конференция 1-2 июня 2023
Международная научная конференция "Мода, идентичность и кризис: как мы создаем одежду, носим ее и заботимся о ней"

Международная научная конференция "Мода, идентичность и кризис: как мы создаем одежду, носим ее и заботимся о ней"

Место: Ереван, Ереванский государственный университет, Абовяна 52

события

01-02.06.23

Ереван, Ереванский государственный университет, Абовяна 52

1 и 2 июня 2023 года в Ереване (с трансляцией на канале nlobooks в youtube) впервые пройдет международная научная конференция, посвященная теории и истории моды. Ведущие исследователи со всего мира соберутся в Ереванском Государственном Университете (ул. Абовяна, 52), чтобы обсудить, какую роль одежда и связанные с ней практики играют во времена кризисов, драматических перемен и гуманитарных катастроф. 


(scroll down for russian and english program versions and abstracts)

«Նոր գրական դիտորդ» (Новое литературное обозрение) հրատարակչությունը  և

«Ռուսական նորաձևության տեսություն. հագուստ, մարմին և մշակույթ» ամսագիրը (журнал "Теория моды: одежда, тело, культура)

ներկայացնում են 

«Նորաձևության մշակույթներ, ինքնություններ և ճգնաժամ. ստեղծել, կրել և խնամել» խորագրով միջազգային գիտաժողովը

Ամսաթիվ՝ հունիսի 1-2, 2023թ.

Երևան, Հայաստան

Գիտաժողովի անցկացման վայրը՝ Երևանի պետական համալսարանի պատմական շենք, Աբովյան 52, հիմնական դահլիճ


Գիտաժողովի ծրագիրը


Հունիսի 1

9:30-10:00 Գրանցում

10:00-10:15 Կազմակերպիչների ողջույնի խոսք

Մաս 1

Մոդերատոր՝ Լյուդմիլա Ալիաբիեվա (Ռուսաստանի նորաձևության տեսության ամսագիր («Նոր գրական դիտորդ»)/Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն դպրոց)

10:15-10:45 Թալինն Գրիգոր (Քալիֆորնիայի համալսարան, Դեվիս)՝  Թեհրան 1974թ. ցուցահանդես՝ «Ավանդույթի» և «Ֆոլկլորի» արդիականությունը հայ կանանց տարազներում

10:45-11:15 Սաթենիկ Ղուկասյան (Հայաստանի ազգային պատկերասրահ, Երևան Արծաթյա գոտիներ և զարդեր Հայաստանի ազգային պատկերասրահի հավաքածուից

11:15-11:45 Հիլըրի Դեվիթսոն (Տեխնոլոգիաների նորաձևության ինստիտուտ, Նյու Յորք)՝ Անցյալը ապագան է. հագուստի պատմությունը և պահպանումը որպես կայունության փորձ

11:45-12:00 Սուրճի ընդմիջում

12:00-12:30 Նորաձևության գլոբալ ասամբլեան. նորաձևության գիտելիքների ստեղծման և փոխանակման ապակենտրոնացում (Անջելա Յանսեն՝ անկախ հետազոտող, Բրյուսել, Ապագաղութականացում և նորաձևությունը հետազոտական կոլեկտիվների համար և այլն)

12:30-13:00 Ջո Թըրնի (Վինչեստերի արվեստի դպրոց, Սաութհեմփթոնի համալսարան)՝ Հին հագուստի նոր տեսք. վերահայտնագործություն զգեստապահարանում

13:00-13:30 Մորնա Լեյնգ (Նյու Սքուլ, Փարսոնս Փարիզ)՝ Պատմողականության կայունությունը, նիշային նորաձևության մեդիան որպես միկրո-ուտոպիստական ցանց

13:30-14:15 Ճաշի ընդմիջում

Մաս 2

Մոդերատոր՝ Լյուդմիլա Ալիաբիեվա (Ռուսաստանի նորաձևության տեսության ամսագիր («Նոր գրական դիտորդ»)/Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն դպրոց)

