Fashion Studies

"The Culture of Dress History in France: The Past in Fashion, 1814-1900," studies the role of historic dress and dress history in creating knowledge about the past in nineteenth century France. This research examined how the practice of writing about, collecting, exhibiting, making, and representing historic and historicizing dress helped the French visualize their past. The conceptual questions raised by looking at the way that people observed and used historic artifacts not only expands the history of studying artifacts but also contributes to our thinking about how to study an artifact.

Directed by Peter Miller and Michele Majer. 433 pages. Defended in September, 2015. Registered in ProQuest in 2016.

This research paper was for the completion of the "Materiality of Fashion" course instructed by Professor Sarah Scaturro, previous Head Conservator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Introduction: In the twentieth century, during the wake of modernist experimentation across the visual and performance arts to which fashion was linked, designers projected images of themselves by establishing relationships to such categories as the ‘new’, the ‘classic’, and the ‘timeless.’  Elizabeth Wilson explains, “fashion is dress in which the key feature is rapid and continual changing of styles. Fashion in a sense is change" (2003: 3).  Because fashion was and is in a constant state of movement, the industry was in an ongoing orientation of the new. As its own enterprise, the innovation and changeability suggest the multifaceted temporality of fashion.

Flexible, inclusive and accessible provision of education and training online can provide a supportive learning environment to the students studying fashion with the help of blended, flipped classes or online courses. Also the employees working in the fashion domain might be exposed to the on-the-job training activities through e-Learning courses for instance on learning about corporate history, culture or new safety regulations. This research investigates the role of new media in education in the field of fashion, harvesting existing online courses and categorizing them according to subdomains so to provide a clear overview of the field. More than 60 available online training platforms related to the fashion domain are analysed. Results may be considered as a first picture of the e-Learning domain related to the fashion industry.

O livro "Moda e ironia em Dom Casmurro" foi publicado em 2010, Editora Alameda, fruto de uma pesquisa desenvolvida nos anos de 2005 a 2007, como dissertação de mestrado da autora.
"Moda e ironia em Dom Casmurro" foi a primeira obra brasileira a abordar a moda na literatura como estratégia de criação literária.
Tornou-se, desde então, uma referência para pesquisadores que pretendem empreender estudos sobre moda e literatura no Brasil, sendo a autora uma precursora na área.
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The book "Moda e ironia em Dom Casmurro" was published in 2010, Editora Alameda, the result of a research developed in the years 2005 to 2007, as a master's thesis of the author.
"Moda e ironia em Dom Casmurro" was the first Brazilian work to approach fashion in literature as a strategy of literary creation.
It has since become a reference for researchers who intend to undertake studies on fashion and literature in Brazil, and the author is a precursor in the field.

Andrew Rossi’s 2016 documentary film, The First Monday in May, is ostensibly about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s extravagant black-tie gala, held every spring to inaugurate the Costume Institute’s annual blockbuster exhibition. This star-studded media event has become both a financial boon to the Met – raking in over $12.5 million for the Costume Institute, or its entire yearly operating budget – as well as a staple on fashion and celebrity calendars. The film offers a classic ‘front stage’ and ‘backstage’ glimpse into preparations for the event, following a cast of well-known characters from the fashion industry – including, among others, Vogue editor-in-chief and host of the gala, Anna Wintour – as they prepare the red carpet event, while turning its lens in equal measure to the decidedly less glamorous backstage job of preparing the exhibition itself, documenting white-coated assistants performing the mundane tasks mannequin dressing, installation and conservation. Amid the lushly filmed celebrity cameos, however, a more interesting, if overlooked portrait undergirds the film. This subplot focuses on the day-to-day activities of Andrew Bolton, the soft-spoken Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, as he researches and prepares the 2015 exhibition, China: Through the Looking Glass.

Miniskirt has gone from being the uniform of dissent to be the most common dress for dancers on show business, from being the object of feminist struggles to be the absolute protagonist in tacky dance shows. From the creation of miniskirt , by Mary Quant during the Sixties, this dress had changed his social status, becoming accepted in various social contest and becoming very successful over the years, even giving origins to similar dresses like "belt-skirt" and "hot-pants". How has the miniskirt meaning changed? Focusing on a selection of meiningful cases while analysing them with semiotics' instruments, we will underline the processes that allowed this change which is, first of all, a preception change in society. The main goal will be to follow the evolution of what was considered just a gender protest troughout apparel and than became, over the years, a perfectly common dress in show business universe and in everyday life.

