Guest Editors: Sharon N Hughes and Tania Phipps-Rufus, University of East London

This Special Issue focuses on ‘Black Beauty’, offering those who engage in pan-African, women and gender, critical race theory, fashion and beauty studies an opportunity to showcase scholarly work that will unpack, evaluate and critique the views, perceptions, history, myths and realism of Black women and beauty. We encourage submissions that critically use such lenses as Black feminist thought, feminist theory, critical race theory, postcolonial and decolonial theory, and that consider the numerous intersections of power and oppression at work in race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and nationality, as well as constructions of identity through the gaze of imperialistic cultures. 

Author bell hooks contends that Black female representation in the media determines how Blackness and people are seen and how other groups respond based on their relation to these constructed images. An insular definition of beauty is deeply ingrained in all cultures, each unique in its own right. It is rationalized that race, a social construct, determines our beauty standards, fashion choices and lifestyles. However, the more marginalized one is, the more challenging it is to be seen as relevant, alluring or part of western society. It can be argued that no one has felt this more than Black women. 

Women, in general, are challenged by societal ideas of beauty developed by culture creators. Can it be said that Black women, even more so, encounter a range of characterized ideologies filled with stereotypes and expectations of colonized perceptions of beauty? Today, images of twenty-first-century beauty are depicted with diversified faces through social media, pop culture, celebrity ambassadors and campaigns, vastly increasing the market share of beauty brands within the Black community. As researchers examine how culture affects self-concept and cultural identity, how have the challenges of Black beauty affected Black women psychologically, socially and emotionally? 

This Special Issue seeks to critically reflect upon and interpret how beauty among Black women within the pan-African diaspora is defined, expressed, created, criticized, politicized, appropriated and appreciated. 

Submissions are encouraged to explore Black beauty, including, but not limited to, the following kinds of questions or issues:

• How is Black beauty seen and interpreted through varying eyes and views?

• What is the influence behind the production of beauty within the pan-African community?

• How has beauty been defined within the Black community?

• How has the colonization of African Americans affected perceptions of Black beauty?

• The influence of Black culture on the beauty industry.

• To what extent did COVID and the Black Lives Matter movement compel changes in the representation of Black women in beauty and fashion media?

• What are the effects of the perception of Black hair styles on the social mobility of Black women in the workplace? 

We welcome contributions from any discipline that incorporate academic articles and more experimental and artistic forms of writing. Please submit abstracts of 300–500 words and a brief bio (150 words) to Sharon N. Hughes, s.n.hughes@uel.ac.uk by 31 May 2023. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions or ideas you want to share in advance. 

Articles submitted to ‘Black Beauty’ can range from 4000–8000 words in length (including references); images, tables and diagrams are welcome. All submissions will be double-blind peer-reviewed. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis, with reviews commencing immediately. All submissions must follow Intellect’s house style: https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/1748/house-style-guide-6th-ed..pdf

Important dates

Deadline for abstracts:           31 May 2023

Notification of abstracts:         30 June 2023

Deadline for full articles:         1 December 2023

Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty (CSFB) is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. The journal engages analytically, critically, and creatively with fashion and/or beauty. General questions regarding the journal can be sent to the journal editors Susan Kaiser, sbkaiser@ucdavis.edu or Anneke Smelik, anneke.smelik@ru.nl. 

https://www.intellectbooks.com/critical-studies-in-fashion-beauty#call-for-papers

Archiving Fashion Conference: Mapping Fashion Collections

November 11, 2023 10am-4pm Katie Murphy Amphitheater

Fashion Institute of Technology - State University of New York

In-person and virtual formats

Following the “Archiving Fashion Workshop” held at The American University in Paris in June 2022, The Fashion Institute of Technology-State University of New York will host an international academic conference, “Archiving Fashion: Mapping Fashion Collections,” on November 11th, 2023 in New York City.

The keynote event will be the launch of FIT’s Fashion Calendar Research Database, part of the digital humanities project, “The Ruth Finley Collection: Digitizing 70 Years of the Fashion Calendar,” funded by a “Hidden Collections” grant from The Council on Library and Information Resources [CLIR], and made possible with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This conference will gather scholars, researchers, archivists, librarians, faculty, students, and professionals for a one-day event (with optional second day of programming for speakers) to discuss the present and future of fashion and textiles, and related material, in archives. Papers considering the impact on access to archives and libraries during the Covid-19 pandemic and the various institutional responses to it, as well as other topics, are welcome.

The first objective of this conference is to map as many archives (public and private), museums, institutions, associations, libraries, collections and repositories that are either dedicated to fashion and textiles, or unrelated collections (that could be non-fashion archives) that contain fashion and textiles related materials, including but not limited to textual, visual, technical, multimedia and material collections.

The second objective of this conference is to identify recently completed, and/or current educational, scientific, artistic and social projects developed from archival research and/or archive-based projects (exhibitions, books, digital humanities, database development, virtual exhibitions, etc...).

Further, the conference aims to stimulate discussion about the challenges of fashion archives restoration, conservation, and exhibition and the exploration of the potential of digital humanities for fashion archives.

In addition, a fourth objective is to encourage discussion regarding the scope and limits of what we consider being a “fashion archive” and the goal to expand and decolonize the study of fashion and textiles. This conference strongly encourages papers addressing lesser-known “fashion archives,” such as archives of now-forgotten couturiers and couturières, designers, makers, folk artists, archives of labor and workers in the fashion industry, corporate archives, archives of fashion institutions outside of Europe/America, and those about workwear, dailywear, and craft.

A dedicated open-source website indexing global fashion archives that uses mapping technologies will be made available after the conference. The committee welcomes proposals of a variety of presentation formats including panel discussions, short research papers, long-format papers, and short archive introduction/overview presentations.

The committee encourages proposals that address diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice as it relates to fashion archives. We encourage proposals that center global archives and collections and those pertaining to historically under-represented groups, including but are not limited to—persons with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and people of Hispanic or Latino, Black or African-American, Asian, Middle Eastern, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, First Nations, Native American, or Alaskan Native descent.

The committee especially welcomes scholars and individuals who identify as any of the previously mentioned groups to apply, as well those working in non-English language spheres.

Presentation/Paper Formats

● Short archive presentations, virtual or in-person (presentations that feature interesting pieces or objects from their archive or brief overviews of the archive’s holdings) 5-10 minutes

● Short papers 10-15 minutes

● Long-format papers 20 minutes

● Digital Humanities and Research Platform presentations 10-15 minutes

● Panel discussions 15-20 minutes

Dates

● Submission Deadline: February 28th, 2023

○ 250-word abstract or proposal

○ 200-word author bio(s)

○ The names of collections or archives that you would like to submit to the mapping project

PLEASE NOTE: Conference dates for accepted presenters are November 10th and 11th, 2023. Presenters are invited to an optional afternoon schedule on November 10th, 2023 that will include fashion archive visits at FIT and around New York City, followed by a networking event.

The public conference will be held on Saturday, November 11, 2023.

Please send proposals and abstracts to: archivingfashionconference@gmail.com

● Response: March 28, 2023

Scientific Committee

Natalie Nudell, FIT-SUNY, NY

Karen Trivette, FIT-SUNY, NY

Justine De Young, FIT-SUNY, NY

Lourdes Font, FIT-SUNY, NY

Hilary Davidson, FIT-SUNY, NY

Sophie Kurkdjian, American University of Paris, France

Gianluigi Di Giangirolamo, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, France

Steeve Gallizia, INPI, France

The Victoria and Albert Museum is hosting a conference November 18th and 19th, both in person and online, to explore the themes touched upon in the Africa Fashion exhibition, on view until April 16, 2023.

Tickets are available at the links below.

In person tickets: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/BoRwXrdnGXv/africa-fashion-conference-nov-2022 

Online tickets: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/p7YXlrq8qZ/africa-fashion-conference-online-nov-2022 

In recent years, Toronto has steadily positioned itself as a fashionable city. References to “Hogtown” and “Toronto the Good” have long been replaced with the upbeat “T. Dot” and the slick moniker “the 6ix” — made famous by the celebrated Toronto-born rap artist, Drake. In Who’s Your City? (2008), Richard Florida praised Toronto’s “messy urbanism,” and finding his adopted city a hotbed of diversity, culture and intellectualism, he characterized Toronto as a creative city. In the last decade, Toronto’s global profile has continued to rise. In 2014, Vogue declared Queen West the second coolest neighbourhood in the world, and after the celebrations of the 2019 NBA season, the city was awash in spectacle and grandeur. Nevertheless, Toronto has also been the subject of mayoral scandal and ridicule, and, in the latest decade, a site of much violence and protest. Additionally, the city has seen the loss of major cultural institutions such concert halls, theatres, fashion weeks and brick-and-mortar stores. In the wake of COVID, Toronto creatives have been prompted and forced to venture into online and remote modes of work and presentation. Indeed, the new millennium has offered an opportunity to investigate how Toronto artists, designers, writers, filmmakers and thinkers have fashioned their city to reflect a more contemporary vision for Toronto’s urban imaginary.

In “Chic Theory” (1997), Joanne Finkelstein acknowledged that “The emphasis that city life gives to appearances concentrates attention on the fashionable.” In this regard, this symposium reflects larger discourses as they relate to urban change in Toronto. In particular, this symposium is in dialogue with the locational histories of fashion that have been investigated in Berliner Chic (Ingram and Sark, 2011), Wiener Chic (Ingram and Reisenleitner, 2014), Montreal Chic (Sark and Bélanger-Michaud, 2016) and L.A. Chic (Ingram and Reisenleitner, 2018). These texts demonstrate how fashion, understood broadly as both a signifier of clothing and style and as a barometer of social, technological and political change, is an integral component of the city.

We seek to bring together scholars, writers, and artists to explore, engage, critique and challenge the concept of “Toronto Chic.” This one-day symposium is supported by the English Department at the University of Toronto, St. George Campus, and will take place at the Jackman Humanities Building in downtown Toronto on Friday, September 30th, 2022.

We invite proposals for 15-20-minute presentations on topics that include but are by no means limited to:

• Toronto cultural institutions: galleries, museums, artist-run centres, theatres

• Festivals: TIFF, Luminato, Nuit Blanche, Pride, Caribana

• Toronto Fashion Week, Indigenous Fashion Arts, Fashion Art Toronto, African Fashion Week Toronto

• FashionTelevision, The New Music, MuchMusic

• Fashionable icons: Mary Pickford, Jeanne Beker, The Raptors, Drake, The Weeknd

• Toronto as Hollywood North or Toronto as itself: Videodrome, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Chloe, Turning Red

• Literature and fashionable literary figures in Toronto: Margaret Atwood, Sheila Heti, Phyllis Brett Young, Catherine Hernandez, Austin Clarke

• Television based in Toronto: Degrassi, Sensitive Skin, Sort Of, Metropia, Private Eyes

• Hippies of Yorkville and Punks of Queen St.

• History of Toronto’s garment industry

• Historical flagships of fashion: Eaton’s, Simpsons, Hudson’s Bay

• Fashionable neighbourhoods and gentrification

• Toronto nightlife, clubs, restaurants

• Fashion journalism in Toronto

• Musicians, artists and collectives

• 20th-Century Toronto designers: Alfred Sung, Marilyn Brooks, Claire Haddad, Pat McDonagh

• 21st-Century Toronto designers: Jeremy Laing, Hayley Elsaesser, Sage Paul, Evan Biddell, Izzy Camilleri

• Toronto’s recognition (and barriers to recognition) on the global stage

• The philosophy of Torontopia

Accepted papers will also be considered for an edited collection of Toronto Chic: A Locational History of Toronto Fashion, by Intellect Books.

Please send a 300-word abstract and brief bio in Word format to Dr. Kathryn Franklin (University of Toronto) and Dr. Rebecca Halliday (Toronto Metropolitan University): torontochicsymposium@gmail.com by June 15th, 2022.

The Fashion Studies Journal in collaboration with an editorial team from Italy consisting of Fashion writer and independent researcher Sara Kaufman, Professor Anna Zinola, teacher and researcher at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and Istituto Marangoni Milan, and marketing and communication specialist Virginia Attisani, invites submission for a special issue:

“Fashion and Politics”

The theme:

Fashion is a political matter. It states, it revolutionizes, it claims, it creates and deconstructs social stereotypes, social classes, and social conventions. It oppresses and it liberates. It is also a powerful industry within a capitalist world, and players and consumers can decide which position to take: in or out, disrupt or maintain, preserve or dismantle.

We may not always be aware of it, but our clothes, and the way we communicate through them, have a political value: this is because of when, where and how they were produced, because of what they represent socially, and because of the context in which we wear them. Brands, garments, and styles all have an implicit, or explicit, political meaning and while we sometimes choose to ignore it, the simple act of getting dressed each and every day is de facto a political demonstration.

In a world where political decisions end up influencing our lives in a way that often seems beyond our control, analyzing the political aspects within something as everyday as clothing may be a way to take some of that control back.

We seek contributions in the form of written content ranging from traditional academic research to personal essays, creative writing, and poetry. Written texts should be maximum 5000 words. We also welcome visual contributions such as photoshoots, videos, artwork etc. Given the theme, the more international the better; submissions from ethnic minorities and from the LGBTQI+ community are particularly welcome.  

Please send an abstract of 500 words, or a visual presentation of your artwork, to: fashionandpolitics.fsj@gmail.com

Deadline for abstracts: 31st of July

Deadline for complete drafts: mid-November

The Issue will be published on The Fashion Studies Journal in summer 2023

Some sample topics to get you started

While fashion and politics have been intertwined throughout history, we are mostly interested in analyzing the relationship between the two in contemporary society, historical topics are welcome when and if they also have a reference in the contemporary world.

• Is there still a right-wing and a left-wing way of dressing?

• What kind of uniforms does society accept, refuse or impose today?

• What kind of political values does contemporary fashion express? How do these work with the politics of the various countries of the world?

• What kind of political views do designers have today? How do they express them?

• How do politicians (and royalties) dress in the various parts of the world? What do their clothes stand for?

• The Power Suit (in all its declinations.)

• The war in Ukraine: Zelensky’s army-green t-shirt, the “wear your protest” demonstrations in Russia, Russian influencers destroying their Chanel bags after the imposed embargo…

• (Laws and social diktats regarding) Modest fashion: what are the norms in terms of dress of the various religious communities? How are items with a strong religious connotation perceived in self-proclaimed non-religious communities?

Please note: Besides Fascism, Nazism and racist slurs, we are open to all kinds of political positions, left and right, and to all kinds of language as long as it is not unnecessarily offensive. Do not be afraid of pitching something to “radical”, adjustments may be needed in a second moment, but we wish to respect and ideally represent as many views as possible.

Over the past ten years, there have been several fashion exhibitions that have looked at garments designed and worn to unsettle normative gender codes. The number of research articles on queer styles of dressing focusing on the experiences of designers, vendors, and (more rarely) wearers has increased exponentially; and collaborations between fashion brands and queer artists, activists, and thinkers (as is the well-known case of Gucci and Paul Preciado) have emerged in the public domain. Additionally, more and more trans, genderqueer and nonbinary models are walking the runway of major international shows and becoming ‘the face’ of luxury brands, and fashion media outlets have been prompt to capitalize on gender-inclusive discourse to rebrand themselves as neoliberal bastions of progressive cultural production. Within critical fashion studies, however, there is still an absence of scholarship on the politics of representation and the embodied sartorial experiences of trans folks. The field is also proving slow in engaging and keeping up with the important theorizing on the dressed body produced within trans studies. This special issue seeks to provide a cogent corrective to such critical silence. It, thus, purports to: a) highlight how transgender and gender nonconforming people from multiple contexts have been using the sartorial to intimately reckon with their subjectivity, foster affective bonds and kinship within their communities, and/or develop aesthetic-political imaginings of a queer future; and b) expose how transness has been narrated in fashion and beauty discourses produced across different decades, geographical sites and media outlets.

Submissions are encouraged that explore trans sartorial embodiment informed by trans and queer theory, including, but not limited to:

• Discursive and visual representation of transness in fashion and beauty media (e.g. fashion periodicals, zines, weeklies, glossies, blogs, newsletters, social media platforms and YouTube channels with a focus on fashion or beauty)

• Participation in the fashion and beauty industries by transgender creatives, whose lives and work have been omitted or sidelined by mainstream fashion history

• The uses and meanings of ‘transgender’, ‘transsexual’, ‘transvestite’, ‘travesti’ and ‘cross-dresser’ in fashion and beauty discourses across temporal, linguistic and transnational boundaries

• Transgender fashion collectives and the political uses of clothing within trans activism

• The sartorial legacies of iconic trans figures in queer history

• Wardrobe stories and personal fashion archives

• Fashioning and costuming in trans artistic performance and filmmaking

• Trans fashion pedagogies: teaching fashion from a trans perspective and/or teaching fashion in the queer and trans studies classroom

We encourage in particular submissions that look at trans fashion stories from the Global South and contributions that pay attention to the relation of transness to Blackness, Indigeneity and whiteness, as well as to racist, colonialist and heteropatriarchal ideologies in the fashion and beauty systems. We are also open to contributions that incorporate more experimental and artistic forms of writing into the academic essay.

Please submit a 250-word outline of your proposal, followed by a brief (max 150 words) author bio by 15 July 2022 to roberto.filippello@ubc.ca and erique@u.northwestern.edu. If you have questions or ideas you want to share with the editors of the special issue in advance, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Editors

Susan B. Kaiser (University of California, Davis, USA)

sbkaiser@ucdavis.edu

Anneke Smelik (Radboud University, the Netherlands)

anneke.smelik@ru.nl

Guest Editors

Roberto Filippello (University of British Columbia, Canada)

roberto.filippello@ubc.ca

Erique Zhang (Northwestern University, USA)

erique@u.northwestern.edu

The world is changing. Fashion and design education must address potentially catastrophic climate change, environmental degradation, protecting the Earth’s finite resources, North-South asymmetry and social and racial inequalities. We have become aware of the ways in which Western cultures have colonised indigenous international cultures.

Fashion and design education has always equipped students with the skills and knowledge they need to join an industry that we now know requires significant change. Therefore, let us join together to consider the new skills, knowledge and values that fashion and design graduates need for a future that may be unrecognisable from the past or from present and which requires new pedagogical approaches. In this one-day online symposium, we will share ideas together about what and how we teach, creatively and holistically, in the Anthropocene.

Questions:

What are the specific priorities for international fashion and design education in a rapidly changing social, environmental, cultural and political landscape?

How do we make sure that our students are equipped with the knowledge and skills to respond to environmental and other ethical imperatives through their disciplines and their global citizenship?

How do we promote responsible practices throughout the learning journey?

How might international fashion and design educational institutions respond to the need to decolonise their curricula?

What role does, and will, digital technology play in international fashion and design education? What are the opportunities that this presents, as well as the limitations?

What will the fashion and/or design curriculum of the future look like?

Keywords:

International; fashion and design education; decolonisation; global citizens; responsibility; new paradigms; new approaches; holistic thinking; ethics; digital technologies; critical thinking; collaboration; futuring.

We invite abstracts for 15-minute paper presentations.

Please send to: research@istitutomarangoni.com

Key Dates:

• 300 word (maximum) abstracts to be submitted by June 24th, 2022.

• Notification to authors: 15th July, 2022.

• Symposium date: 29th September, 2022 – time and duration tbc.

Attention visual artists, graphic designers, and illustrators in the FSJ community (and beyond)! For our forthcoming guest edited Fashion & Digital Engagement Summer 2022 issue, we are looking for individuals who’d like to contribute!

About the Issue

Guest edited by fashion scholar Chinouk Filique de Miranda, this special issue will critically unpack fashion’s various modes of digital engagement. As consumers play an active role as interpreters of their online environment, navigating one's interaction with the digital fashion landscape has become an important socio-political act. 

There’s a very wide range of topics that can be considered within the pendulum of online fashion, from commercialized filter bubbles and becoming your own unreliable narrator to online identity and consuming behavior. In our participatory digital culture, fashion in its digitized forms has become a tool to assert the way we engage with the industry and each other. 

Through examining the manifold personalized experiences the online fashion landscape extends to its users, consumers, and explorers, this issue focuses on artists, practitioners, academics, and students re-configuring the online environment in new ways, by seeking solutions and exploring how we can become the systems we need by highlighting democratized and and decentralized approaches towards fashion. 

So, what are we looking for? Someone who has a keen interest in the crossover between fashion and digital culture, and is able to explore its aesthetic. More specifically, we’re looking for individuals who’d like to collaborate with us and develop a micro identity for this guest-edited issue. This visual language is meant to extend itself in the form of various graphical formats that distinguish but also unify the multitude of contributions to be published in the Fashion & Digital engagement issue. In terms of identity package we’re looking for the following assets :

• key visuals for Social Media (static and moving)

• header image for the FSJ Homepage

• Image contributions for specific essays 

• Graphics for the (email) newsletter  

Please note that this is an unpaid opportunity. We’d therefore like to stress that we’re very open to all input in terms of format and assets!

(contact information + deadline)

To be considered, please send a portfolio and short proposal in which you describe (or visualize) your style and the way you’d imagine the desired outcome, no later than February 28th, 2022 to info@fashionstudiesjournal.org with the subject 'Visual Submission: Digital Engagement Issue.' Can't wait to hear from you!

Calling all writers, students, researchers, and industry professionals! For our forthcoming guest edited Fashion & Digital Engagement Issue we are looking for a reviewer! 

About the Issue 

Guest edited by fashion scholar Chinouk Filique de Miranda, this issue aims to critically unpack fashion’s various modes of digital engagement.  As consumers play an active role as interpreters of their online environment, navigating one's interaction with the digital fashion landscape has become an important socio-political act. 

There’s a very wide range of topics that can be considered within the pendulum of online fashion, from commercialized filter bubbles and becoming your own unreliable narrator to online identity and consuming behavior. In our participatory digital culture, fashion in its digitized forms has become a tool to assert the way we engage with the industry and each other. 

Through examining the manifold personalized experiences the online fashion landscape extends to its users, consumers, and explorers, this issue focuses on artists, practitioners, academics, and students re-configuring the online environment in new ways, by seeking solutions and exploring how we can become the systems we need by highlighting democratized and decentralized approaches towards fashion.  

