The new academic year is just beginning here in the UK, so to welcome all the new students focused on Dress History and Fashion Studies, we are giving you a PDF to download that will hopefully get started on your new course!
![spectres-exhibition-designed-and-curated-by-judith-clark-at-momu-antwerp-2005](https://sites.courtauld.ac.uk/documentingfashion/files/2016/09/Spectres-exhibition-designed-and-curated-by-Judith-Clark-at-MoMu-Antwerp-2005-504x378.jpg)
This is the Introduction to my book Fashion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2009), which discusses some of the definitions of the word fashion and its multiple meanings. When I was writing this, I thought hard about how to introduce what is such a seemingly easy term that quickly becomes complex when you think of all the ways it is used within global culture. I used Judith Clark’s amazing 2005 exhibition Spectres, held at MoMu in Antwerp as my starting point. Encapsulated within the show were many of the ideas I wanted to convey to open up the book and its readers to ways to study and think about fashion. I hope you will find this an interesting opening – I loved writing this book, it was a challenge to decide how to approach a big subject in a small format, but actually, this gave a brilliant clarity and focus to what needed to be covered in each chapter, to build towards a (very short) introduction to fashion …
Happy New Term!