“The symbologies of the typical costumes of the ‘Rainha Das Rosas’ competition in Barbacena, Minas Gerais, Brazil “ (Glauber Soares junior, Isadora F Oliveira, Fabiano E A Batista and Ítalo J M Dantas)

Originally posted: July 13th, 2021 

Report by Robyn Westcott

The ‘Festa Das Rosas’ festival began in the city or Barbacena, Brazil in 1968. A flower festival, that honours the city’s culture and history with the title event being the ‘Rainha Das Rosas’ a pageant that crowns the queen of roses.

Isadora described that herself and fellow researchers were looking into symbols used in beauty contests and the evolutionary process of the costumes, whilst identifying how they reflect the time and place. She explained that they were to use the study of material culture, observational video graphic review as well as interviews to obtain information on the subject, specifically focusing on the case study of contestants in the ‘Rainha Das Rosas’ competition.

Rainha Das Rosas

When immigrants from Germany and Italy came to the city of Barbacena, to escape the European economic crisis following WW2, they began to grow flowers as a source of income. This became a key part of the economy of which the city still relies on today, as a major supplier to states such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Since the 1970’s, the city has become nationally-known as ‘the city of roses’.

In 1968 the ‘Festa Das Rosas’ festival began, honouring the important position that flowers have within the community. The event has many different activities and is has become a bustling and important practice since its conception. The main event is the ‘Rainha Das Rosas’ where women in the community dress up in beautiful, lavish costumes. Inspired by their heritage of European medieval peasants, they are adorned with roses to compete for the title of the ‘queen of roses’ – a symbol of tradition, beauty, glamour and status.

The competition over time has evolved, becoming more lavish, professional and glamourous as sponsors have become involved and the competition has become more prestigious. However, artifacts passed down through generations are still used and families tend to have major involvement in helping to choose the wearer’s costume, thus helping to retain its traditional and cultural roots. But, although our clothing is embedded within our culture, it still evolves and adapts over time, becoming diluted and the original heritage begins to slowly fade.

The research undertaken hopes to delve deeper into why certain symbologies are used and to better understand the influence culture has on costume used in pageantry and how these change over time to evolve to their social climate. I look forward to seeing the findings of this paper and learning more about the intricacies and influences involved in such costumes.

Watch the paper here: CCD2021 | » Symbolic Dress

Student Researchers – part of the CCD Community!

Originally posted: June 28th, 2021 

Where has the time gone?

It’s now six weeks since the Culture, Costume and Dress Conference on May 5^th-7^th. It’s been busy with assessments and marking work here at BCU so I felt that it was about time to add some of the student contributions from CCD 2021 to the blog.

A selection of level 5 and level 6 students were tasked with ‘reporting’ on a selection of the paper presentations given in the conference. The convening panel have, since the inauguration of the conference in 2017 been keen to ensure that our student undergraduate and post- graduate community should also be part of the, and contribute to the CCD research community.

Each year students have partaken in the conference in a variety of ways, including on- site support for registration and navigation of the conferences, in 2017 and 2019, and designing and contributing to the Cabinets of Costumeexhibition in 2017. This year with the move to online delivery of the conference onto Zoom the ‘Student Round Table’ offered a valuable contribution to the conference- I leave this to Sian to explore more in her student’s blog post.

For the next six to eight weeks I will be handing over the blogosphere to our student researchers. This blog post is an introduction to our student reports to be featured as blog posts, I hope that you will read and support our early researchers in their reporting? I would like to welcome and thank them all for their contributions which include:

Jessica Boyd

Emma Davis

Lin Dou

Robyn Westcott

Abbie Wells

Week 1– The symbologies of the typical costumes of the ‘Rainha Das Rosas’ competition in Barbacena, Minas Gerais, Brazil. (Glauber Soares Junior, Isadora F Oliveira, Fabiano E A Batista and Ítalo J M Dantas, 5^th May 2021) Blog post written by Robyn Westcott. Watch it here: CCD2021 | » Symbolic Dress

