Fashionscapes and fluid cities

Abstract

There is a deep intertwining among fashion and the city, whose relationship is manifested in many forms. There is the official and stereotypical form where the city creates fashion, for example in the “cities of fashion”. There is a second form which manifests when fashions shape the city, especially through street style. In the last three decades a third type of relationship between fashion and the city has come to life, which did not obliterate the traditional cities of fashion or the function of the “street”. Resonating with Appadurai's landscapes (Appadurai, 1996), I am inserting the idea of fashionscapes—with which I refer to the stratified, hybrid, multiple and fluid disposition of imageries of the clothed body of our time. Today, fashion and the city live through constantly moving signs, mirroring the movements of digital information in our world.