What will you be doing? We are looking for a curious creature who wants to explore and create a user-centric review for wordsonfashionwebsites.com, a project initiated by artist and writer Femke de Vries.

This project explores the use of text in the realm of online fashion media. The website is connected to a selection of 10 high-profile fashion/lifestyle websites (of which some have over 90 million unique monthly visitors and a large commercial impact) and offers the option to search, track, and compare the use of text on these websites.

Because this FSJ Issue will focus on various forms of (digital) engagement, we’d like to ask you to approach this review creatively.

(contact information + deadline)

We’re looking for pitches to be submitted by February 28th, 2022. If submitting a pitch, please provide a link or writing sample that accurately represents your work, along with a short explanation (max 250 words) on how you’d like to creatively approach the review.  

Be sure to send submissions and inquiries to info@fashionstudiesjournal.org with the subject 'Review Submission: Digital Engagement Issue.' We look forward to hearing from you!

National Museums Scotland
Edinburgh, Scotland
CFP Submission Deadline:
11:59pm GMT, 31 January 2022

The conference will be held on Friday, 27 May 2022.

The Association of Dress Historians (ADH) will be holding the conference in person at National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh and online via Zoom. National Museums Scotland closely follows Scottish Government guidance on Covid-19 prevention measures. If future restrictions prevent an in-person conference, the event will be online only via Zoom.

Every year, the ADH hosts The New Research in Dress History Conference. In 2022, we are trialling a new format, which will include presentations by emerging scholars, chaired and hosted by established scholars. The format will focus on our aim to support those studying in the fields of dress and textile history by emphasising connections, conversation, and collaboration as we move forward with pandemic-affected research.

Alongside individual presentations, the conference will include time for roundtable reflections from established scholars and a National Museums Scotland curator talk.

Submit to Present:

We encourage submissions from anyone new to scholarship in the field of dress and textile histories or who are currently undertaking postgraduate studies.

Suggested presentation topics include untold histories, conservation and preservation studies, interpretation and display, making technologies, haptic investigation, and/or global connections.

To submit a proposal to present a 15-minute (maximum) paper at the conference, simply email the following information by the deadline, 11:59pm GMT, 31 January 2022, to NewResearch2022@dresshistorians.org as a .doc or .docx attachment (not a .pdf).

• A 150-word (maximum) abstract (without footnotes) that describes your paper.

• A 50-word (maximum) biography to be published in the PDF programme on selection. (This will also help the selection panel prioritise new researchers.)

• A black-and-white photograph of yourself or your work, to be published in the PDF programme on selection (embedded above your biography).

If you do not anticipate travelling to present or speak in person at National Museums Scotland, please note this and include time zone information with your abstract. Please be aware that this event is currently planning to run during National Museums Scotland staff hours 09:30–17:30 GMT.

Submit to Chair and Participate:

Are you an established scholar? To submit to act as a panel chair and to participate in the roundtable reflections, please send your note of interest (with the information, below) to NewResearch2022@dresshistorians.org.

• A 50-word (maximum) biography to be published in the PDF programme on selection.

• A black-and-white photograph of yourself or your work, to be published in the PDF programme on selection (embedded above your biography).

The deadline for submissions is 11:59pm GMT, 31 January 2022.

Please direct all questions about this conference to Dr. Emily Taylor at email NewResearch2022@dresshistorians.org.

Potential ADH conference speakers are not required to hold an ADH membership at the time of proposal submission; however, all accepted conference speakers must hold a current annual ADH membership for the year in which they present. The term “conference speaker” includes all those who participate in the conference, including speakers, panel chairs, poster presentations, et cetera. This policy does not include conference attendees in the audience, who are welcome to purchase a non-ADH member ticket. ADH memberships are £10 per year and support our charity and scholarship in dress history.

There will be an opportunity for New Research Conference ticket holders to book one of four curator led sessions at museum sites across Edinburgh, Scotland on Thursday, 26 May 2022 to be scheduled after 2:30pm GMT.

The conference programme will be announced and ticket sales will open on Monday, 28 February 2022, check back here for a direct link or look out for notification on our social media.

See the full listing to this position here.

Parsons School of Design, a college of The New School, invites candidates for the position of Associate or Full Professor (tenurable) of Fashion Design and Social Justice and Donna Karan Director of the MFA Fashion Design and Society program, in the School of Fashion.

We are seeking candidates who can help us lead a new era of fashion education by decentering whiteness, fostering body inclusion and advancing equity and social justice. Candidates should demonstrate how their lived and professional experiences inform a deep commitment to diverse and intersectional communities and whose theoretical, professional practice and making/design expertise furthers social justice in and through fashion design practice. Candidates should also have experience leading projects, programs and/or units in higher education, the fashion industry and/or the community.

The work of this faculty member is divided between (1) teaching, (2) scholarship or professional/creative practice, and (3) university service. The standard teaching load is five courses––or the equivalent––per academic year. Within their field of expertise, the faculty member may be expected to teach First Year and undergraduate as well as graduate courses, to majors and non-majors. They will hold regular office hours, and participate in extracurricular teaching activities such as critiques, review panels, thesis supervision, independent study, and advising. University service includes program, Parsons, and New School assignments on committees and task forces, and as program directors or associate directors with a reduced teaching load. All faculty are expected to be engaged with scholarship or professional/creative practice at a level commensurate with their faculty rank.

Donna Karan Director, MFA Fashion Design and Society

This faculty member will also serve as Donna Karan Director of the MFA Fashion Design and Society program, a 3-year rotational leadership role. While program director, the faculty member will teach the equivalent of 3 courses per academic year. The MFA Design and Society program is the first graduate program of its kind in the United States. Innovative and progressive, the program offers students the opportunity to make substantive contributions to the field of fashion design. Students learn to consider design, production, and distribution cycles as well as social, critical, ecological and communication dimensions of fashion. The program was initiated with the support of Parsons alumna and designer Donna Karan. Its admission rate is highly competitive, and students have been finalists/winners in competitions such as LVMH Awards, International Woolmark Prize, CFDA Awards, H&M Awards, VFiles Award, and Feel the Yarn at Pitti Filati.

