ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the centrality of fashion theory to the mode of cyberpunk, one that is concerned with clothing, commodity, and personal style. The chapter outlines the influences between cyberpunk texts and textiles in street fashion and club fashion as well as the ways fashion designers take up cyberpunk themes in the highly commoditized world of haute couture. This tension between street style and commercial fashion reflects the narrative tension between corporate control and marginalized subcultures central to many cyberpunk stories. In addition, the chapter also argues that fashion itself is a speculative practice, one that is future-oriented with a constantly shifting set of speculative assumptions about the future of social expression and posthuman embodiment. This emphasis on futurity allows fashion to serve as a science-fictional space for exploring the contradictions inherent in commodity-driven hyper-modernity.