14:15-14:45     Տելեյկա Քրըրլենդ (Լոնդոնի նորաձևության քոլեջ,

Լոնդոնի արվեստի համալսարան)՝ Մշակութային բրիկոլաժ. աֆրիկյան սփյուռքի գոյության բաղադրյալ ինքնությունները

14:45-15:15 Լինոր Գորալիկ (անկախ հետազոտող, Թել Ավիվ) Կոճակներով վերնաշապիկով տղան. դեպի ուշ խորհրդային հագուստի թեմա՝ 1989-1991թթ. արտագաղթի համատեքստում

15:15-15:45 Քսենիա Գուսարովա (Ռուսաստանի պետական հումանիտար համալսարան, Մոսկվա)՝ Պատրաստվելով աշխարհի վերջին. աղջկական և սպառողական երազանքներ պատերազմական Զագրեբում

15:45-16:00 Ընդմիջում

16:00-16:30 Իլյա Պարկինս (Բրիտանական Կոլումբիայի համալսարան, Օկանագան)՝ Հարաբերական հարմարեցում. պատկանելություն և հարսանեկան հագուստ

16:30-17:00 Աննա Ֆուրս (Գոլդսմիթ, Լոնդոնի համալսարան)՝ Գործնական հագուստ. գործվածք, մարմին և պարողի աշխարհ

17:00-17:30 Աննա Գանժա (Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն գիտահետազոտական համալսարան, Մոսկվա)՝ Կասկածի նշաններ և կասկածելի նշաններ. նորաձևության շրջանառությունը սոցիալ-քաղաքական բևեռացման համատեքստում

Հունիսի 2

Մաս 3

Մոդերատոր՝ Լյուդմիլա Ալիաբիեվա (ռուսերենաստանի նորաձևության տեսության ամսագիր («Նոր գրական դիտորդ»)/Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն դպրոց)

10:00-10:30 Օլգա Վայնշտեյն (Ռուսաստանի պետական հումանիտար համալսարան, Մոսկվա)՝ «Իմ հագուստի բարդույթը». Վիրջինիա Վուլֆի նորաձևության համատեքստերը

10:30-11:00 Տատյանա Դաշկովա (Ռուսաստանի պետական հումանիտար համալսարան, Մոսկվա)՝ «Առաջնորդների դիմակահանդես». քաղաքական հանդերձանք Պերեստրոյկայի կինոյում և 1990-ական թթ.

11:00-11:30 Էլիզաբեթ Կուտեսկո (Կենտրոնական Սեն Մարտինս, Լոնդոնի Արվեստի համալսարան)՝ Նորաձևությունը՝ սատանայական ուղի. աշխատելու, հագուստ կրելու և հագուստի խնամքի նյութականությունը բրազիլական Ամազոնում

11:30-11:45 Սուրճի ընդմիջում

11:45-12:15 Էլեն Սամփսոն (Նորթումբրիայի համալսարան, Նյուքասլ)՝ Մաշվածության պատճառները. անկատարություն, մարմնավորում և մաշվածության հիմնարար ուժը

12:15-12:45 Սյուզան Մարշալ (Նորաձևության տեխնոլոգիական ինստիտուտ, Նյու Յորք / Միլանի պոլիտեխնիկական համալսարան)՝ Կառուցում, ապակառուցում, վերակառուցում

12:45-13:15 Կատարում

13:5-14:00 Ճաշի ընդմիջում

14:00-16:45 Թեկնածուական պաշտպանող ուսանողների քննարկում

Մոդերատոր՝ Լյուդմիլա Ալիաբիեվա (Ռուսաստանի նորաձևության տեսության ամսագիր («Նոր գրական դիտորդ»)/Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն դպրոց)

14:00-14:30 Օֆելյա Ազիզյան. (Հայաստանի գեղարվեստի պետական ակադեմիա, Երևան)՝ «Ինքնության հանգույցներ. ազգային հագուստի իմաստները մշակութային ժառանգության և ինքնության պահպանման գործում»

