Harriette Richards

Dr Harriette Richards is Lecturer, Fashion Enterprise in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University, Melbourne. Previously, she was a Research Associate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne working on the ARC Future Fellowship project (2018-2022) ‘Modernism, Cosmopolitanism and Consumer Culture’ with Professor Natalya Lusty.

Harriette is co-founder of the Critical Fashion Studies research group and is currently working on projects investigating modern slavery, consumer culture and radical transparency in the Australian fashion industry and sustainable fashion innovation. Her research interests include fashion in Aotearoa New Zealand, settler colonial theory, melancholia, ethical and sustainable fashion, feminist framings of value and the future of fashion.

In 2021, she co-edited a ‘Fashion Futures’ special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies with Professor Natalya Lusty and Dr Rimi Khan. She has published in Q1 journals including Cultural Studies and Gender, Work & Organization and, most recently, has published work on Janet Frame’s ‘frock consciousness’ in Australian Feminist Studies and fashion’s transparency industry in the International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy.