Editorial

It is with great pleasure that we present the much-awaited issue of ZMJ, dedicated to fashion and communication, edited by Daniela Calanca and Grazia D'Annunzio. Never has the imagery of fashion transcended the specific sectors it represents. Indeed, the aesthetic research that characterizes our age finds in the mechanisms of fashion the place of most immediate learning, the center of personal and collective identity formation. An imaginary universe of possible individual and social choices, fashion is “a means of mass communication that reproduces and spreads according to its own modalities and, at the same time, enters into relations with other mass media systems.”¹ Precisely because fashion is communication itself, indirect, ambivalent, but timely and pervasive, it can be more effective than traditional methods of communication. The essays we present in this issue explore the different, aesthetic, and political angles of fashion communication, its recent evolution — museums, exhibitions, journalism, and various forms of representation — and its growing influence in culture and society. We wish everyone a good read and a good summer.