This article examines the overlooked market of plus-size fashion and explores the ways in which the fashion industry neglects and marginalizes fat consumers. Faced with limited options in garments colloquially known as “plus-size” or “outsize” that are typically relegated to dark corners of clothing stores and are excluded from the pages of high fashion periodicals, the plus-size consumer lacks options in fashioning her self-identity. Under these circumstances, the role the fashion industry has played in further entrenching fat stigma in the collective consciousness and in abetting the processes of fat identity formation amongst plus-size consumers merits closer examination. Drawing upon the collected sartorial biographies of three self-identifying plus-size women, this article considers the ways in which fat identities are formed through the intimate practices of self-fashioning and via social channels such as shopping and fashion blogging, thereby bridging the fields of fat studies and fashion studies. It also takes into account issues of performativity and dress as a situated bodily practice. Through these case studies, the role the fashion industry plays in the processes of fat identity formation is brought to the fore, as are the complicated, creative, and sometimes subversive means through which fat women engage with plus-size fashion.

In Fashion: Culture, Commerce, Craft, and Identity For the contributors to In Fashion: Culture, Commerce, Craft, and Identity being "in fashion" is about self-presentation; de ning how fashion is presented in the visual, written, and performing arts; and about design, craft, manufacturing, packaging, marketing and archives. The book's international cast of authors engage "in" fashion from various disciplinary, professional, and creative perspectives; i.e. Those interested in an interdisciplinary approach to fashion, i.e., the social, cultural, cross-cultural, historical, art, archival, and business aspects of fashion, as well as those concerned about sustainability and craft. For more information see brill.com Order information: Order online at brill.com The Americas: 1 (860) 350 0041 | brillna@turpin-distribution.com Outside the Americas: 44 (0) 1767 604-954 | brill@turpin-distribution.com Submission information: brill.com/authors Titles published by Ferdinand Schöningh, Wilhelm Fink and mentis: +49 (0)7154 1327 10 | brill@brocom.de

As a category of fashion, masks have been worn in both secular and ritual circumstances across time and cultures. At the heart of masking is the concealment or obscuring of identity. Masks enable the wearer to occupy and enact alternative identities, perform without fear of reprisal and maintain anonymity. They are therefore useful tools to analyze human behavior. Yet while the mask is a pervasive feature within fashion and popular culture, it has, until recently, been largely unrecognised as an influence in fashioning identity today.

This paper will analyse the fashion mask, tracing its earliest uses in the sixteenth century through to its presence in contemporary fashion collections where its symbolic potential is embraced. A focus on specific examples will offer insight into fashion designers who have employed the mask as an instrument of fantasy and empowerment. Masking as seen in contexts such as in club culture and Mardi Gras will be evaluated to demonstrate how these grassroots activities have been adopted not only by fashion designers, but by popular culture icons such as Björk, Kanye West, and Lady Gaga within large-scale, mainstream performances. I conclude that the prevalence of the fashion mask is driven by contemporary shifts in identity politics, mirroring the motives of its earliest uses in fashion history.

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".

Revival of roller derby in the early 2000s garnered significant interest in the sport, and an extensive network of leagues began to form. By 2018, approximately 1,500 leagues were operating in North America, each with a unique logo. In this study, we focus on the league logos as a potent form of embodied fashion representation. Using content analysis, we examined all of the logos for U.S. Women's Flat Track Derby Association-member leagues and have interpreted our findings through a critical cultural analysis. Revival of roller derby in the aughts has repositioned the sport as inclusive of diverse bodies; however, the logos tell a different story. League logos perpetuate hyperfeminized, thin-centric, white bodies-that is, the norms that derby athletes are performatively challenging through participation in the sport.

This dissertation examines how fashion media discourses created the conditions through which the fat, female body was both known and constructed within the context of the early large-size garment industry in the United States, or what between the years 1915 and 1930 was known as “stoutwear.”

Drawing on a wide array of media sources, including women’s and fashion magazines, trade journals, catalogs and style guides, and employing Michel Foucault’s archaeological method, the dissertation examines the productive nature of fashion discourse in the construction and constitution of the fleshy body, or how the discourses of stoutwear brought order to the disorderly, fat, female body. While previous studies of the relationship between dress and the body have theorized how the body is fashioned, this dissertation builds upon these works through its focus on how discourse manifests fashion practices and thereby gives shape to the cultural body.

