Cultural Studies, Fashion Theory

Sewing Reality: Fashion in Non-fiction Media
University of Bedfordshire, Luton Campus, UK
9th June 2018


As two distinct art forms, fashion and film have flirted with each other in symbiotic relationships since the dawn of the medium: from British and American actualities showing current high-street fashion, to French newsreels capturing fashion shows. The synergy has been mutually influential also as far as other media are concerned, with pop stars and television dramas inspiring catwalks and collections. While the literature on film and fashion is quickly growing, this interest has primarily focused on fiction and includes, among others, works on the construction of femininity and masculinity through costumes, the definition of national identities through cinematic clothing, and the haptic pleasure of fashion in film. Non-fiction material remains an understudied source, with only a few scholarly works shedding some light on early cinema’s attention to the fashion world, still and moving images in fashion archives, celebrity and fashion, but also make-up culture and TV entertainment, the relationship between austerity and sewing/knitting programs, and the political potential of fashion documentaries.

This interdisciplinary symposium wants to fill this vacuum and excavate and reassess the role of non-fiction media in shaping our understanding of fashion across multiple platforms and different national contexts. The event aims to create an open space for dialogue between fashion and documentary studies, drawing from different methodologies and approaches: media and cultural studies, ethnography, audience research, marketing and public relations.
Sewing Reality aims to discuss the interconnection between fashion and media industries, the audiences of factual moving images about fashion, as well as the past, the present and the future of fashion documentaries.


Curated by: Dr Elena Caoduro, University of Bedfordshire, UK

Keynote Speaker: Pamela Church-Gibson, Reader in Cultural and Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK

PANELS

1a: Fashion Documentaries

• Rona Murray - Have Fun: Fashion Matriarchies
• Daisy Richards - Muses, Mythology and The First Monday in May
• Karen Ritzenhoff - A maverick on the streets: Bill Cunningham, photography and New York fashion

1b: The Pleasure of Sewing

• Laurel Forster - Bringing up the Subject of Sewing
• Joanne Knowles - ‘I should have stayed at home and finished the hem on my skirt’: Sewing, domesticity and distinction in teenage girls’ magazines of the 1970s and 1980s
• Nickianne Moody - Bunty’s Cut-Out Wardrobe Goes to Art College
• + Rosie Steele’s poster

2: Fiction/Factual fashion exchanges

• Rachel Velody - Stitching authority
• Mariaemanuela Messina - Fashion Cinema and Representations

3: Capturing the Fashion Real

• Mark Pickering - HUMAN SEE, HUMAN DO: A case study exploration of the para-social interaction between celebrity blogger and fashion consumer
• Boel Ulfsdotter - Shooting fashion: the double-bind of a non-fiction approach to Paris Fashion Week

4: Fashioning the Archive

• Silvia Vacirca - Call to fashion reality: a closer look at Istituto Luce Archive fashion cinejournals (1939-1941)
• Jihane Dyer - Documenting Fashion Histories on the BBC, 1989-2014: Temporality and Cultural
• Sigrun Lehnert - The Fashion of East and West in German Cinema Newsreels
• Giulia Caffaro - The Italian Ready-to-wear Fashion through Carousels

It is possible to assert that the fashion system constitutes a complex device that determines consumption agendas. Fashion clothing is massively consumed, and consumer habits are deeply affected by online advertising. These consumption practices are not simply passive, sometimes they are creative, yet they are still part of the fashion disciplinary device. In these consumption practices, a range of expressions and discourses between individuals may be detected as well as multiple subjectivities under construction within contemporary societies. The intention of this article is to shed some light on the role of online fashion consumption practices within our societies, which are traversed by daily and prevailingly online advertising and encourage increased consumption. 'Influencers' are one novel example of how online advertising is subtly influencing fashion consumption. Even though consumers show certain tendencies in acquiring fashion clothing from specific brands, via different digital media outlets depending on their socioeconomic status and their peer groups, their consumption practices may try to subvert the conventional formats through which fashion clothing has been consumed traditionally. Nevertheless, as much as these practices seem to promote freedom, they might confirm the tactics of the system and just be a part of the algorithmic logic that imposes certain products, reproducing established categories.