14.30-15.00 Ասյա Ալաջալովա (Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն դպրոց, Մոսկվա)՝ «Ես չեմ ուզում դրան մասնակցել». վինտաժային հագուստ՝ որպես բողոքի և դիմադրության դրսևորում

15:00-15:30 Գալինա Իգնատենկո (Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն դպրոց, Մոսկվա)՝ Կարի ինքնություններ. ասեղնագործությունը հագուստի վրա՝ որպես ինքնարտահայտման ձև

15:30-15:45 Ընդմիջում

15:45-16:15 Սվետլանա Սալնիկովա (Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն դպրոց, Մոսկվա)՝ Ինքնությունը ճամպրուկի մեջ. այլ մշակույթում ապրելու համար հագուստը պատրաստելու փորձ՝ որպես նոր ինքնության կառուցում

16:15-16:45 Ելիզավետա Կուզնեցովա (անկախ հետազոտող, Մոսկվա). «Քիդկորի էսթետիկա. փախուստ դեպի մանկություն ճգնաժամի ժամանակ»

16:45-17:45
Գործնական մաս, քննարկում և փակման խոսք

Լյուդմիլա Ալիաբիեվա/Մենդիտի հետազոտական լաբորատորիա (Նորաձևության տեսություն/Տնտեսագիտության բարձրագույն դպրոց, Մոսկվա)՝ Մենք կարող ենք շտկել հագուստը. հագուստի վերականգնման գործնական մասը ճգնաժամի ժամանակ (Մենդիթ հետազոտական լաբորատորիայի դեպքը)

 

Издательство «Новое литературное обозрение»

 

Журнал «Теория моды: одежда, тело, культура»

 

представляет международную конференцию

 

«Мода, идентичность и кризис: как мы создаем одежду, носим ее и заботимся о ней»

 

1-2 июня 2023 г.

Ереван, Армения

 

Место проведения конференции

 

Ереванский государственный университет, ул. Абовяна 52, главная аудитория

 

 

Программа конференции

 

1 июня

 

9.30-10.00 Регистрация

 

10.00-10.15 Приветственное слово организаторов конференции

 

Сессия 1

 

Модератор: Людмила Алябьева (журнал «Теория моды» (НЛО)/НИУ ВШЭ, Москва)

10.15-10.45 Талинн Григор (Калифорнийский университет, Дэвис). Тегеран-74: современность «традиции» и «фольклора» в выставке «Костюмы армянских женщин»

10.45-11.15 Сатеник Чукасзян (Национальная галерея Армении, Ереван). Серебряные пояса и украшения из коллекции Национальной галереи Армении

 

11.15-11.45 Хилари Дэвидсон (Институт технологии моды, Нью-Йорк) Прошлое – это будущее: история и сохранение одежды как компетенции устойчивого развития

 

11.45-12.00 Перерыв

 

12.00-12.30 Международная ассамблея моды: децентрализация создания и обмена знаниями о моде (Анжела Янсен, независимый исследователь, Брюссель, Исследовательский коллектив деколониальности и моды и др.)

12.30-13.00 Джо Тёрни (Винчестерская школа искусств, Саутгемптонский университет). Новый взгляд на старую одежду: переосмысление гардероба

13.00-13.30 Морна Лэнг (Новая школа, Парсонс Париж). Устойчивый сторителлинг: нишевые фешн-медиа как сеть микроутопий

 

 13.30-14.15 Обеденный перерыв

 

Сессия 2

 

Модератор: Людмила Алябьева (журнал «Теория моды» (НЛО)/НИУ ВШЭ, Москва)

 

14.15-14.45 Телейка Кёркланд (Лондонский колледж моды,

Лондонский университет искусств). Культурный бриколаж: составная идентичность в жизни африканской диаспоры

 

14.45-15.15 Линор Горалик (независимый исследователь, Тель-Авив) «Мальчик в кофточке с пуговицами»: к теме позднесоветской одежды в пространстве эмиграции 1989-1991 годов

 

 

