Fashion and health are symbiotic; each affects the other. Fashion can make us stand straighter and help prevent osteoporosis. Fashion can also damage our feet and our balance through a choice of shoes or it can exercise our leg muscles and improve our gait. Fashion can protect us from the harsh rays of the sun or monitor our health through embedded electronic sensors. Fashion is a visualization of how we choose to live our lives. The fashion choices we make affect our thoughts and feelings (emotionally, spiritually, physically).
This issue will connect fashion to the topic of health and wellbeing. Manuscripts are requested that explore, define, and document the interconnections between fashion and health.

Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:
• Fashion design and wellbeing
• Fashion and sports
• The relationship between healthy lifestyles and fashion design
• Fashion and mental health
• Issues related to body image (cross cultural or cross historical)
• Considerations of health/disease and beauty/ugliness as it relates to body size
• Connections between fashion and appearance management
• Functional fashion and protective apparel
• Unhealthy consumption practices
• Environment and health related to fashion

Submission Guidelines
Prepare a full paper (approximately 6,000–8,000 words in length) for review. You must also include a biography of the author(s) of no more than 60 words on a separate page, an abstract of approximately 200 words, and a list of five keywords. Authors are advised to consult the Berg website for style guidelines (http://www.bergpublishers.com/JournalsHomepage/FashionPractice/AuthorGuidelines/tabid/3732/Default.aspx).
Contacts: Lucy Dunne (ldunne@umn.edu) or the regular editors of Fashion Practice: Marilyn DeLong (mdelong@umn.edu) or Sandy Black (s.black@fashion.arts.ac.uk)
Submission Deadline: May 25, 2012
A symposium at the University of Minnesota is focused on this topic and will serve as a pool. However, submissions for this special issue are not limited to authors of the Fashion and Health Symposium at the University of Minnesota.