Public Discourse and the Fashion Industry

This book explores what happens when fashion discourse migrates from specialised media to mainstream newspapers. Analysis of 2,263 texts across five Dutch and international case studies (animal welfare, disability, repair practices, smart wearables, and metaverse fashion) demonstrates systematic reversal: instead of creating desire, it provokes aversion; instead of fostering inclusion, it reinforces marginalisation; instead of encouraging creativity, it stokes speculative investment appetites.

Drawing on Barthes’s semiology of fashion, Foucault’s discourse theory, and Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere, the book introduces critical discursive matrix analysis as a method for examining fashion at its periphery. The findings reveal that when fashion intersects with social issues in mainstream media, it becomes colonised by other discursive systems - medical, civic, technology, and financial - while fashion industry voices retreat, replaced by NGOs, activists, and technology companies pursuing non-fashion agendas. The volume provides insights into why sustainability efforts fail despite awareness, how media representation shapes consumer behaviour, and why fashion discourse cannot evolve within its commercial framework.

Public Discourse and the Fashion Industry will engage a diverse audience, including fashion studies scholars, discourse analysts, media researchers, sustainability practitioners, policymakers, fashion industry strategists, and communication specialists.

Natalia Berger is Senior Researcher at the Applied Research and Creativity Research Centre (ARC) at Inholland University of Applied Sciences. She is a philologist specialising in public discourse analysis from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Over the past decade, her research has examined fashion discourse at the margins of the fashion industry, analysing how fashion language functions beyond traditional fashion journalism. Her work explores how mainstream and social media construct fashion narratives that influence public understanding, focusing on the ’non-native’ contexts where wider audiences encounter and interpret fashion’s meaning in their everyday lives.