Week 2: Covid -19 and online living: A recipe for a slow fashion lifestyle? (Hughes, 5^th May 2021) Blog post by Abbie Wells. Watch it here: CCD2021 | » Lifestyle and identity

Week 3- Power and Wellbeing Through garment choice: Experimental garment design concepts for women who wear men’s clothing. (Jackson, 6^th May 2021) Blog post by Abbie Wells. Watch it here: CCD2021 | » Cross-dressing and gender politics

Week 4- New Materiality and Phygital Dress: The performance of self through AR beauty filters. (Coffey, 7^th May 2021) Watch it here: CCD2021 | » Identity and technology

More to follow…

If you would like to watch the paper conferences or key notes they are all now on the CCD Website CCD2021 | » Recordings

Louise Chapman 
Senior Lecturer in BA Hons Costume Design and Practice
Ph.D. Candidate London College of Fashion

A week to go – meet the team

Originally posted: April 29th, 2021 

With only a week to go before the start of the conference, we are all getting very excited. We had a hectic meeting on Tuesday, catching up. So much done, and so much still to do. As usual though, it didn’t preclude fun and laughter. I have been very lucky over the years to work with such a dedicated and supportive team of people, who are also such entertaining company. You will meet them all at the conference, but I thought you might like to know a little about them, and what they’ve been doing.

In no particular order:

Charmaine Stint is senior development manager in the University’s Research, Innovation and Development team. She has been our mainstay over the years at every conference we have run. Personally, I knew very little when we started about how to organise a conference, but Charmaine steered us through the process effortlessly. This year, we have had new challenges to deal with, but Charmaine brought her expertise to bear and has provided invaluable support. 

Joanna Jarvis has used her knowledge of period dress as a foundation for her research into women in the eighteenth-century. She was one of the founding members of the Dress in Context Research Centre, and has contributed greatly to the success of all our events. This year, Joanna has managed the review process for submissions, a hugely complex and time-consuming procedure, not least keeping track of progress. She also helped develop the exciting programme.

Nazli Alimen joined us two years ago, and has proved to be an enthusiastic and energetic member. Her research interests are wide-ranging, but generally focus on dress as it relates to material and visual culture. For CCD2021, Nazli has taken on, almost single-handedly, the development of the Book of Abstracts. This year, it will take the form of an e-book, and that has presented its own challenges. I haven’t yet seen the finished product, but the drafts look very exciting.

Sandra Costa could be described as a cuckoo in our nest, but we appreciate that she has brought a whole new perspective to our work. She is primarily a landscape artist, whose research focuses on people’s interaction with their environment. Her work with Muslim women, and their interactions with green environments, led to an interest in the significance of their clothing, and she has recently been involved in researching the attitudes of Muslim women to dress and the role of their clothing in constructing identity. Sandra is very experienced in managing conferences, and her support has been invaluable.

Louise Chapman is currently studying for her PhD with the London College of Fashion. Coming from a costume for performance background, her archival research focuses on historical dress and its embodied practice. Louise has been closely involved in all our research events, including the CCD conferences. We have a tradition of involving students of all levels in our research-related work, and this year, Louise has taken responsibility for coordinating the contribution of our Student Associates. Thanks to Louise’s direction, they will be taking an active part in proceedings, and we are all looking forward to working with them.

Sian Hindle, also a founding member of the Centre, has research interests in jewellery, its role in identity, and its significance in marking memories and relationships. Sian has managed the Student Round Table, an innovation we have introduced for the first time, and along with Charmaine has organised the Poster display session. She was also instrumental in developing the programme – and all this achieved in her usual calm and (seemingly) unflustered way.

Poppy Wilde’s research focuses on the posthuman subjectivities, and how these are embodied. She has a particular interest in the current media fascination with zombies. Poppy is, without doubt, the most efficient member of the team. While the rest of us are discussing an issue, she has it done. She recently managed the whole process of our online Dress in a Time of Crisis symposium, and for CCD2021 she has coordinated the hosting and chairing of all sessions.

