Creating Feminist Paths with Mood Boards
Description
In this essay, Floriane Fo Misslin puts forward the idea of using 'mood boards' as activist tools — visual collages that bring together images, references and research in an intersectional feminist approach. By emphasising the importance of citation ethics, they encourage educators, designers, and researchers to explore power, solidarity, and lineage through carefully curated visuals. By centring underrepresented creators and epistemologies, mood boards become sites of resistance, challenging entrenched hierarchies, colonial narratives and disciplinary norms. The text advocates reflexivity in pedagogy, transforming mood boards into archives and generative spaces where feminist histories are honoured and new collective futures are imagined.
Reflection
Misslin's feminist expansion of the mood board as a citational tool is a much-needed intervention in fashion, where visual referencing is often unacknowledged or uncredited. The work draws urgent attention to how inspiration circulates and how it might be redirected towards more ethical, inclusive and reflexive practices. In a field that often celebrates aesthetics without questioning power, this approach provides a critical perspective on citation as both visual and political. It encourages fashion practitioners to trace their influences with care and to reimagine how knowledge is shared.
Quote
"Where does authorship begin? Is a bibliography—or a set of visual references—intellectual property?"
External references
Added on
08.07.25