Toby Slade

A/Prof Toby Slade is an Associate Professor and Acting Head of the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). His research focuses on Japanese fashion history, popular culture, and decolonizing fashion narratives. He previously held roles at the University of Tokyo and Bunka Gakuen University in Japan. Slade is an authority on Japanese fashion modernity, luxury consumption, and the aesthetics of kawaii (cute fashion). His work challenges Eurocentric fashion discourse through projects like the Research Collective for Decolonialising Fashion.

Education: PhD from the University of Sydney, Australia. Academic roles include Director of Higher Degrees by Research and Acting Associate Dean in UTS's Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building. He leads UTS's Imagining Fashion Futures Lab, exploring alternative fashion histories and global consumption patterns.

Research interests:

• Decolonial approaches to fashion history
• Luxury's evolving definitions in Japan
• Kawaii aesthetics and social strategies
• Edo/Meiji period clothing cultures
• Fashion's role in modernity debates

Publications include two seminal books: Japanese Fashion: A Cultural History (2009) and Introducing Japanese Popular Culture (2018). Recent articles analyze Tokyo Olympics fashion symbolism, samurai armor dandyism, and non-Western decolonized fashion narratives.

Grants/Advising: No specific grants mentioned, but extensive international collaborations in fashion studies. Supervises PhD candidates through his leadership roles in higher degree research.

Labs/Teams: Leads Imagining Fashion Futures Lab at UTS. Co-founded the Research Collective for Decolonialising Fashion, an international network challenging dominant Eurocentric fashion narratives.