Sophie Johnson is the newest member of the team. She has recently begun her PhD into public relations and its financial value within an organisation. She is also joint host, with her colleague, Laura Arrowsmith, of the popular podcast, Fashadmix. Sophie, with her knowledge and expertise in PR and social media, has been an invaluable asset, and we all look forward to working with her more in the future.

Bethany Lewis is one of our third year students, who successfully applied for the role of Social Media Manager. She has been an enthusiastic and energetic member of the team, working tirelessly to promote the conference, and has supported all our efforts throughout. Beth hopes to go into PR and social media management when she graduates. We think whoever employs her will be very lucky.

Finally, I have to thank Jane Anderson, lecturer in graphic design at BCU, who has so beautifully refreshed our graphic design, giving it a new and contemporary lease of life.

You may ask, what have I done? I have been clever enough to surround myself with brilliant and exciting people, and have benefited from their wondrousness!

Anne Boultwood

The Bridgerton Effect

Originally posted: March 25th, 2021 

I have been watching current fashion trends and wondering if we will see a Bridgerton effect, and when we do how will it look? Will we see princess line dresses in powder blue satin from the early sixties or frilly white dresses with pastel sashes such as I wore to parties while at infant school? Both have featured in the Regency parallel universe inhabited by the world that is Bridgerton, based on the novels by Julia Quinn. With its modern storyline, strong female characters and narrative-led colour-blind casting.

There has been a long and honourable history of fashion responding to the latest film or TV show. Remember Annie Hall (1977) and all those baggy pants, waistcoats and trilby hats? Or more recently, catwalks adorned with red cloaks in response to Handmaid’s Tale (2017) and clouds of Tulle from that pink dress worn by Jodie Comer in Killing Eve (2018)?

Ellen Mironjnick, costume designer for Bridgerton told Vogue magazine (Dec. 2020) that this was a period drama that needed to feel ‘scandalous and modern’. Taking the Regency silhouette of the 1810s she applied a Christian Dior aesthetic, with the V&A’s 2019 exhibition Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams as her starting point. There were to be no bonnets, that would hide women’s faces and no muslin, that made women look like Greek statues but quickly crumples into a limp rag. She also subtly changed the necklines of the women’s dresses, replacing the straight line with an elegant scoop shape that is far more flattering.

Updating a period style to give a modern and acceptable aesthetic is a tricky business to pull off. Maintaining the period feel while also allowing the audience to identify with the characters and thus be drawn into the narrative demands walking a fine line. Mirojnick is an experienced Hollywood costume designer with films such as Behind the Candelabra (2013), for which she won an Emmy, The Greatest Showman (2017) and Malificent: Mistress of Evil (2019) under her belt. 

As well as subtly altering necklines and head shapes Mirojnick also used colour to emphasise the up-to-date feel of the characters, adding visual emphasis to their narratives. As eldest daughter of the ‘old money’ Bridgerton family Daphne began the series in pastel blues, moving to more dusky colours and deeper tones of silver and blue. As Mironjnick puts it ‘she begins as a porcelain doll and becomes a woman’. In contrast, daughters of the ‘nouveau riches’ Featherington family were given sizzling oranges, greens and purples. As their pushy mother (played by Polly Walker) puts it at one point, ‘I need them to stand out from the crowd and to be noticed if they are to make advantageous marriages’. You will have to watch the series to see if she succeeds.

Both families – Bridgertons and Featheringtons – have strong mothers each given a personal style. For Lady Bridgerton (played by Ruth Gemmell) her look is more 1950s, nicely pre-dating the early 60s feel of her daughters, but still with the Regency silhouette. My one quibble is with Lady Featherington, whose silhouette is more figure hugging and Edwardian in feel, more 1910 than 1810. Was this to show off her figure, to emphasise her hips, which barely feature in the Regency line? Or to take attention away from her décolletage? Added to the large garish prints of her fabrics is this a reminder of her aspirational status? 

