University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Fashion Torn Up: Exploring the Potential of Zines and Alternative Fashion Press Publications in Academic Library Collections

Hall, Suzanna

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/111802

Description

Title
Fashion Torn Up: Exploring the Potential of Zines and Alternative Fashion Press Publications in Academic Library Collections
Author(s)
Hall, Suzanna
Issue Date
2021
Keyword(s)
  • Libraries
  • Fashion
  • Zines
  • Academic libraries
Abstract
This article discusses the purposes of collecting zines and alternativepress magazines in academic libraries that support fashion studies programs. Fashion is a discipline that is both creative and academic but is also a field that is dominated by commercial interests. Fashion zines offer a form of counterdiscourse to the mainstream fashion media, which engages with fashion as a phenomenon while challenging its institutionally held power. Zines are also emerging as a new media in fashion communications, with alternative magazines taking inspiration from their aesthetics and brands co-opting the terminology and capitalizing on their subcultural appeal. This article focuses on the developing relevance of this medium to fashion as an industry and as an academic discipline, the challenges academic libraries face in collecting zines and small-press fashion publications, and the academic library’s role in providing access to this kind of alternate literature. Additionally, it discusses zine making as a pedagogical tool, exploring how they can be used by students for inspiration and as a medium with which to engage with, and challenge, fashion discourse on their own terms.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Library Trends 70 (1). Summer 2021
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/111802
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2021.0013
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2021 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 70 (1) Summer 2021: Fashion in the Library/Fashion Librarianship PRIMARY
Library Trends 70 (1) Summer 2021: Fashion in the Library/Fashion Librarianship. Edited by Courtney Becks and Cristina Favretto.