GEOPOLITICS OF FASHION. CRITICAL THINKING THROUGH SOFT POWER AND SUSTAINABILITY. A LITERACY FRAMEWORK FOR WEAVING THE PRESENT AND MENDING THE FUTURE.

The underlying reason that drives the research work of this Thesis is the need to make visible the importance and impact of Fashion, which is rarely understood in its whole dimension and rather seen from its aesthetic facet, surrounded by a halo of frivolity and dispensability. Through a textile, it is possible to understand the human being, who he is, or who he wants to be, how he stands before the world, and the values guiding his culture. Because dressing, since the beginning of human history, has been much more than threads interwoven to protect oneself. Dressing is an act full of meaning that entails a universe of relationships, exchanges, dynamics, territories, powers and actors in the making of each garment worn. Today, when Fashion is portrayed through the media as one of the most polluting industries and its abuses and excesses are denounced, it is more necessary than ever to delve into its roots and understand how the Fashion System works worldwide and why. Although this highly complex phenomenon has been analysed in depth from different approaches by semioticians, philosophers, historians and sociologists (Barthes, Flugel, Veblen, Entwistle, Crane, Kawamura, among others), resulting in a rich bibliography, finding a discipline (geopolitics) and a method (ANT) that, like a vast umbrella, allows to gather and connect all this knowledge is more than pertinent if we want to make it visible in all its magnitude in order to examine the reasons for today's ethical and environmental problems and therefore to trigger future changes for a sustainable and circular Fashion System. At the same time, few studies in the literature contrast the Fashion user's point of view in the field. The studies analyse garments, users and their communications at a theoretical level. If field studies are conducted, factories are visited,