The real matriarch of this society is the Queen (played by Golda Rosheuvel) and she has a delightful eccentricity, after all no one at court would dare to criticise her, so why not have some fun with her look? Her gowns were kept to the formal style worn by the real Queen Charlotte – all the better to set off her outrageous wigs. These were extraordinary, sometimes high, sometimes wide, in a range of tones from hard white to gunmetal grey, but always precisely curled and sculptural. Each added to a superior demeanour accompanied by her withering put-downs.

Bridgerton has caused outrage among adherents to a certain style of period drama, but that is not what this series is. The description above may make the semiotics of the costumes sound a little crude, but by carefully setting up their rules and parameters in advance Mironjnick has been able to create a complete look, one that resonates throughout and gives us a coherent and believable universe. The story is not about Regency heroines with little personal agency waiting with bated breath for the right man, but young women learning to challenge their status. It is a modern story of kicking back against accepted norms and creating your own path; one that not only includes love, but also partnership and agency.

As I write this piece the week’s fashion pages arrive in the newspaper, including a feature on next season’s dresses by Reformation. Their collection includes several styles with low scoop necks as featured by Mironjnick; so maybe the Bridgerton effect has already arrived!

— Joanna Jarvis

The Joys and Challenges of the Virtual Conference

Originally posted: March 25th, 2021 

For the past year, like many organisations, the Dress in Context Research Centre has had to move to an online presence. We had a successful online symposium in August looking at Dress in a Time of Crisis, but now we’re facing the challenge of a much bigger and longer conference, and I’ve been reflecting on the pros and cons of the virtual approach. 

The great advantage of a virtual conference is that we can welcome people from all over the world. CCD has always attracted an international audience, but this year the response from other countries is more marked than ever. We have received submissions from every continent – apart from Antarctica (maybe we’ll get a late request). Given that we also have an awe-inspiring range of topics, this should guarantee some excellent discourse. It does mean that there will be issues around different time zones, and of course, we’ll do our best to factor these into the programming.

By contrast, the significant downside is the absence of real-world contact. There won’t be the usual social opportunities that generally form a significant aspect of conferences, and while this has meant a saving in conference fees (we are only charging a nominal fee to cover our expenses), and less work for the committee, the lack will be felt by most of us. The conference dinner, for example, will surely be missed. These things are peripheral, however. The purpose of an academic conference is to disseminate research, to engage in academic dialogue with peers, and the absence of a social side shouldn’t matter. Except it does. The opportunity for a brief exchange of ideas over coffee; the conversation over dinner that might grow into a future collaboration; the excitement of a student who gets to talk to names they have previously only come across in publications: these are often the highlight of a conference, and what delegates take away.

At CCD we have given much thought to how we might mitigate against this absence. We’ve been devising alternative activities –  some (though not all) may involve alcohol – and we’ll be sharing them over the coming weeks. We still haven’t come up with an alternative to the serendipitous encounter, though. If anyone has ideas, please let us know.

The conference will be hosted on Zoom, something we have all become familiar with over the last year – both professionally and socially. Zoom has enabled us to keep in touch with friends and family, to continue our work lives safely, and to hold events like CCD. Unfortunately, as with many aspects of life, there is a price to be paid. I think we’ve all been surprised by how tiring online meetings can be. After all, we don’t have to move from our desk – or kitchen table, or bed, depending on personal arrangements – the meeting comes to us. The problem is that online encounters operate in a different way to real life, and the nonverbal behaviours that have evolved to make interaction with others easier become overemphasised and intrusive in a virtual world. In real world exchanges, we rely on a raft of nonverbal cues to ensure we understand each other; but these are much harder to send and receive in an online situation, and consequently, we end up working much harder to achieve the same level of understanding. Similarly, because we are constantly staring at the screen, we can’t escape eye contact. In real life eye contact is intermittent, and we feel uncomfortable if it becomes continuous. And perhaps even more stressful is being faced with an unremitting image of ourselves (though I’m told you can switch this off). Research tells us that when faced with an image of our self, for example, in a mirror, we have a tendency to self-evaluate (and as you might expect, women do this more than men). This kind of self-focus tends to be negative, and therefore distracting and ultimately, dispiriting.

