This lecture and seminar course provides students with a broad framework for the understanding of the significance of fashion as industry, intrinsically linked with processes of globalization. Presented through outstanding guest speakers from the fashion industry, the course is intended to open up multiple perspectives on fashion, its practitioners and its wider social and cultural dimensions as well as to bridge diverse disciplinary fields in the theory and practice of fashion. Key-issues that will be addressed include the linkage between fashion practices, the process of industrialization and post-industrialization, the development of fashion as system, intensifying relations to fashion through media culture and technology, the asymmetries of fashion, production and consumption and the rethinking of fashion in its unique potential to shape the future through more sustainable and ethical practices.