15.15-15.45 Ксения Гусарова (Российский государственный гуманитарный университет, Москва). Чемодан на случай конца света: девичество и потребительские мечты в Загребе военного времени

 

15.45-16.00 Перерыв

 

16.00-16.30 Илья Паркинс (Университет Британской Колумбии, Оканаган). Примерка отношений на себя: принадлежность и свадебный костюм

 

16.30-17.00 Анна Фёрс (Голдсмитский колледж, Лондонский университет). Танцевальная одежда. Материя, тело и мир танцоров

 

17.00-17.30 Анна Ганжа (НИУ ВШЭ, Москва). Знаки подозрения и подозрительные знаки: циркуляция моды в условиях социально-политической поляризации

 

2 июня

 

Сессия 3

 

Модератор: Людмила Алябьева (журнал «Теория моды» (НЛО)/НИУ ВШЭ, Москва)

 

10.00-10.30 Ольга Вайнштейн (Российский государственный гуманитарный университет, Москва). «Мой одежный комплекс»: модные контексты Вирджинии Вулф

 

10.30-11.00 Татьяна Дашкова (Российский государственный гуманитарный университет, Москва). «Карнавал вождей»: политическое переодевание в кинематографе перестройки и 1990-х годов

 

11.00-11.30 Элизабет Кутеско (Центральный колледж искусства и дизайна имени Святого Мартина, Лондонский университет искусств). Мода на «Железной дороге дьявола»: материальные аспекты работы, ношения и ухода за одеждой в бразильской Амазонии

 

11.30-11.45 Перерыв

 

11.45-12.15 Эллен Сэмпсон (Нортумбрийский университет, Ньюкасл). Почему изношенность: несовершенство, персонализация («душа») и сила изношенности

 

12.15-12.45 Сьюзан Маршалл (Институт технологии моды, Нью-Йорк/ Миланский политехнический институт). Конструкция, деконструкция, реконструкция

 

12.45-13.15 Перформанс

 

13.15-14.00 Обеденный перерыв

 

14.00-16.45 Аспирантская сессия

 

Модератор: Людмила Алябьева (журнал «Теория моды» (НЛО)/НИУ ВШЭ, Москва)

 

14.00-14.30 Офелия Азизян (Государственная академия художеств Армении, Ереван). Узлы идентичности: роль национальной одежды в сохранении культурного наследия и самобытности

 

14.30-15.00 Ася Аладжалова (НИУ ВШЭ, Москва). «Не хочу участвовать в этом»: винтажная одежда как проявление протеста и сопротивления

 

15.00-15.30 Галина Игнатенко (НИУ ВШЭ, Москва). Вышивая идентичность. Вышивка на одежде как форма самовыражения

 

15.30-15.45 Перерыв

15.45-16.15 Светлана Сальникова (НИУ ВШЭ, Москва). Идентичность в чемодане: опыт сборов в эмиграцию как конструирование будущего «я»

16.15-16.45 Елизавета Кузнецова (независимый исследователь, Москва). Эстетика кидкора (kidcore): побег в детство в кризисные периоды

 

16.45-17.45

Практическая сессия с дискуссией и подведением итогов

Людмила Алябьева / Mendit Research Lab (Журнал «Теория моды» НЛО/ НИУ ВШЭ, Москва). «Мы это починим»: ремонтные практики в кризисные времена (случай Mendit Research Lab)

 

 New Literary Observer Publishing House

 

Russian Fashion Theory: the Journal of Dress, Body & Culture

 

present an international conference

 

Fashion Cultures, Identities and Crisis: Making, Wearing, Caring

 

June 1-2, 2023

Yerevan, Armenia

 

Conference venue

 

Yerevan State University, Historical building Abovyan 52, main aula

 

 

Conference program

 

1st June

 

9.30-10.00 Registration

 

10.00-10.15 Conference organizers welcome

 

Session 1

 

Chair: Liudmila Aliabieva (Russian Fashion Theory Journal (NLO)/HSE)

10.15-10.45 Talinn Grigor (University of California, Davis). Tehran ’74: the Modernity of “Tradition” and “Folklore” in Costumes of Armenian Women Exhibition 

10.45-11.15 Satenik Chookaszian (National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan). Silver belts and jewelry from the collection of the National Gallery of Armenia 

 

11.15-11.45 Hilary Davidson (Fashion Institute of Technology, New York) The Past is the Future: Dress History and Conservation as Sustainability Expertise 

 

11.45-12.00 Coffee break

 

12.00-12.30 The Global Fashioning Assembly: Decentralising Fashion Knowledge Creation & Sharing (Angela Jansen, independent researcher, Brussels, Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion, et al.) 