Мода и стил - това са понятия, неразривно свързани едно с друго. Между тези
две явления има и винаги е имало симбиоза. Модата се променя постоянно, а
въвеждането на нови модни стилове се случва ежедневно. Стилът обаче надхвърля честите промени, тенденции и капризи, които изпълват и характеризират модата. Стилът започва като мода, но устоява на модните и годишните промени, а част от естетически издържаните елементи отекват през сезоните и десетилетията. Стилът е по-устойчивото явление в модата, но както и тя самата, той може да е на модната сцена дори само година-две, а след това да остави своите следи в историята. Модата, според Гари Бест е просто „преследване на новости заради самата себе си".

Thinking through fashion is an exciting and challenging exercise. It is dependent on one's ability to critically engage with an array of theories and concepts, at times from thinkers who have not themselves written about fashion. This is the first book designed to accompany readers through the process of thinking through fashion. It aims to help them grasp both the relevance of social and cultural theory to the fields of fashion, dress, and material culture and, conversely, the relevance of those fields to social and cultural theory. It does so by offering a guide through the work of selected major thinkers, introducing their concepts and ideas, discussing when relevant how these have been appropriated by other authors to engage with the topic of fashion, and looking at other ways in which they can be appropriated to reflect on this topic. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and is devoted to a key thinker, capturing the significance of their thought to understanding of the field of fashion, while also assessing the importance of this field for a critical engagement with the thinker's ideas. Japanese translation. Publisher: Tokyo: Film Art Inc., 2019, 466 pp. ISBN 978-4-8459-1716-7: http://filmart.co.jp/books/fashion/fashion_philosophy/.

3D printing technologies are among the new developments in fashion design. The Dutch designer Iris van Herpen is one of the forerunners of 3D printing in fashion design. She is particularly known for her 3D printed designs of ‘fractal folds’: designs of inimitable curves, bends, and loops. Morphing art, fashion and technology, she developed productive collaborations with scientists and artists. Through a mixed method this article provides background information and gives insight into the design practice of the fashion house of Iris van Herpen in Amsterdam. Iris van Herpen combines highly technical specifications with a commitment to aesthetic design. In her designs she intertwines the digital and the material and the human and the non-human. Such intertwinements are characteristic of posthumanism that postulates a dynamic notion of life in which human bodies are inextricably entangled with the non-human—like fibers, silicones, garments, and technologies. The article interprets Van Herpen’s work within the context of posthuman theory, so as to make sense of its avant-garde aesthetic. Out of innovative technologies, new materials, and assiduous craftsmanship, Van Herpen creates a visual and material language of fractal folds that expresses the affective mood of a posthuman world.

This is definitely NOT an academic essay.  It is an introduction to an exhibition of my fashion dolls at Canberra Museum and Gallery. There has been an explosion of fashion dolls for adults in the last  15 years or so, and there does not seem to be much written about the anthropology of dolls. For this tiny pamphlet I am indebted to: Jean-Pierre Rossie, Toys, play, culture and society: An anthropological approach with reference to North Africa and the Sahara (SITREC, Stockholm 1005/2013), Max von Boehn, Dolls (F. Bruckmann, Munich 1929, New York, 1972, translated by Josephine Nicoll), and M. G. Lord, Forever Barbie: The unauthorized biography of a real doll (New York, 1994).

Fashion in the twenty-first century in Iran has become highly inventive, surprisingly innovative, and undoubtedly glamorous. This is a surprise to some in the West who are accustomed to seeing images of large public gatherings of men and women in drab clothing engaged in religious or political activities that seem to be decidedly lacking in any elements that could be called “fashionable.”

Women in particular are portrayed in the all-enveloping
chador, usually solid black, which has become a Western trope for female repression. Fashion in Iran has, in fact, been remarkable for its flexibility and for its role in cultural communication. It has been directly responsive to social and political events in the country for as long
as documentation has existed. Iranians take enormous care in their dress, exhibiting a great deal of attention and individualism.

Every element of Iranian fashion is socially coded, making it easy to determine the political, social, and personal attitudes of the wearer. Because dress is such a potent public statement, attempts on the part of the Iranian state to impose standards and requirements
on the population have been a universal phenomenon over many centuries.

