Materials and materialities: Viral and sheep-ish encounters with fashion

The question of what role materials and materialities play in critical fashion studies emerges for us at the present time for at least two reasons We write this introduction in the context of the coro-navirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic As the virus spreads globally from body to body, the importance of material protection, along with ‘social distancing’, becomes paramount In the hospi-tal context, especially, material shortages of face masks and shields, protective gowns, ventilators and testing swabs present life-threatening conditions due to sheer demand as well as supply chain disruptions On 27 February 2020, the World Health Organization declared, ‘The current global stock-pile of PPE [Personal Protective Equipment] is insufficient’ (WHO 2020a) The COVID-19 pandemic brings materials, their flows and functionality into stark relief By the end of April, many countries were recommending or demanding cloth face masks for everyone in public spaces, with the clarifi-cation that medical masks (e g N95s) should be reserved for healthcare workers The materiality of masks raises a number of aesthetic, cultural, psychological and social issues that we discuss – later in this introduction – through the lens of a posthumanist perspective Secondly, but of special significance for this issue of Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, the coin-cidentally timed papers and exhibition review also point directly to issues of materials and mate-rialities All three articles delve into what emerges from the materials associated with sheep: for example, wool fibre, woollen tweed fabric, sheepskin Each also locates material cultural expressions in themes of place, and even nationality, but within larger contexts of globalization Before address-ing the COVID-19 crisis and introducing the articles and the exhibition review in this issue, we briefly explore concepts of materials and materialities in relation to posthumanism © 2020 Intellect Ltd Introduction English language