12.30-13.00 Jo Turney (Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton). New Looks for Old Clothes: Reinvention in the Wardrobe 

13.00-13.30 Morna Laing (The New School, Parsons Paris). Storytelling Sustainability: Niche fashion media as micro-utopian network 

 

 

13.30-14.15 Lunch break

 

Session 2

 

Chair: Liudmila Aliabieva (Russian Fashion Theory Journal (NLO)/HSE)

 

14.15-14.45 Teleica Kirkland (London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London). Cultural Bricolage: Compounded Identities of African Diaspora Existence 

 14.45-15.15 Linor Goralik (independent researcher, Tel Aviv) A Boy in A Buttoned Shirt: Towards the Subject of Late-Soviet Clothes in the Space of 1989-1991 Emigration 

15.15-15.45 Ksenia Gusarova (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow). Packing for the end of the world: girlhood and consumer dreams in wartime Zagreb 

 

15.45-16.00 Comfort break

 

16.00-16.30 Ilya Parkins (University of British Columbia, Okanagan). Relational Fit: Belonging and the Wedding Suit 

 

16.30-17.00 Anna Furse (Goldsmiths, University of London). Practice Clothes. Fabric, flesh and the dancer’s world 

 

17.00-17.30 Anna Ganzha (Higher School of Economics Research University, Moscow). Signs of Suspicion and Suspicious Signs: The Circulation of Fashion in the Context of Socio-Political Polarization 

 

2nd June

 

Session 3

Chair: Liudmila Aliabieva (Russian Fashion Theory Journal NLO/HSE)

 

10.00-10.30 Olga Vainshtein (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow). «My clothes complex»: fashion contexts of Virginia Woolf  

10.30-11.00 Tatiana Dashkova (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow). "Carnival of Leaders": political dressing up in the Сinema of Perestroika and the 1990s 

 11.00-11.30 Elizabeth Kutesko (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London). Fashion on the Devil’s Railroad: The Materialities of Working, Wearing and Caring for Clothes in the Brazilian Amazon 

 

11.30-11.45 Coffee break

 

11.45-12.15 Ellen Sampson (Northumbria University, Newcastle). Why wornness: imperfection, embodiment and the radical power of the worn 

 

12.15-12.45 Susan Marshall (Fashion Institute of Technology, New York/ Milan Polytechnic). Constructed, Deconstructed, Reconstructed 

 

12.45-13.15 Performance

 

13.15-14.00 Lunch break

 

14.00-16.45 Doctoral students panel

 

Chair: Liudmila Aliabieva (Russian Fashion Theory NLO/HSE)

 

14.00-14.30 Ophelia Azizyan. (State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia, Yerevan) Knots of Identity: The Meanings of National Dress in Preservation cultural heritage and identity

 

14.30-15.00 Asya Aladjalova (Higher School of Economics, Moscow) “I don’t want to participate in this”: vintage clothing as a manifestation protest and resistance

 

15.00-15.30 Galina Ignatenko (Higher School of Economics, Moscow). Stitching Identities: Embroidery on clothes as a Form of Self-Expression 

15.30-15.45 Comfort break

15.45-16.15 Svetlana Salnikova (Higher School of Economics, Moscow). Identity in a suitcase: the experience of packing to live in a different culture as a construction of a new identity. 