While you may think this makes for depressing reading, there is one upside that I haven’t mentioned yet, and that is the absence of the what to wear dilemma. This is particularly so, perhaps for doctoral researchers who are new to the conference world. I have often seen online discussions around what is appropriate conference dress – not too formal, not too casual, definitely not too short. In a Zoom conference, all that disappears; we can only be seen from the shoulders up, so, as we’ve seen from social media, anything goes.  The news may get even better over time. The growth in virtual fashion allows us to inhabit and share images of different outfits, wear them only once, and make them as  outlandish as we please. This is a move that is very attractive to younger Instagram users, who can clothe themselves in an array of different outfits, yet at the same time salve their sustainability consciences. Recent advances in digital fashion mean that there will soon come a time when we can clothe ourselves in outfits as exotic and exaggerated as we please. Perhaps use virtual clothes to curate a new and exciting digital identity. In the meantime, we might want to think about how we can enhance our image at conferences. Given the shoulder-up view, we might want to focus on a hat. One of the conference papers considers the importance and significance of hats – perhaps we should all take notice!

— Anne Boultwood

Academic Conferences: Why can’t they be more like Comedy Shows

Originally posted: February 24th, 2021 

(written by a researcher and music fan who has spent far too much time alone in Lockdowns 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3) 

As a tutor, student and early career researcher studying towards a Ph.D., I often find myself questioning and challenging the many accepted academic conventions persist in academia. As a practice-based Ph.D. student studying the visual arts, with a professional background in theatre costume its often my natural position to challenge ‘why’ certain practices endure. My confirmation (mid-point review) on my Ph.D. evidencing my questioning of academic conventions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fm54AiSk_c

As lecturers and academics there is a certain amount of ‘showman’ and ‘show-woman-ship’ required to stand in front of a crowd of people and talk in depth on a subject. MS Teams and Zoom don’t really allow for this level of performance and performativity to be evident or legible by the audience. 

Recently, in my teaching, like many lecturers and academics I have had to evolve new practices to deliver content online.  Currently, online, my entrance onto MS Teams, within my teaching evidencing a more “Zebedee-esque” ‘popping up,’ or a peculiar ‘emergence’ onto the screen with a panoply of student’s initials to greet me. 

So, I started to think if music would pump the crowd (students) prior to the session beginning? 

Having attended comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, and comedy events around the UK, I started to consider ‘how’ comedians enter the stage prior to their stint, and what devices they use to ‘prime’ and ‘pump’ their audience. ‘Extensive, scholarly and rigorous research’, well maybe a ‘ping around’ on Google (other search engines are available) revealed an article in The Guardian Newspaper in 2014, entitled ‘Stand-ups on their entrance music: ‘I play it loud to drown out the screaming in my head’ 

The piece, noted that each of the comedians featured, adopted a different approach to their ‘entrance’ music, however each of them outlined how their choice of music was chosen with care; some reinforcing the themes of their show, some because of the anarchy the music represented, and others were playing themselves onto the stage- just to add to the anxiety of performing at the Fringe festival. 

Contemplating the comedians entrance track and my own rather un-assuming entrance onto the virtual screen in my teaching I started to muse on what track I might select to make my entrance on to MS Teams. Researching comedy entrance music online revealed that Spotify has a playlist entitled ‘Comedy Night Intro Tracks’ https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4FbDecrOV6IkpviRbQSjGq. 

So I thought, great! This should be fun. I had a zip through and the track-list featured tracks including, Happy by Pharrell Williams, Get Lucky by DJ’s Incorporated, surely it should be the Daftpunk version?  I started to muse about the situations where as academics the entrance to a ‘stage’ is an obligatory part of event. 