Before one can understand the current status of fashion in Iran, it is necessary to understand the elements from which fashion is constructed. These consist both of material element, like fabrics and tailoring, ethnic traditions from the many cultural groups that live under the rubric of Iranian culture, and historical social forces that have inspired the expression of Iranian identity
over the years. These three elements: material, cultural, and historical, have shifted and interacted with each other to create fashion variation.

Contemporary fashion in the Netherlands shows a unique mix of playful individualism, conceptual strength, and organisational innovation. Delft Blue to Denim Blue maps the landscape of Dutch fashion in all its rich variety and complexity. Luxuriously illustrated in colour, the book uncovers the cultural roots of Dutch fashion in a globalized context. The authors debunk myths surrounding Dutch fashion, dig up new facts and stories, and explore the creative relation of fashion design to cultural heritage. Written by experts in the field, Delft Blue to Denim Blue gives a thorough overview of designers, ranging from G-Star jeans, and affordable retailer C&A, to a savvy brand like Vanilia, and from the famous designer duo Viktor&Rolf to a futuristic designer like Iris van Herpen. The book assesses the diversity of Dutch fashion designers, firms and brands in their historical and cultural contexts.

El libro Medellín, medio siglo de moda: 1900-1950 de William Cruz Bermeo se analiza cómo en Medellín se vivió y experimentó la moda a inicios del siglo XX. Su libro es un recorrido ameno por el pasado de la moda colombiana -de la forma cómo las personas asumieron las ideas sobre el vestir, de la influencia de la moda internacional, del inicio de las tiendas departamentales, de la forma cómo se difundió la moda a través de las revistas de la época y del papel de la publicidad en el consumo de la moda- en un contexto de plena modernización en donde la apariencia, el buen vestir (...)

I fashion blog sono la peculiare declinazione che il fenomeno del blogging ha assunto nel campo della moda. Nati come ‘diari personali’ di operatori, professionisti e consumatori per condividere con altri utenti i propri personali gusti in materia di abbigliamento e tendenze, si sono presto contraddistinti per un prevalere della componente iconografica su quella testuale, tanto che sono spesso indicati come ‘fashion photoblog’. Esempi opposti ma ugualmente paradigmatici di questo universo composito sono, da un lato, The Sartorialist, blog del fotografo statunitense Scott Schuman, che nei suoi post ritrae persone dal look particolare incontrate nelle capitali mondiali della moda e fotografate per strada; dall’altro non può non essere citato Style Rookie dell'adolescente americana Tavi Gevinson, tipico esempio di blog nato ‘dal basso’ e capace di fare di una consumatrice, per di più giovanissima, un punto di riferimento degli appassionati di moda. Le fotografie del professionista Schuman e gli autoscatti della giovane Tavi hanno ben poco in comune, fatta eccezione per i milioni di contatti mensili. Mostrano, dunque, quanto varie possano essere le fonti di informazione sulla moda nell’epoca del web 2.0.
Una prima classificazione dei fashion blog può essere fatta individuando tre categorie di contenuti. In primo luogo gli ‘outfit’, vale a dire l’insieme dei capi e accessori indossati da una persona. Il più seguito blog italiano è quello di Chiara Ferragni (The Blonde Salad), che propone quasi quotidianamente fotografie della sua autrice con mise sempre diverse, nel tentativo di proporre e sperimentare soluzioni vestimentarie sempre inedite e aggiornate. Esistono poi blog dedicati allo ‘streetstyle’ e ispirati al capostipite The Sartorialist, in cui l’attenzione si concentra sui passanti e sui loro intriganti look; blog che hanno creato una sorta di database globale sugli stili urbani, in un panorama che, da Hel Looks a Manyla Style, trasforma le città in passerelle aperte 24 ore al giorno. Una terza tipologia di blog si occupa invece di ‘vintage’ e va alla ricerca di capi usati o nuovi, ma con una patina piacevolmente retro. I tre generi possono ovviamente ibridarsi, ma molti blog seguono da subito una di queste strade e la mantengono nel tempo. Accanto a questa tripartizione dobbiamo però osservare la nascita di fashion blog aziendali, promossi da imprese produttrici di moda per stabilire un contatto dialogico con i propri consumatori; un approccio molto spesso non orientato alla vendita e alla promozione del brand, capace di affrontare temi di discussione più ampi, come accade in Benetton Talk.

