1 Editorial: Constructing National Fashion Identities Jennifer Craik Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne Angela Jansen University of the Arts, London This special issue of the International Journal of Fashion Studies features a selection of articles that were presented as papers during the second edition of the (Non)Western Fashion Conference, held at the London College of Fashion in November 2013. The conference provides a forum for scholars who focus on a wide variety of fashion systems throughout the world and who aspire to rectify a prevailing Eurocentric discourse in fashion studies. Although fashion is historically located all around, many fashion systems remain little known and therefore seem less important or influential. Many are misinterpreted due to a (Eurocentric) binary oppositional thinking which creates false dichotomies like traditional versus fashionable, tradition versus modernity, western versus non-western, local versus global, and so on. The conference sets out to gathers academics, curators, designers and industry professionals who are engaged in creative and critical thinking concerning (non)western fashion systems in a wide scope of geographical areas and from a wide variety of disciplines, targeting a true global perspective through cross-cultural comparisons based on extensive field research rather then ‘fashion globalization;’ a highly popular concept that has been implying participatory narratives in recent years whereby especially new economies are included in fashion discourse in the light of their recent socio-economic achievements, their convergence with the West and their successful engagement with fashion as consumers and producers. In order to understand fashion beyond Europe, the conference argues it is important to refrain from thinking that fashion in the non-West has only recently emerged as a result of globalisation (Riello and McNeil, 2010, Global Perspectives, 4-5). The conference address the lack of attention to the analysis of contemporary dress practices in non-western or non-Euro-American fashion systems and the widely held assumption that fashion exists only in the West, for the West, although largely relying on non-western places for its production, and increasingly, consumption. In this framework, dress practices in non- western contexts are categorized as traditional, customary, literal markers of status and collective membership, and—above all—unchanging. Accordingly, prevailing theoretical and conceptual frameworks to understand the phenomenon of fashion reproduce this assumption that Fashion = western modernity and epitomises the practice of conspicuous consumption in societies obsessed with the presentation of self and individual identity in capitalist and industrialised societies. Yet, this theoretical straightjacket ignores the galloping pace of global fashion and the existence of fashion systems in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Oceania and Africa, whose dynamics are transforming the perception, industry and consumption trends within fashion. The conference aims to explore a wide range of fashion contexts within these fashion sites that are transforming traditional models of production, circulation, consumption and representation. This second edition focused on the construction of national fashion identities in particular and the roles of so-called ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in this process. Fashion designers are increasingly branding their national heritage/tradition as a successful marketing tool, while simultaneously reinventing/modernizing it. On the one hand, in a globalizing world, it allows them to differentiate themselves on a highly competitive international fashion market, while on the other hand, on a national level, it makes them successful as a result of a general revaluation of national culture as a counter reaction to increasing foreign cultural influences. However, when non-western designers use