This article seeks to contribute to the debate on the proposal to decentre urban the ory and to develop postcolonial urban studies, and on the related issue of the geography of the production and circulation of knowledge. It focuses on how scholars writing about post-socialist cities explain why their sub-field has so far contributed little to urban theory, and it proposes an alternative--historically informed--perspective on the issue. Based on an anal ysis of the ties and exchanges that existed between urban studies in Central and Eastern Europe and 'West-based' urban theory and research during the state-socialist period, this article argues that the recognized current position of research on post-socialist cities in relation to international urban scholarship has important historical parallels with the period prior to 1989. The article thus underlines the need to include a historically informed analysis of geography of knowledge production in critical thinking about urban theory and in the project of cosmopolitan urban studies. The capacities of researchers in different localities to contribute to this project are various and shaped by the history of the discipline. The conditions and perspectives in and from which researchers contribute to urban theory should therefore be taken into account if the project of cosmopolitan urban studies is to succeed. FERENČUHOVÁ 1Although this question is also receiving attention (see e.g. Hirt, 2012, and for an overview Ferenčuhová, 2015).

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This paper works at the intersection of three bodies of writing; theories relating to fashion, identity and the city; debate relating to urban materialities, assemblages and context; and cultural interventions advancing the study of post-socialism. Drawing on empirical research undertaken in Bratislava, Slovakia, we unpack a blurring of public and private space expressed through clothing. In contrast to elsewhere in the city, in Petržalk, a high-rise housing estate from the socialist period, widely depicted as anonymous and hostile since 1989, residents are renowned for wearing 'comfortable' clothes in order to 'feel at home' in public space. We describe the relationship between fashion, identity and comfort as an everyday 'political' response to state socialism and later the emergence of consumer capitalism. We argue however, that by considering materialities, assemblages and context that studies of fashion and consumer culture can offer more complex political, economic, social, cultural and spatial analysis. To that end, we show how personal and collective consumption bound up with comfort and city life can be understood with reference to changing temporal and spatial imaginaries and experiences of claiming a material 'right to the city'.