Defining Fashion started as a graduate school project originating from the Fashion Cultures course in the first year of the MA Fashion Studies at Parsons School of Design.

A desire to utilize the work done for a class project (that would otherwise sit and collect dust on a hard drive) to bring fashion education to a broader audience through digital means.

Fashion History scholarship has historically been produced in a euroamerican context, considering only European and American luxury fashion houses as "Fashion".

This narrative serves as an "othering" project, allowing the West to dictate who does and does not have fashion - in other words, who does and does not have culture, civilization, etc.

When these approaches to fashion (history AND theory) exist in our education, it perpetuates a false dichotomy that disallows multiple ways for fashion to exist in a global world.

Beginning stages of the project - essentially on hiatus while the founder finishes grad school! She works on it when she can, but we take it slow and one step at a time!

The "manifesto" - which you can view on the "definitions" page - is the document from which the project was born. We hope to expand upon this, providing both historical and contemporary context for perspectives on fashion.