Education and Research
Dr Rachel Matthews teaches fashion communication and fashion enterprise in Higher Education.
In addition, she is a curriculum consultant and runs professional development courses for educators and fashion professionals. This work is informed by on-going research into contemporary fashion communication, focused on the marketing and mediation of sustainable fashion practices, as a field capable of supporting positive social change.
She is a member of Union of Concerned Fashion Researchers, a Senior Fellow Advance HE, member of Sustainable Fashion Consumption Network and certified as Carbon Literate.
Published work
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‘Finding Sustainable Strategies for Fashion Communication through Digital Channels’
2026 (forthcoming)
in A Muhammad Sayem (ed) Digital Fashion & Sustainability, The Textile Institute. Book series for Elsevier, Oxford.
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‘Future of Sustainable Fashion Communications: From Marketing Messages to the Mediation of Mutable Meanings’
2024
in A Skjerven, L Berg, L Nielsen & D Stuedahl (eds) Mediating Sustainability in the Consumer Society, Routledge, Abingdon.
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‘What’s in your wardrobe? Kindness in assessment design’
2024
in A Grant & S Pittaway (eds) Enacting a Pedagogy of Kindness: A guide for practitioners in higher education, Routledge, Abingdon.
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‘Entrepreneurship and Fashion Law’
2021
in L Davis Burns (ed) Fashion Business Cases: A Student Guide to Learning with Case Studies, Bloomsbury London.
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Understanding ugg boots: Travels through place, space and time
2020
Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, 11(1), 73–100.
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Redrawing the Timeline: Teaching the History of Fashion in the Networked Conditions of the Twenty-First Century
2019
Special Issue of Arts: Changing Pedagogies in the Art College Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Arts 2019, 8(1), 24;
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Taste-making in Turbulent Times: The Social Networks of Vogue.
2018
Communication Sciences, 18(2), 399–410.
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Who Owns Genuine Ugg/UGG® Boots in the Global Footwear Marketplace?
2018
Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
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Sneakerboy: Giving Luxury Retail a Digital Up-Grade.
2018
Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Bloomsbury Fashion Central.
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Fairy tales and Fashion Criticism
2016
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Contemporary Fashion Tastemakers: Starting Conversations that Matter.
2015
Catwalk: The Journal of Fashion Beauty and Style, 4, 1 (2015): 51-70.
Transmedia story of #harrystylescardigan phenomenon (2024). This tracks the spread of the Harry Styles cardigan challenge from TikTok through articles in the New York Times, from radio to museums, with each channel adding to the narrative. Presented at Digital Fashion Innovation Conference (2024), Manchester Metropolitan University and in ‘Finding Sustainable Strategies for Fashion Communication through Digital Channels’, in Digital Fashion & Sustainability (forthcoming).
Mapping materials in sustainable fashion marketing (2023). Three case study analyses of brands Ganni, Bode and A.BCH, each showing the different mediation of sustainability through materials in marketing messages. Published in: Future of Sustainable Fashion Communications: From Marketing Messages to the Mediation of Mutable Meanings’ in Mediating Sustainability in the Consumer Society (2024)
Rachel Matthews (2019) Measures of Influence visible from social media accounts (after Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Influence) presented at International Conference on Communication and Media Studies – Media Data & Society (at UCL London 10-11 August 2019)
Rachel Matthews (2020) Discourse-Assemblage: Australian Media Sources, 2018. Collage created during the discourse analysis process, published in Understanding ugg boots: Travels through place, space and time
Rachel Matthews (2020) Discourse-Assemblage: International Fashion Media Sources, 2018. Collage created during the discourse analysis process, published in Understanding ugg boots: Travels through place, space and time
Rachel Matthews (2018) Network mapping and visualisation: British Vogue May 1967 and May 2017, published in Studies in Communication Sciences 18.2 (2018), pp. 399–410
Timeline & Convergence — Rachel Matthews (2018). Teaching Resource published in Redrawing the Timeline: Teaching the History of Fashion in the Networked Conditions of the Twenty-First Century.
PhD Collage — Rachel Matthews (2016) A Tastemaker’s Assemblage: The Convergence. Unpublished PhD project research
Research platforms
Check out my Google Scholar profile.
Emporium
Fashion and Textile research seminar group
Research Gate
ResearchGate is the professional network for scientists and researchers.
Academia
Academia is a platform for sharing academic research.