Enter the academic conference… 

These erudite and often terrifying, but essential events, which as an ‘emerging researcher’ continue to terrify me, have a lot in common with the comedians set. The chair is the compere and there are 20 minutes within which to impress the audience, in the hope they won’t heckle. The task, to communicate our ideas, thoughts and research findings to an audience wanting to be, if not entertained, edified. Crucially, we have to evidence rigour, knowledge and expertise in a subject which manages to maintain the audience’s attention for 20 minutes plus questions. The format of the academic conference, is well-established but with the move to online and virtual events, is there an opportunity to challenge these conventions? 

The omnipresent fear that I experience before delivering a paper at a conference parallels the comedian, Natasia Demetriou’s terror prior to her entrance at a comedy show. To evidence this terror, at one conference, I had to wear a full- length skirt to hide my knees which were literally knocking together because of the terror I was experiencing. Demetriou quotes that her choice of ‘Roar’ by Katy Perry to make her entrance at the Fringe in 2014 was a strategy admitting that, ‘I’ll be so ridiculously terrified it’s nice to have something so loud because it drowns the noise of the screaming in my head’ echoes my experience at conferences. 

The idea of having an entrance track that, a) drowns out the ‘screaming in my head’, and b) masks the sound of my knees knocking together was appealing. 

So began the search…

Which song? As a long-time fan of dance and electronic music, I liked the idea of something upbeat and high energy, but I research historical dress and costume. The seeming disconnect between these worlds, the gentility of historical dress and costuming, and the sweaty, sticky experience of the dance tent seemed contradictory. 

Last year in 2020, I had the opportunity to present at Critical Costume which was supposed to be in Oslo, but like many events, it moved online. The speakers, were asked to film the presentation of our paper, creating a video which attendees would view, and then discuss in ‘working groups.’ As we were editing the presentation, my friend helping me edit asked if I wanted music… https://costumeagency.com/project/louise-chapman/

In Culture, Costume and Dress, 2021, should my paper be accepted I am not sure if I will be brave enough to embrace the entrance track, and if I do, how will I select it, will it be a track to drown out the screaming in my head and the knocking of my knees?  

One thing I do know is that the conference format is overdue an overhaul- we have to be brave- step into the unknown. Speaking about my music and conference musings to some member of the convening panel, I asked the members what their entrance track might be? 

Dr. Sian Hindle: ‘Original’ by Leftfield 
Dr. Joanna Jarvis: ‘Sound the Trumpet’ Purcell and ‘Lady from the Sea’ by Seth Lakeman 
Dr. Poppy Wilde: ‘Jus a Rascal’ Dizzie Rascal
Dr. Sandra Costa: ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe
Sophie Johnson: ‘The Greatest Showman’ from the Greatest Showman Film Soundtrack
Louise Chapman: ‘Go’, by the Chemical Brothers

I am not sure what their choices reveals about our team? I will leave you to ponder…

Other suggestions from researchers in the School of Media (BCU) include: ‘Simply the Best’ by Tina Turner, 
‘Future Drugs’ by The Armed, ‘Psycho Killer’ by Talking Heads, ‘Rock n’ Roll Star’ by Oasis
and ‘Crown on the Ground’ by Sleigh Bells.

What would your entrance track be?

— Louise Chapm

Fashion’s fake feminism

Originally posted: March 7th, 2019 

Proclamations of female solidarity can be found on every corner of the high street and even some high fashion shows (ahem, Dior), but are these items of clothes created with a deep consideration for the position of women within society, or simply to increase sales to an ever-growing ‘woke’ generation?

For her SS17 collection for Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri printed We Should All Be Feminists (the title of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s collection of essays) across the chests of white t-shirts. These t-shirts immediately became a symbol of solidarity – aptly released just before the 2017 Women’s March, the t-shirt became inescapable. Chiuri’s t-shirt drew criticism for seemingly cashing in on the feminist movement without any consideration for charitable donations. The house responded to these criticisms, however, and shortly after announced that a portion of the sales from the t-shirt will be donated to Rhianna’s non-profit, The Clara Lionel Foundation. 