FULL ARTICLE ON: VITA E PENSIERO, vol. 3, 2011

The aim of this master thesis is to find out how the everyday life is aestheticized through the
medium of photography in fashion brand imagery and what impact does it have on professional photographers, consumers, and products in focus. To present the perspectives of both professional photographers and consumers, the in-between method of triangulation was
used.

This chapter examines fashion practices and discourses through the work of philosopher Michel Foucault. The growth of academic interest in Foucault’s work has reflected shifts in thinking about the nature of power, but how might we apply his concepts to the embodied practices of fashion and dress? Follows the development of Foucault's thinking from the objectifying effects of the sciences, modes of power/knowledge, to biopolitics; this chapter highlights the value of his body of work to research on the social and political significance of fashion.

Members of online menswear communities spend their leisure time engaged in extensive textual discussions of menswear. This article presents some of the findings from a study of these online menswear communities. It is based on an online ethnography of six online menswear forums and 51 in-depth interviews with men from Britain, Canada and the United States who use them. It details how the research participants , despite their passion for clothing, produced a rhetorical distance between style and fashion. Fashion was rejected in favour of what was described as 'classic menswear', 'style', 'timeless style' or simply 'clothes'. This was a productive critique of fashion's temporality, with online menswear communities offering a more democratic , inclusive and participatory alternative to men's fashion. However, this rejection of fashion also reflected the persistent gendering of fashion. As spaces for the discussion of clothing, as opposed to fashion, online menswear communities allowed men to enjoy clothes and consumption without their masculinity being tainted by fashion's associations with femininity.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the role of fear and desire in the work of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. The research is focused on the projection of the designers’ personal experiences and traumas on their creations and the interaction between the garments as symbols and the female body. It also aims to highlight the shaping of the designers’ ideal females and their connection to the concepts of fear and desire. In order to explain the relations between the designers, their backgrounds, their symbols and the concepts, I explore related fashion theories with sociological background along with the most important work in the field of fashion and psychoanalysis. The study’s conclusions are related to the exploration of the symbols of fear and desire as they are projected on the designers’ collections, the dialogue between their ideal females and the interrelation between fear and desire as fashion concepts.

Whilst the Gothic and Lolita subcultural movement arose in Japan, it represents a transmigration and collaboration of ideas between Japanese and Euro-American cultures, especially pertaining to the Gothic. It, therefore, initially shifted towards sites that shared similar interests regarding these gothic roots, such as the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada. In more recent years, however, growing “hotspots” have included Latin-American nations, with none more conspicuous than Mexico.
The transition of the Japanese Gothic and Lolita movement into Mexico poses new and pertinent questions associated with differing socio-politics and cultural understandings and meanings, particularly regarding gender, sexuality, and even religion. Why is this movement becoming prevalent in Mexico? Why does it resonate with participants there? How does it operate? What relationships does it have with local and historical traditions, rituals, practices, and superstitions? And, what does it say about the concept of Subculture, itself? Is the notion of a resistant subculture really dead? How is it transformed?
As both an “insider” (participant) and “outsider” (critical observer) researcher of the increasingly globalising Gothic and Lolita subculture, my most recent ethnographic studies, comprised of surveys, interviews and personal communications, have been concentrated on answering these questions in regard to Latin-American Lolita communities, with a focus on, or major case study being, Mexico. This paper reveals some of these findings, which will go towards my PhD: Doctor of Philosophy in Visual and Material Culture thesis, and subsequent publications.

Kathryn A. Hardy Bernal
Kathryn A. Hardy Bernal is an art and design historian and subcultural fashion theorist. She is currently a PhD candidate at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. Her latest research explores the translation and transmigration of complex socio-political ideas associated with the Lolita subcultural movement across Japanese, Euro-American, and into Hispanic cultures.