The Program Director should be a leader in amplifying Indigenous, Black, and/or People of Color; fostering inclusion of plus-size or disabled bodies; and/or other means of advancing social justice and challenging dominant systems in and through fashion design. The Program Director oversees effective curriculum delivery, assessment, and development of the MFA Fashion Design & Society program; serves on the Leadership Council of the School of Fashion; supports recruitment and admission of MFA Fashion Design & Society students; and manages the day-to-day operations of the program. The Program Director also participates in establishing and developing the culture, identity, and academic reputation of the historical importance of Parsons’ leadership role in the field of fashion design more broadly.

Please click here to see the full job listing and additional information.

Search in Dress, Fashion, and Textile History

Bard Graduate Center (BGC) announces a faculty search in Dress, Fashion, and Textile History. This position is open rank, tenured or tenure-track as appropriate, with a strong preference for senior (2+ completed projects) or advanced junior candidates (1 completed project). Ph.D is required. Material knowledge of textiles, clothing, and its construction is essential. Preferred research area in 18th- to 21st-century Europe and America, which may include Indigenous, diasporic, migrant, and/or minoritized communities. The ability to teach graduate students about dress, fashion, and textiles in a wider global context is expected.  BGC is an interdisciplinary graduate research institute studying the cultural history of the material world. Our students gravitate to careers in museums, academia, the art world, and publishing. 

Please send cv, cover letter, names of 3 recommenders, and a writing sample no longer than 30 pages to faculty.search@bgc.bard.edu by 1 November 2021.

Bard College is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome applications from those who contribute to our diversity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, mental, or physical disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, familial status, veteran status, or genetic information.

Bard is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for all individuals in employment practices, services, programs, and activities. Bard College encourages applicants from groups historically underrepresented in United States higher education.

We are seeking activities that re-imagine fashion as a design process, product and symbolic form.

Radical Fashion Practices is a workbook that assembles methods for learning and practicing fashion in meaningful, radical and responsible ways. Published by Valiz, the book will be a tool for design students, designers, writers, and practitioners of diverse disciplines to challenge fashion as a commodity and industrial system in these times of uncertainty and upheaval.

Contributions

We are seeking contributions that explore fashion in the expanded field—these are activities/exercises/assignments (and are around 400 words). They should embrace interdisciplinarity, experimentation, and aesthetic play to critique fashion’s politics and economics, destabilize its hierarchies, and widen its horizons as a medium for expression, embodiment, and sociality. Tried, tested, and speculative fashion activities are welcomed. You may submit up to three activities/exercises/assignments before December 1, 2021.

Who

Designers, curators, researchers, artists, educators, fashion practitioners, anyone from fashion education, research and industry, anywhere in the world. Successful contributors will be reviewed by a selection panel and notified by February 1 2022 at the latest. Selection will be based on quality, originality and the diversity of practices represented by the contributors. If accepted, contributors will be supported editorially in order to prepare their contribution for publication. Published contributors will receive two copies of the book.

Where

Submit your assignment/activity at www.radicalfashionpractices.com

Please email radicalfashionpractices@gmail.com (or reply to this email) if you have any questions about your submission or the project.

FSJ seeks contributions to its next themed issue on Partnership and Togetherness, to be published Winter/Spring 2022.

Our journal sees dress as a site of connection and seeks to build community wherever possible. But how do fashion and dress support, reflect, and expose cultural ideas of partnership in its many relevant forms and appearances? We are building an issue around this complex and nuanced subject, and we would love to include your written or visual work.

Some ideas to get you started:

The expectations for romantic partnerships are changing. How is this being reflected in dress?

Business and creative partnerships and collaboration are essential to the fashion industry, on both large and small scales. Do you have a story to tell about a particularly successful or unsuccessful example of such, or reflections on how togetherness might be strengthened in the fashion business?

The pandemic can be seen as a dress rehearsal for other disasters that will require humans to band together in solidarity. Has fashion played a role in this togetherness or lack thereof? Could it be a space of increased solidarity going forward?

Are there any lessons from fashion history that could illuminate a way forward for better partnerships?

What does authentic community look like in fashion academia, what benefits could it have, and how can it be nurtured?

Are you a fashion design practitioner? Have you created any work that reflects themes of partnership or togetherness that we could feature in the issue?

We accept written work (up to 5000 words) of either a traditional academic or more creative, personal style (and anything in between or hybrids thereof), as well as photographs, illustrations, and other visual content. We are also interested in recorded interviews and other works on video.

Please familiarize yourselves with our mission statement to best gear your submission to the interests of our editorial board and readership. We prioritize perspectives that are equitable, critical but solutions-oriented, feminist, queer, and actively antiracist.

Please submit pitches by October 15th to info@fashionstudiesjournal.org with the subject line “Submission: Partnership Issue.” Pitches can be informal, but the more information you provide about what you’d like to submit, the better (i.e., projected length, possible sources or accompanying visuals, etc.).

FSJ in collaboration with the collective ‘Border Creatures,’ consisting of Chilean fashion scholar-activists Tamara Poblete and Loreto Martinez (Colectivo Malvestidas) together with Ellen Sampson (Northumbria University) and Karen Van Godtsenhoven (Ghent University), invites submissions for a special issue:

“Border Garments. Fashion, Feminisms and Disobedience”

“The U.S-Mexican border is una herida abierta (an open wound) where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture. Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.” Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa, 1987

Anzaldúa writes that borderlands, teeming with transition, as an in-between space of resistance against control, are also full of potential. Similarly, garments, with their potential for transmutation, can create new hybrid identities for marginalized or colonized peoples and harness artistic and social protest and political practices, organized around the axes of gender, colonialism, race, and inequality (class).

