Print Objects and Fashion Subjects: Independent Publishing in the Contemporary Fashion Milieu since the 1980s

The author documents and discusses the independent books, magazines, and print projects produced by fashion designers since the 1980s when fashion and art aligned and fashion publishing transformed. Significant collaboration among fashion designers, graphic designers, photographers, and artists developed in the 1980s and continues in the twenty-first century. Self-published zines and lookbooks, small-press photobooks, and independent magazines point away from the fashion industry and towards the febrile and conceptual world of artists’ books and magazines. Fashion designers’ practices have expanded, and book making and publishing, rooted in art and graphic design, have become significant and symbolic multidisciplinary activities within specific networks of distribution.