Art and fashion have always play with the ambiguous attraction adults feel towards tween eroticism. In 1998 the fashion photographer Ellen Von Unwerth shot a picture for the cover of the magazine i-D in collaboration with the model Devon Aoki. In the portrait, many little details are very interesting: Devon Aoki is photographed with glossy and red lips, her sullen face covered with freckles, her blue eyes wide, and her nails lacquered, again with red color. These details are sufficient to make us think of Devon Aoki as a doll and modern Lolita. Through some case histories, taken from art and fashion, this paper wants to underline the role of photographic voyeurism in narrating the story of this very eternal taboo: the tween eroticism. He is Full Professor of History of Photography at the University of Bologna. Among his recent books and papers: Le idee della fotografia. La riflessione teorica dagli anni Sessanta ad oggi (Milan: Bruno Mondadori 2001); Nelle ombre di un sogno. Storia e idee della fotografia di moda (Milan: Bruno Mondadori 2004); L'immagine infedele. La falsa rivoluzione della fotografia digitale (Milan: 2006); Fotografia e pittura nel Novecento (e oltre) (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2012); Fotografia e arti visive (Rome: Carocci, 2014); Che cos'è la fotografia (Rome: Carocci, 2017).

Fashion Digital Memories
EUROPEANA FASHION SYMPOSIUM 2017
Venice, May 22-23, 2017

Conservation/Explication: The Costume Institute’s use of digital technologies for the preservation and interpretation of its Charles James collection by Sarah Scaturro

The Costume Institute’s 2014 exhibition  Charles James: Beyond Fashion achieved an unprecedented depth in the understanding and explication of Charles James’ mastery of fashion through its critical use of technology, which included moving cameras, robots, animations, and projections. Curated by Harold Koda and Jan Reeder, the success of the exhibition hinged on the synergistic relationship between technology and fashion object, mediated through knowledge gleaned by the conservation team, who dissected and analyzed all of the garments on display. The conservators’ active role in the exhibition’s interpretive content was itself unprecedented for the Institute, as they were tasked with not only analyzing how James made his garments, but with translating information gleaned through 3D scanning, x-radiography, 360 photography, and material analyses to the designers, engineers, and computer programmers responsible for the development of the technological exhibition components.
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The conservators were inspired by the exhibition’s successful integration of digital technologies, and thus began explorations into the potential of technology to aid the preservation of Costume Institute’s collection. One significant outcome is the completion of an innovative project utilizing 3D scanning to create custom manufactured storage torso forms for Charles James gowns that cannot be hung or stored flat. The success of this project has encouraged the conservation team to deploy scanning and other digital technologies to preserve other aspects of the Institute’s collection, such as synthetic materials. This paper will explore the conservator’s role in the creation of explicative digital materials that were a critical part of the  Charles James: Beyond Fashion exhibition, and will show how the exhibition’s use of technology has inspired further digital explorations aimed at preserving the Costume Institute’s collection.

The following article examines the mechanisms structuring two thematically similar documentaries: The September Issue and Mademoiselle C. I consider both documentaries for their common fixation on the public and private lives of two prominent fashion editors: American Vogue's Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and CR Fashion Book's Carine Roitfeld. Examining a few key scenes from these documentaries, I discuss the cinematic techniques that create illusions of access, discussing the resulting power dynamics structuring each production. The fashion industry has risen to greater cultural prominence in recent decades, evident from the increase in documentaries focused on the professionals and institutions running the fashion business, including Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf (Meile, 2013), In Vogue: The Editor's Eye (Bailey and Barbato, 2012), Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (Vreeland, Tcheng and Perlmutt, 2012) and a number of reality television shows. The common thread (besides fashion) uniting these films is their fixation on the public and private lives of the professional women who direct the production of fashion ephemera.

Between 1986 and 1988, American Vogue ran a series of advertorials entitled "Fashion Plus." Documenting the mid-1980s explosion of designer-led plus-size fashion, the series offers a rare glimpse into an overlooked moment in the history of large-size dress; however, it also stands as a singular foray into plus-size fashion for Vogue--a periodical that marginalizes representations of non-normative bodies. While its mere inclusion within the pages of Vogue is historically significant, this article will shift its focus by examining the crucial role pose played in the advertorial's postmodern "refashioning" of the fat female body. While interrogating the concept of fashioning as a process that occurs at the intersection of text, image, body and garment, this article also considers how an embodied vernacular of fashion posing transformed the fat female body, making it "fit" for the pages of Vogue. Indeed, by striking identifiably "modelesque" poses, the models of "Fashion Plus" upset deeply entrenched norms of imaging the fat female body, while widening Vogue's notoriously narrow definition of beauty. Framing the plus-size body as a product of postmodern notions of identity construction, this article also reflects upon the relationship between dress, discourse and the fleshy body in the construction of identity.

