Introduction: Fashion and Transnational Inequalities – What, Where, Why?

Fashion has for a long time been associated with forms of inequality, which today are increasingly transnational. Evoking pressing questions, such as legacies of colonialism, structural racism, and environmental damage, inequalities embedded within capitalist fashion systems need to be challenged more urgently than ever. In this chapter, we reflect upon certain important themes related to these questions, such as increasing demands and projects to decolonise fashion scholarship and fashion education, the recognition and critique of persistent exploitation of workers within fashion industries, and the socio-economic, as well as environmental, problems inherent in the transnational organisation of capitalist fashion systems. We contend that fashion scholars’ responsibility to demand justice and ethical treatment across fashion systems needs to be central to researcher positions today.