The first chapter provides an overview of this premise, reviews the small body of extant literature on plus-size fashion and defines key terms used in the dissertation. As an extension of the introduction, the second chapter outlines key methodological and theoretical concerns, including the practice of studying a history of fashion “without fashion,” discourse analysis, visual analysis, technologies of the body, fashion media discourse and dress as a situated bodily practice. The ensuing analytical chapters are organized so that they proceed from “macro” practices (i.e. the construction and constitution of the industry, stoutwear design and advertising strategies) to the “micro” (i.e. embodied dress practices) so as to evidence how the discourses of stoutwear touched every level of fashion practice. Chapter three provides a broad historical foundation for the study by examining the origins of the stoutwear industry and identifying the key actors and firms who were instrumental in consecrating the idea of a stoutwear industry separate from, but adjacent to, the burgeoning ready-to-wear industry. Thereafter, chapter four explores the design discourses of stoutwear and how these intersected with the aesthetics of modernism and the nascent technology of standardized sizing. Chapter five examines the practice of selling stoutwear, and specifically how stoutwear was advertised within the women’s and fashion press and how it was sold within department stores. Key issues in this chapter include the representational conventions of depicting fat women in the fashion media and the segregation of stoutwear into separate departments. Chapter six considers what it meant to look stout and how the stigma of stoutness was constructed within mainstream fashion media and ancillary to the slender ideal. Finally, chapter seven looks closely at style guides as a site of self-fashioning discourses.

The dissertation concludes that stoutwear discourses were underpinned by a “slenderness imperative,” or a disciplinary regime that manifested a “stout ideal,” or a stout body that visibly aspired toward slenderness. In its entirety, this interdisciplinary dissertation illuminates a history that has been almost entirely neglected within conventional histories of fashion at large, and within American fashion specifically, while also contributing to the theoretical literature on the relationship between fashion, dress and the body.

La venta de patrones para confeccionar vestidos con estilos novedosos a través de revistas fue un elemento central en el desarrollo y la expansión de los mercados de la moda en el mundo desde la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. En México esta incursión se consolidó en la década de 1920 cuando la revista El Hogar comenzó a vender patrones para confeccionar vestidos de una de las más importantes empresas estadounidenses dedicadas a ese ramo: McCall Company. El Hogar fue una revista mexicana para mujeres editada y dirigida por Emilia Enríquez de Rivera Hauville (1881-1963) de 1913 a 1942. Este artículo narra la entrada de las revistas mexicanas al mundo de la moda, la incursión de El Hogar en el mercado de patrones de moda y las consecuencias de este negocio. El texto también describe el tra- bajo de edición realizado en las secciones de moda de esta revista (“Elegancias” y “Buzón del Departamento de Patrones”)

Концепция выставки «Застёжка на века: Шнуровка» является результатом коллективной работы студентов в рамках курса "Кураторское дело в области моды".
Представленный кейс описывает третий раздел выставки , который призван познакомить посетителей с историей шнуровки в одежде вообще и со шнуровкой в современной одежде в частности.

This article examines how, in the latter aughts, men from the United States thought about their style, favourite clothing, masculine style(s) and the ways they imagined masculinity as articulated through everyday practices of fashioning the body. The body is a site of identity production, situated within broader cultural expectations, commitments and ideals. This study uses demographically balanced open-ended survey responses to gauge men’s relationships to masculine ideals while dressing the body. We ask: how do men think about masculinity in relation to dress? How do they define ‘masculine style’? In this article we examine individual responses about everyday appearance decisions, as well as larger trends. The study is a cross-section from a particular moment in time (May 2008) and uses demographically balanced open-ended survey responses to gauge men’s relationships to masculine ideals while dressing the body. We use descriptive statistics to illustrate how men in the United States – at a particularly transitional moment in time – articulated their perspectives on favourite clothes and masculine style.

The Fashion & the Senses Symposium held at LCF on 27th March 2015 was an international multi-disciplinary forum for industry professionals, practitioners, academics and postgraduate students with a shared interest in this emerging field - fashion and the senses. It was co-organised by Sara Chong Kwan, Associate Lecturer in Cultural and Historical studies at LCF and a final year PhD candidate, and Bethan Alexander,  Course Director of the MA in Fashion Retail Management at LCF.