Both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous countries (in particular those across the global South), saw a surge of protests and uprisings, against race and gender inequalities and authoritative regimes: protests in which garments were often deployed as sites of and tools for disobedience and resistance. Despite global lockdowns and isolation, these protests have not been silenced, instead re-emerging online, through social media, with garments again as enduring material, embodied signifiers of allyship, protest, and disobedience.

This special issue of Fashion Studies Journal, “ Border Garments. Fashion, Feminisms and Disobedience” explores clothing as a site of resistance and disobedience. The issue will focus on garments, as material as well as symbolic agents of struggle, protest, and liberation, particularly for those from non-Western nations and from territories that are traditionally strongholds of colonialist thought and autocratic regimes. By framing disobedience as a liberating, affirmative ethical practice, clothing can be thought of as not just a powerful weapon against authority and control but also a tool for subversion and empowerment as well as transformation.

The editors invite contributors to create, write, testify, or respond in their own affirmative voice (in the spirit of the Latin-American notion of ‘artistic activism’) to the following axes of clothing and disobedience:

- Disobediences in the ways of producing clothing: materialist perspective, labor practices, crafts(wo)manship, reclamation of indigenous methods, motifs, and textiles.

- Disobediences in everyday ways of carrying and wearing clothing: deconstructing and appropriating eurocentric, ‘fashionable’ conventions, affect/enjoyment as resistance, queering gender codes ...

- Disobedience and protest through (collective) performance: rituals and catharsis, religion, manifestations, hybrid identities, anti-capitalist, intersectional feminist struggles (anarcho-feminism, Chicano, lesbian and Black feminism, xenofeminism, queer and trans bodies, crip bodies, fat bodies).

- Disobedient futures: innovative, disobedient ways of engaging with fashion in the virtual realm, where fashion functions as a non-normative tool for self-expression and community formation (virtual fashion, avatars, eco-critical fashion, digital communities, gaming, the posthuman turn).

The editors seek contributions including:

Scholarly essays (max 4000 words),

Photo-essays and video submissions, accompanied by ~1000-word text.

Interviews (1500 words)

Illustrations

Please submit a 250 word outline of your proposal indicating its format, length, and language, alongside a 150 word biography in English or Spanish, by November 15, 2021. Theoretical, historical, ethnographic, personal narrative, disobedient, and creative perspectives are welcome.

We also welcome graphic designers, artists, and illustrators to co-create a visual identity for this special issue with us, based on the disobedient practices of zines and independent publications. Please send us your portfolio and we can discuss!

Deadline for abstracts: December 1st, 2021

Notification of abstracts: December 1st, 2021

Deadline for Full articles/submissions: March 30, 2022

Email: bordergarments@gmail.com

Language Note:

“Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?” Gloria Anzaldua in Borderlands/ La Frontera, 1987.

In the spirit of disobedience,in solidarity with non-English-speaking authors and indigenous languages and as a corrective to the white anglo-saxon gaze of fashion and dress scholarship, the editors welcome articles written in the contributors’ mother tongues, and aim to make the contributions available in both their original language and in English translation.

Read More at Fashion Studies

Here at Fashion Studies, we are always looking for new and innovative ways to look at fashion scholarship and research. While we love publishing our annual Volume and biannual Issues, we also love collaborating with talented academics from around the world to create Special Issues that are meaningful and push the envelope for the field of fashion studies. Fashion Studies advocates and offers a platform for research that is both critical of fashion studies and recognizes fashion’s nuanced history and continued potential as a tool for systemic change. Creating Special Issues that centre on topics that mean the most to our contributors and readers is a priority. We are excited to hear what you have in mind.

To propose a Special Issue, we ask that you submit a 500-word proposal to the Fashion Studies email address, fashionstudies@ryerson.ca (fashion studies [at] ryerson [dot] ca). Your proposal should include a strong focus as well as a description of why your topic is important to the field of fashion scholarship. Should you have any submissions you would like to see published in your Special Issue, please include the title of the work along with one to two sentences summarizing each piece. Please note that at Fashion Studies we accept a wide range of scholarly work, both in the form of traditional papers or creative, mixed-media formats. The work will still need to be formally submitted in order to be considered for inclusion, but it will be helpful for us to understand the types of research you envision being part of the special issue.

Please include the following along with your proposals

Five key words

A 100- to 150-word bio for any proposed Guest Editors of the Special Issue

A Works Cited list and appropriate in-text citations

The secured rights for any images/figures/graphs included

Finally, we ask that you follow the general formatting guidelines listed in our checklist (read it here). Should your proposal be accepted, you will create a 250- to 300-word Call for Submissions. The peer review and publication process will follow the same guidelines as our annual Volume, with the Guest Editor(s) standing in for most of the Co-Editors’ roles.

Read More at Fashion Studies

While the deadline for submissions as part of the launch of Volume 3, Issue 1 has passed, we continue to accept submissions to Volume 3, Issue 2 on a rolling basis to fashionstudies@ryerson.ca.

Fashion Studies is in search of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary written and creative research that analyzes and offers original contributions to the field of fashion studies. Our journal is mixed-media focused and accepts a wide range of scholarly approaches: papers or creative work, as well as combinations of the two, are always welcome. We also invite collaborative work, interviews, and event reviews in traditional or mixed-media formats. We specifically invite the submission of creative formats, the research of graduate and emerging scholars, research focused on fashion history, and research on contemporary fashion.