This paper will offer a historic analysis of the shift dress as essential to the middle and upper-middle class American woman’s wardrobe and its lasting influence on American sportswear and the collections of luxury brands as a signifier of understated feminine youthful health through movement.

This paper will argue that the shift dress’s key place in the American woman’s wardrobe reflects the unique historical and cultural influences on American dress from the birth of the new democratic nation in the eighteenth century to the dominance of New York City’s ready-to-wear sportswear industry in the mid-twentieth century.

The shift dress can be traced back to the 1920s chemise. Dresses of that era, particularly those of Coco Chanel, featured exposed legs and arms, simple cuts, loose shapes and little waist definition. This was a move away from corsets and offered women both style and ease of movement. It became a staple of the American woman’s wardrobe in the 1960s and signified a new trend in women’s clothing as the garment promoted independence, modernity, a redefinition of the female shape, and concurrent ideological expectations of the female form.

Fashion plays a significant role in the global creative industries and in urban social space, and has recently evolved from a peripheral topic to a valued interdisciplinary subject coined as " fashion-ology, " investigating how fashion as an intangible and changeable meaning is systematically produced by and amongst different cultural intermediaries, and how it is cyclically diffused in society. As an exercise in understanding the conflictual notions of fashion in operation under the rubric of production inside a local fashion media organization, this study emphasizes how text and image in fashion representation can be multifarious and are intertwined with the commercial and capitalist logic of the fashion industry. This research supplements related ethnographic studies and discerns how industry practitioners actually negotiate fashion meanings and are constantly torn between encoding desirable (luxury) fashionability, while at the same time anticipating and serving different advertisers' interests. Fieldwork data portray partly conflicting, partly consistent notions of fashion among different workers in the fashion media. The focus was: What shapes the collective interpretation and production of fashionability within a media organizational setting? The responses demonstrate the effect of advertising on fashion editorial pages and its major role in shaping fashionability, in addition to the contradictory rules guiding how media people strive to present a preferred face of luxury fashion in the magazine and why such an attempt was unsuccessful in this case.

Cátedra Abierta, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín
Ponentes: Claudia Fernández Silva, Mauricio Velásquez Posada
Abril 28 del 2011
Presentación de la ponencia:
http://prezi.com/dvowdgyw_xt1/ponencia-mamm-esteticas-urbanas-claudia-fernandez-silva-mauricio-velasquez-posada/

Introducción: Las estéticas urbanas aparecen en el instante mismo en el que el cuerpo entra en relación con el espacio sociocultural que acota y determina su experiencia del mundo: la ciudad, construyendo todo un juego de representaciones de sí mismo a través de su apariencia. El cuerpo ajusta su apariencia a esas experiencias a las cuales se adscribe como poseedor (al menos simuladamente) de unas ideas de vida, de prácticas en relación a un contexto. La charla de hoy se dirige a observar los agentes que detonan la formación de estéticas en el ámbito urbano y no de tipologías estéticas. Vamos a indagar sobre esos procesos que llevan a los cuerpos a investir una identidad particular dentro del escenario urbano. Esos procesos los entenderemos como la estrategia de diferenciarse a través de una escenificación de sus identidades (presuntas), desde su apariencia a través de operaciones vestimentarias y espaciales.

In an era where the physical and the digital are conversely intertwined, physical experiences are either enhanced through the repercussions of digital technology or even substituted. With each own institutional website per museum, more are adding a section where visitors may view the digitised collections unique to the museum. Progressively, fashion and dress collections have also been digitised with accumulation more recently – aiding the efficiency of collection management methods. Here, emphasis is placed upon reasons museums present dress collections digitally and the implications of it. Where the largest museum dress collections records are found around Europe and America, the examples provided are mainly Western. Despite the digitisation of collections to provide public access being an on-going and progressive move by cumulative institutions, little have been considered on the repercussions of technology. Consequently, this research aims to explicate the impacts of digitising collections for presenting through the Internet and its effectiveness by testing the enduring benefits against how it will affect the visitors’ experience and future curatorial practices through conducting empirical research.