Chiuri seemingly managed to avoid any further allegations of using feminist slogans merely for profit by aligning her product with Rhianna’s foundation, and has gone on to situate herself as a woman fully aware of her responsibility to the next generation. She commissions female artists to shoot Dior campaigns and to design the show sets, and has created what will inevitably become the t-shirt of 2019: a shirt that reads Sisterhood Is Global in support of the international women’s movement anthology by American author Robin Morgan. She seems to understand her responsibility to not only bring the feminist movement into popular culture, but to be inclusive and representative of women to, essentially, practice what her t-shirts preach. 

What happens, then, when feminist slogans and wording trickles down into the mainstream, high-street clothing stores that have little understanding or care for anything other than increasing their profit margin? Fashion retailers such as Topshop, Forever 21 and H&M benefit from selling clothing with feminist slogans to their (majority female) customer base, yet the CEO’s of all these companies are men. Women, meanwhile, are exploited by companies such as Forever 21 – who received a lawsuit against them in 2001 filed by the Asian Pacific American Legal Centre, naming 19 workers who worked six days a week for up to 12 hours a day for less than the minimum wage. Whilst women across the world are being exploited by mass clothing corporations, those same companies are selling t-shirts with the word FEMINIST embroidered across the chest – these companies are removing the word from the movement, monetizing the feminist movement whilst engaging in highly un-feminist practices. It is hard to ignore, too, that whilst Topshop have sold their fair share of feminist t-shirts, a pop-up store celebrating Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (and other lies), a collection of feminist essays curated by Scarlett Curtis, was cancelled and removed just hours before it was set to open. The event was to raise money for the UN charity Girl Up, a charity set up in 2010 with the goal of preparing young girls for leadership positions. 

Fashion clearly has a long way to go before it can fully situate itself within the feminist movement. It is clear that high-street brands solely use the movement to increase sales amongst young female shoppers, but whilst Chiuri’s feminist T-shirt retails at just over $700, where are they to turn?

Sophie Winfield is on the MA Fashion Journalism at London College of Fashion, after graduating from BCU with a BA in English Literature.

Fashion’s import

Originally posted: November 13th, 2018 

This last weekend has been full of ceremonies and events to commemorate the Armistice of 1918 which brought to an end the First World War. It was a devastating period in world history, and news coverage was appropriately solemn. What struck me most forcibly, however, were the frequent allusions, in all media, to what people wore: images of the outfits of the female members of the royal family, with special reference to the Duchess of Sussex and how she successfully disguised her pregnancy; fashion coverage of Melania Trump and Brigitte Macron, both in blue outfits, and both wearing five-inch heels; and criticism of Jeremy Corbin, the leader of the Labour Party, for his scruffy raincoat. It seems that, even on sombre occasions, we are judged more by what we wear than what we do.

The ability of clothes to define and categorise us is at the heart of Culture Costume and Dress. In our last conference, the focus was on how dress contributes to individuals’ sense of identity, and how that translates into the shorthand clues we use to judge each other. This time we will focus on the way in which this characteristic contributes to group identity, and leads to the apparently superficial concern with fashion. We will consider dress in relation to fashionable society, the fascination it holds for us, and its enduring impact.

This is an exciting time in the organisation of a conference. We know there’s much hard work ahead of us, but we can look forward to receiving submissions which, as last time, will span the full range of Arts and Humanities, providing the promise of new topics, new perspectives, and stimulating discussion.

Anne Boultwood

Two Women

Originally posted: 9 May 2017

Two women – or at any rate their spirits – will feature at our conference.

Both were born in Victorian times and lived into the twentieth century. They led very different lives, yet we know both of them through clothes.

Mrs Emily Tinne was a wealthy Liverpool doctor’s wife, who amassed a vast collection of clothes, spanning the years 1910-1940. Many of these clothes she never wore; some she knew she would never wear because they didn’t fit her lifestyle. She lived the conventional life of a married woman of the time, and the clothes she collected were high end, often couture, fashionable outfits.