Fashion hacking is a practice where fashion is reverse engineered and tuned to make users "fashion-­able", using social media to expand transversal tactics in order to reprogram and shapeshift fashion codes. Other traits address the shamanistic rituality of fashion and how participatory practices can expand the realm of fashion beyond the catwalk and ready-­to-­ wear paradigm. Can technologies express the mythical beauty of fashion?

Textbook encompasses the final year of undergraduate studies in fashion design: thesis development, the graduate portfolio, professional preparation, current industry practices, and the future of design education are discussed. Featured on international college-level required reading lists.  Translated into English, German, Chinese, and Korean.

I developed a course for Parsons ADHT Fashion Studies program called Materiality of Fashion.  Course description:
"In this course students will be introduced to the analysis of textiles and fashion through material culture methodology. Utilizing objects in the school’s study collection and the Professor’s private collection, students will be guided through the various steps in the process of identification, documentation and interpretation of artifacts. By engaging hands-on in the analysis of garments, students will become familiarized with the vocabulary of dress and textiles, learn to identify materials, processes and technologies, and conduct research leading to a historical contextualization of garments. The course further provides students basic insights into museum practice and ethics, introducing them to guidelines
for object handling, cataloging, documentation, and condition reporting."

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.

Resumen: Pueblo fue uno de los diarios más importantes durante el franquismo. En los años sesenta, documentó la aparición de los nuevos ritmos musicales y los cambios en las formas del vestir para llegar a una nueva juventud urbana que demandaba mayor libertad. Entre estos re-portajes, destacan los trabajos fotográficos de Juana Biarnés sobre Mary Quant y la irrupción de la minifalda, midifalda y maxifalda. Mediante una práctica de archivo y el empleo de una metod-ología de carácter historiográfico, se pretende hacer una narración en base a los relatos y repre-sentaciones que Pueblo llevó a cabo sobre la irrupción de estas nuevas prendas en la moda joven y el impacto internacional de la revolución Quant. Abstract: Pueblo was one of the most important newspapers during the Franco regime. In the 1960s, it documented the arrival of new musical rhythms and changes in the way of dressing in order to reach a new urban youth that demanded greater freedom. Among these reports, the photograph by Juana Biarnés on Mary Quant and the irruption of the miniskirt, midiskirt and maxiskirt stand out. The research on archives and the use of a historiographic methodology present the stories and representations that Pueblo carried out about the irruption of these new garments in young fashion and the international impact of the Quant revolution.

The contemporary global fashion system is at a unique point of convergence between 'high' and 'low' culture and across creative disciplines and representational spaces. Fashion designers are no longer confined to the catwalk, nor to the physical object of clothing, but are multi-hyphenate creators bringing together design principles from other fields such as architecture, graphic design and fine art. Within this shifting design landscape, 'meta' has entered the millennial colloquial vernacular to describe anything that is self-referential, and has become a trait common to a generation whose cultural production and direct way of communicating is based upon digital social networks such as Instagram and Facebook. The 'metamodern' is a nomenclature paradigm proposition for contemporary culture beyond that of postmodernism and proposes an oscillation between principles characteristic of both the modern and postmodern. This new metamodern paradigm will be aligned within this article and mapped against developments in the contemporary popular 'fashionscape'. This will include the close analysis of multihyphenate interdisciplinary design practitioner Virgil Abloh and examples of the global practice he has established including: his streetwear brand Off White™, his collaboration with Nike and the curation of his 2019 exhibition in Chicago,

Tom Ford (Austin, TX 1961), fashion designer di successo e nuova voce del cinema statunitense contemporaneo, viene raccontato per la prima volta in un libro: le frequentazioni presso lo Studio54 di New York lo porteranno trasversalmente a diventare il direttore creativo di marchi importantissimi della Moda, come Gucci, fino alla fondazione del suo brand indipendente “Tom Ford”. La sua scelta di mettersi alla prova con il Cinema ottiene un successo poderoso prima con A Single Man (2009) e poi con Nocturnal Animals (2016). L’esperienza individuale di Ford, nel libro, si configura come guida per comprendere le dinamiche e i significati profondi intessuti fra l’universo cinematografico e quello della Moda che, proprio in quest’ultimo decennio, con l’innovativa formula del Fashion Film, riesce a farsi portavoce dell’estetica ibrida e brillante del cinema.