploring this issue to participate in the conference.

The primary goal of the volume on "Visual Communication" is to provide a collection of high quality, accessible papers that offer an overview of the different academic approaches to Visual Communication, the different theoretical perspectives on which they are based, the methods of analysis used and the different media and genre that have come under analysis. There is no such existing volume that draws together this range of closely related material generally found in much less related areas of research, including semiotics, art history, design, and new media theory. The volume has a total of 34 individual chapters that are organized into two sections: theories and methods, and areas of visual analysis. The chapters are all written by quality theorists and researchers, with a view that the research should be accessible to non-specialists in their own field while at the same time maintaining a high quality of work. The volume contains an introduction, which plots and locates the different approaches contained in it within broader developments and history of approaches to visual communication across different disciplines as each has attempted to define its terrain sometimes through unique concepts and methods sometimes through those borrowed and modified from others.

This book explores the intersections between wearable objects and human health, with particular emphasis on how artists and designers are creatively responding to and rethinking these relations. Addressing a rich range of wearable artefacts, from mobility aids and prosthetics to clothing and accessories to digital health tracking devices, its themes include care and cure; wellness culture and the commoditization of health; and the complex interactions between (human) bodies and (non-human) objects. With a theoretical framework inspired by the work of materialist thinkers including Sherry Turkle, Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett, and bringing the disciplinary fields of fashion studies, art and design practice, and medical and health humanities into dialogue for the first time, this volume draws attention to the complex agencies entangled in the things we wear, and situates fashion and art in relation to broader cultural and historical contexts of health, illness and disability.

How are aesthetics and ethics related to the practical realities of the global fashion industry? Both have played an important role in academic fashion studies to this point, but they are most often discussed in the context of abstract phenomena such as modernity and capitalism, or identity issues such as sexuality, class and gender. The essays in this volume strive instead to show how the realities of the global fashion industry have important and pertinent aesthetic and ethical consequences. This collection provides critical and philosophical analysis of the interplay of aesthetics and ethics within the global fashion industry. Characterized by an increasingly fast spinning production, the industry is highly exploitative in terms of environment and labor force: underpaid textile workers, retailers working under brutal competition from the mass-merchandise discounters, young designers, seamstresses and curators often working for free, and a vast body of aspiring models. In addition, fashion-related aesthetic ideals are becoming more influential than ever in directing consumers in their social and personal identification processes and bodily practices with sometimes fatal consequences. Covering a wide range of subjects such as fashion's highly problematic production and consumption practices, the possibility of producing and consuming fashion ethically, fashion's intimate connection with nature and technology, Fashion Aesthetics and Ethics highlights the powerful aesthetical presence of fashion in relation to its ethical premises and often problematic outcomes.

Contemporary culture is as much visual as literary. This book explores an approach to the communicative power of the pictorial and multimodal documents that make up this visual culture, using Peircean semiotics. It develops the enormous theoretical potential of Peirce's theory of signs of signs (semiotics) and the persuasive strategies in which they are employed (visual rhetoric) in a variety of documents. Unlike presentations of semiotics that take the written word as the reference value, this book examines this particular rhetoric using pictorial signs as its prime examples. The visual is not treated as the 'poor relation' to the (written) word. It is therefore possible to isolate more clearly the specific constituent properties of word and image, taking these as the basic material of a wide range of cultural artefacts. It looks at comic strips, conventional photographs, photographic allegory, pictorial metaphor, advertising campaigns and the huge semiotic range exhibited by the category of the 'poster'. This is essential reading for all students of semiotics, introductory and advanced.

This handbook brings together the most current and hotly debated topics in studies about images today. In the first part, the book gives readers an historical overview and basic diacronical explanation of the term image, including the ways it has been used in different periods throughout history. In the second part, the fundamental concepts that have to be mastered should one wish to enter into the emerging field of Image Studies are explained. In the third part, readers will find analysis of the most common subjects and topics pertaining to images. In the fourth part, the book explains how existing disciplines relate to Image Studies and how this new scholarly field may be constructed using both old and new approaches and insights. The fifth chapter is dedicated to contemporary thinkers and is the first time that theses of the most prominent scholars of Image Studies are critically analyzed and presented in one place.

In The Art and Practice of Costume Design, a panel of seven designers offer a new multi-sided look at the current state and practice of theatrical costume design. Beginning with an exploration of the role of a Costume Designer, the subsequent chapters analyse and explore the psychology of dress, the principles and elements of design, how to create costume renderings, and collaboration within the production. The book also takes a look at the costume shop and the role of the designer within it, and costume design careers within theatrical and fashion industries.