We continue to advocate and offer a platform for research that is both critical of fashion studies and recognizes fashion’s nuanced history and continued potential as a tool for positive social change. Work that centres diverse voices and experiences in its exploration of dress, that engages with fashion across multiple fields, and that applies innovative methodological approaches to the field is encouraged.

To jump start your creative juices, we include this list of sample topics:

1. Fashion and Representation

2. Fashion, Identity, and the Body

3. Creative Approaches to Fashion Studies

4. Reworking and Remediating Fashion History

5. Fashion and the Environment

Please see our submission guidelines for more details and information! For questions, please reach out to fashionstudies@ryerson.ca. We look forward to receiving your work!

Fashion Forward is the official publication of the namesake think tank. Established in 2020 as a platform to challenge conventional discourse around the fashion system, Fashion Forward is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of creative, empathetic, and critical thought in an effort to create measurable, systemic change in the industry. 

Fashion Forward seeks contributions, in the form of complete drafts, to the inaugural issue to be published digitally and in print. Our content ranges from interviews, essays, and editorials. Theoretical, historical, ethnographic, personal narrative, and creative perspectives are welcome.

Possible objectives and topics to consider:

• Digital fashion (AR/VR, avatars)

• Body inclusivity/disability

• Fashion and race

• Stigmas in fashion

• Changing concepts of luxury

• Fashion and social/economic/environmental sustainability (labor, modern-slavery, gig economy)

• Gender issues, especially with laborers (i.e.: wage gap, fair treatment)

• Fashion and marginalized communities and regions of the world 

• Classism: Western consumption built on southern production (i.e.: the distant worker)

• Covid-19 and its effects on fashion cultures 

Submission and timeline

Email complete drafts to info@fashionforward.io by December 1st 2020. Drafts should be approximately 2000 words.

If you would like to discuss an idea before submitting it, please email us before November 1, 2020 in order to give enough time to develop it.

For more information about Fashion Forward, visit:

www.fashionforward.io

@fashionforward

From Fashion Studies Journal

Becoming a mother,* whether through biological, adoptive, or other means, is not a rare experience. Wearing clothes, mother or not, is universal. But the nature and reality of dressing as a mother enjoys no particular consensus among those who do it; except, that is, that it’s different than it was before kids, and possibly different than it was for moms in previous generations. What factors shape mothers' experiences of dressing? Media (social and otherwise)? Religion, consumerism, sexuality, privilege, group belonging, the sometimes shocking realities of a new body, the word "MILF"? Please tell us about the confounding expectations! The shame! The fear! The mommy boot camp! The tabloid covers! The hospital-issued mesh underwear!

FSJ seeks contributions, in the form of complete drafts, to a special series on the theme of Fashion and Motherhood to be published on our platform. Our content ranges from thoroughly researched scholarly essays, media criticism, and personal narratives to photo collections and poetry. This series will ideally do the same, reflecting the infinite ways that motherhood acts upon the fashioned self. Theoretical, historical, ethnographic, personal narrative, and creative perspectives are welcome.

Some Ideas to Get You Started

• Personal reflections on individual garments that have defined the transition to motherhood

• Examinations of the role of consumerism and entrepreneurship in the contemporary mom-wear landscape

• Narratives of dressing for fertility treatments or adoption interviews Historical examples of the expectations placed on mothers’ dressed bodies

• Analyses of the politics of dressing while parenting, especially as it intersects with other identities

• Critiques of media representation of the appearances of prominent mothers

• Ethnographies of particular mom tribes (are ‘soccer moms’ still a thing? If so, how do they dress?)

• Retail studies of mall maternity stores

• Discourse analyses of terms like 'MILF' and 'yummy mummy'

• Personal stories or dress biographies of queer or gender non-conforming mothers/parents

• Sartorial reflections on not being a mother, by choice or otherwise

*The term ‘mother’ is not meant to exclude those parents who identify as trans, non-binary, or in other gender-non-conforming ways. It’s just an easier catch-all term than ‘parent who isn’t a cis male.’ Indeed, we excitedly encourage these perspectives on dress and parenting. We are also open to being convinced that there is something equally interesting to say about dressing as a dad—we welcome your attempt!

Email complete drafts to laura@fashionstudiesjournal.org

If you would like to discuss an idea for a submission beforehand, email before March 15, 2020 to give enough time to develop the idea before submission.

Drafts should be approximately 5000 words.

From the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Costume and Textiles Department accepts applications for student interns on an ongoing basis following the academic calendar. 

Description

The Costume and Textiles Department is undertaking a comprehensive inventory, digitization, and rehousing project of the collection. Collections Management ensures works of art in storage areas are accessible, housed in standardized environmental conditions, and are preserved while in storage. Under the supervision of the Senior Collections Administrator, the internship program is designed to provide students with an opportunity to learn about collections care and long term preservation goals specific to costumes and textiles. The intern will gain experience in handling artworks, preparing archival materials for artwork housing, conducting inventories, and navigating the museum database.

Minimum Qualifications

This non-compensatory internship is appropriate for post-graduate and graduate students from the following majors: costume studies, material culture, museum studies, art history, or library science. Candidates must have completed a bachelor’s degree before the start of the internship.  Preference will be given to candidates currently in an academic program who have completed courses in costume and textiles history, collections management, fundamentals of conservation science, and have basic sewing skills. Academic credit can be arranged.

To Apply 
Interested candidates should send a resume and cover letter to Nancy Carcione, Costume and Textiles Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036; or email carcione@lacma.org.

Applications will be accepted during the following periods:

• February 1 - March 15 for summer

• May 1 - June 15 for fall semester

• September 1 - October 15 for winter/spring semester

Applications will be accepted until the internship is filled.