Kate Elizabeth Bunce was a Birmingham artist, who never married and apparently favoured the artistic dress so beloved of Pre-Raphaelites. She bequeathed her costume collection of family clothes, some from the eighteenth century, to Birmingham School of Art (where she studied). These clothes tell the stories of their wearers – especially those that were home-made.

Thinking about these women brought home to me the significance we assign to clothes, and how these two personify the theme of the conference. It’s likely that, without her clothes, we would never have heard of Mrs Tinne, and Kate Bunce typically of the time, has never been as well-known as her male counterparts. Yet, they both come to life through their clothes.

Clothing creates identity. As Goffman so famously pointed out, in presenting ourselves to the world, we manipulate setting and appearance to present the character we want people to see, and the clothes we wear are the most significant aspect of that. They become a kind of shorthand that others use to sum us up. So you might have the girl in the red dress or the man in the pinstripe suit . These are not just descriptions of outfits; in each case, they encapsulate a cluster of qualities that we associate with a certain character. And although it isn’t quite as quick as popular psychology would have us believe, once made, the perception persists.

The same is true of how we see ourselves. The man in the pinstripe suit sees himself differently when in his jeans at the weekend. As a writer I once interviewed said, I want to be a creative person, so I wear creative clothes . Note, she didn’t say she wanted to be seen as a creative person; she believed that wearing the right clothes would make her one. What can we tell about Mrs Tinne and Kate Elizabeth Bunce from their clothes? It will be interesting to see if the truth fits our expectations.

These ideas will form the foundation of much of our discourse over the course of the next three days. Even though, we come from different perspectives, we all recognise the power of clothes in creating and sustaining identity. Will we therefore be looking at each other’s clothes? And what will we make of them?

Anne Boultwood

Culture, Costume, Dress: Interdisciplinarity

Originally posted: 25 April 2017

Putting together this conference and its associated events and exhibition has provided an excellent example of the interdisciplinary working that the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at BCU does so well. While the impetus for the conference came from the School of Fashion and Textiles, the organising committee included staff from English, Jewellery and Visual Communications, and we have all had input in our own areas of expertise as well as learning about new ways of working.
The contributors to the conference come from an even more diverse range of academic backgrounds. Our keynote speakers for the conference include Deirdre Murphy, Senior Curator, Historic Royal Palaces; Dr Catherine Spooner, Reader in Literature and Culture at Lancaster and a familiar name to those interested in Gothic in all its interdisciplinary forms; Dr Mary Harlow, Associate Professor in Ancient History at Leicester, Pauline Rushton, Curator of Costume and Textiles at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and the Dean of the Faculty, Professor David Roberts.

The papers we will hear cover art history, technology, fashion industry, jewellery, performance and film, literature, photography, anthropology, sociology and many more areas. Many papers will explore issues of identity in a particular field, considering how identity is constructed through dress, indicating how widely significant dress is. Virginia Woolf, whose interest in fashion and dress is often overlooked, wrote in Orlando (1928) that:

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us… There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.

Woolf is interested, in Orlando and in her life, in how character is constructed through clothing. Gender, class, financial status, personality and even personal interests, can be apparent through a consideration of dress, though there are many signifiers more nuanced than this. Dress can inform us about history, in a materialist analysis, for example, or about a person or fictional character, in a psychoanalytic aesthetic reading. Marilyn Horn writes that:

‘clothing is a tangible and observable phenomenon that is important to the concept of self and the development of personality. It is often a symptom of suppressed needs and desires, and the analysis of dress can lend insight to a number of hidden psychic problems’ (The Second Skin: An Interdisciplinary Study of Clothing).

Clothing is necessary and also inescapable: it touches every area of our bodies and our lives, and thus is relevant to every academic field in one way or another; it offers a topic which is both diverse and unifying.

The interdisciplinary approach of the conference papers indicates the richness of the topic, and we look forward to welcoming you to CCD17 to explore such interdisciplinary approaches.

Serena Trowbridge