This lecture course provides students with a broad framework to understand fashion as a system, and as a component of culture, intrinsically linked with processes of globalization. Lectures are presented by faculty from within and beyond the university to bridge diverse fields in the theory and practice of fashion. Key-issues that will be frame the course content will include the definition and development of fashion, the linkage between fashion, modernity and capitalism, the process of industrialization and post-industrialization, the relationships of fashion to media culture and technology, performance and exhibition, the transnational dimensions of fashion, the environmental impact of the textile and apparel industries, and the rethinking of fashion towards more sustainable and ethical practices. In this context we will consider the potential of fashion practices and theories to ‘provoke,’ raise questions, critique, comment on, and contribute to, contemporary culture. The lecture course is taken by students in the first year of the MA Fashion Studies and MFA Fashion Design and Society program. Pathway: Fashion Studies.