El estudio del ámbito cortesano ha centrado sus esfuerzos en esclarecer diversas cuestiones que atañen al ceremonial regio, los círculos de poder o el refinamiento artístico desarrollado en el Alcázar. Considerando a la Corte como un espacio social donde convergen no solo las élites, sino otros oficios cuyo fin fue satisfacer al monarca, el espectro de análisis se abre a un estudio marcadamente interdisciplinar atendiendo tanto a factores profesionales como familiares. Por lo tanto, nuestra investigación se centra en conocer cómo los artífices accedieron al servicio real y de qué manera quedaban insertos dentro de una jerarquía laboral. Asimismo, resulta necesario esclarecer cuál fue el papel de las familias del Antiguo Régimen pues, articulando y tejiendo sus redes estratégicas, lograron conservar el privilegio de servir en la Cámara Real.

This paper delineates the conceptual variations between the notions 'fashion', 'dress' and 'costume' in English-language texts on women's garment histories using relevant examples from interwar Romanian periodicals. The aim is to offer a more precise formulation, as these three terms have largely been used interchangeably. This paper is built on an interdisciplinary model stemming from fashion studies towards semiotics, sociology and cultural and art history. I define 'fashion' as a permanently changing progeny of modernity linked to capitalism and consumerism, but also to modernism and technological progress. 'Dress' is a generalised term for clothing worn in a variety of contexts connected more to identity or activity. 'Costume' narrows the scope of 'dress' to a particular style or outfit suggesting specific markers of social position, occupation or ethnicity and can often be deemed as necessary for admission, recognition or acceptability in certain contexts. 'Fashion' would then chiefly apply to cultural studies or history, 'dress' to anthropology or sociology and 'costume' to ethnology or media and art history. Using interwar Romanian examples, this paper offers a viable terminological clarification regarding genre, subject, scope and usability for historical sartorial themes.

Resumen. El título del presente artículo recoge nuestro interés y voluntad por aproximarnos a los diferentes trajes cortesanos de la reina María Luisa de Parma. El vestido y la propia fisonomía de la reina están sometidos a una serie de transformaciones que nacen a fines del siglo XVIII, uno de los cambios más relevantes es el desuso del traje de corte con tontillo por el vestido camisa. Las cuentas, encargos e inventarios de la soberana conservados en el Archivo General de Palacio en Madrid constituyen una fuente esencial para el estudio de la moda y de las prendas que componía el Real Guardarropa de la esposa de Carlos IV.

Editor: Centro de Documentación y Museo Textil de Terrassa (Barcelona).
ISSN electrónico: 1139-028X

What is it about beauty that makes it “such a likely conduit for racial—not just racist—imaginings” (Cheng 2000: 195)? What is the relationship between processes of racialization and aestheticiziation? Is beauty only a technology for abstract equality that generates and veils material inequality, or might beauty also be a viable space for critique? This course will explore these questions through interdisciplinary readings in anthropology, sociology, history, and literary and social criticism and guided ethnographic inquiries of local aesthetic industries and practices.

This chapter discusses approaches to expanded fashion practices. The central focus here is not making garments, but a post-productivist stance, with implications in relation to the production of fashion and its associated meaning. There is an attempt to see fashion beyond its commercial limitations, and instead use fashion film to speculate on our bodies as well as how we perform our materials, clothing, and wardrobes to materialise and dematerialise ourselves. This chapter carefully negotiates film as a useful critical tool, building on fashion’s own ability for image-making, where fashion colludes with dominant narratives. Power is enacted symbolically through bodies via a language of signs that non-verbally convey meanings about individuals; such fashion discourses can be diverted to critically address fashion itself as a system. This exploratory chapter surveys some of the objects, ideas and approaches my practice-as-research into material and immaterial fashion through the semiotics of fashion.