The Editor’s Letter: The New Fashion & Market
‘Pateh’ (2022). Photo by Michelle S. Image courtesy of AKSU. Originally published in AKSU.
Dear F&M Readers,
Welcome to the sparkling new Fashion & Market! We are calling it F&M for short, pronounced “F and M”.
I would like to introduce myself. My name is Nadya Wang, and I am a cultural entrepreneur and academic. I run the company Margins Print, which holds the platforms F&M and Art & Market (A&M). It also offers consulting and event planning services in the cultural and educational spaces. I pursued my MA and PhD in History of Art, with specialisation in History of Dress at the Courtauld Institute of Art; and I have been teaching fashion and art full-time at LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore for the past ten years.
F&M began to fill a gap for dependable, up-to-date information on fashion in Southeast Asia. As an entrepreneur and academic, I saw—and still see—an absence of avenues to discover more about what is actually going on in the region. The zhuzhed-up F&M strives to keep going beneath the glossy surfaces of polished products and services that are offered/expected from fashion: the how of how things are done, and the how of how things could be done, individually and collectively.
Thank you to everyone who has been a part of F&M’s journey since it was launched three years ago, for understanding—and believing in—what we have been trying to do. If you have written for the platform, responded to an interview, shared a contact, referred to our content…… we see the work that you do, and we can’t wait to go further with you.
Please meet the F&M core team: Wei Ting Wong, Associate Editor and Sharrona Valezka, Art Director. You may know Wei Ting from Magazine for Young Girls, which she continues to edit. She has led the rebrand F&M to its current, exciting iteration. Sharrona has worked with F&M for most of its existence, and has played a key role in shaping and maintaining its presence.
Here are the three big things the F&M team would like to achieve:
To profile Southeast Asian fashion practitioners who are involved in multiple facets of the ecosystem
To find out about everyone’s processes specific to their circumstances, so we can learn best practices from each other
To work more together—online and offline—with the Southeast Asian fashion community
Do these aims resonate with you? If they do, we would love to work with you. If you would like to share your story, promote your work, collaborate on a project etc., here is the F&M media kit for you to peruse. We look forward to dreaming up new possibilities with you.
Until the next editor’s letter, and with my best wishes,
Nadya
9 August 2024