16.15-16.45 Elizaveta Kuznetsova (independent researcher, Moscow). Aesthetics of kidcore: an escape to childhood in times of crisis

 

16.45-17.45

Practice-based session alongside discussion and closing remarks

Liudmila Aliabieva/Mendit Research Lab (Fashion Theory / Higher School of Economics, Moscow). We can mend it: repair practices in times of crisis (case of Mendit Research Lab) 

    

Fashion Cultures, Identities and Crisis: Making, Wearing, Caring

Fashion is often reproached for being superficial and capricious, yet it is incredibly sensitive to any socio-economic and political changes. Fashion shapes the fabric of everyday life and remains an essential tool of communication and identity construction for individuals, groups and the whole nations.

Having recently experienced a number of ‘turns’, substantially enriching thematic and instrumental scope of the research and profoundly influencing its optics, fashion theory belongs to the burgeoning branches of knowledge. The decolonial turn has been the most recent of such shifts. It has challenged seemingly the only possible Eurocentric view of fashion, focusing on consumption, the authority of fashion capitals, exclusivity of selected voices, and undoubted normativity of body and fashion standards. Now we have reached the point when the exclusive ‘either/or’ principle doesn’t work anymore, because the diversity of the world we live in, with its multiple voices, narratives and views, requires more flexible approaches and strategies that can improve our knowledge of fashion and sartorial practices in general.

Decolonisation of fashion theory has expanded its geography and led to inclusion of practices, which previously seldom attracted attention of the researchers. The focus has shifted from visual image to sensorial experience of clothes, from buying new clothes to wearing it and caring for the garments already being part of our wardrobes. It is useful to remind that the same processes in fashion once promoted the expansion of fashionable ideal well beyond the perfectly fitting flawless dress and the inclusion of ‘anti-fashion’ gestures in the new order of fashion: from making unfinished, unravelling, recycled and decaying garments to deconstructing the ‘inner mechanics’ of dress (seams, tucks, zippers, etc.).

What is the role of clothes and fashion practices in times of crisis, dramatical changes and humanitarian catastrophes? How does ‘frivolous’ fashion turn out to be a powerful civilizational gesture and a form of everyday creativity and resistance? How does our multifold relationship with clothes, including ‘making, wearing and caring’, contribute to identity construction?

Studying fashion as a phenomenon from the perspective of various theoretical concepts and with the help of interdisciplinary tools, we come to understand all the folds and blind stitches of contemporary social processes. Even the position of a disinterested observer forms an essential piece of the fashion field, the same way any anti-fashion gesture finally becomes part of fashion statement.

Our conference in an experiment, which we carry out in a field new to us, hoping that it will bring along further expansion of fashion studies geography.

  

Abstracts by Author in alphabetical order

 

Asya Aladjalova (Higher School of Economics Research University, Moscow)

«I don’t want to participate in this»: vintage clothing as a manifestation protest and resistance

The protest was at the heart of the nascent fashion for vintage: as Nancy Fisher writes, the interest in early twentieth-century dresses and Victorian home interiors was a response to the emerging modernism and glass-and-concrete architecture in England. Although this protest was more of a lifestyle rather than a political context, the involvement in the protest was entrenched in vintage clothing. Paul Willis mentioned costume protest, including vintage and exotic dress, worn by the hippies.

In the 2000s vintage became a part of consumer behavior pattern protest: «I look at the consumer revelry around and I’m glad that I don’t participate in it» — this is how it was articulated by a vintage lover. The clothes of past eras still bear the imprint of protest: sometimes bright and clear (if it comes to resisting fast fashion trends), sometimes veiled and understandable only to a narrow circle of participants or, in general, only to the wearer of vintage. Vintage clothing can also draw one out of fashion competition and can play the role of armor.

Asya Aladjalova is a fashion historian, vintage clothing collector and wearer, PhD student at the Higher School of Economics Research University, Moscow.


Liudmila Aliabieva/Mendit Research Lab (Fashion Theory/Higher School of Economics Research University, Moscow)

We can mend it: repair practices in times of crisis (case of Mendit Research Lab). Practice-based talk
Mendit Research Lab founded in Moscow in August 2021 is an independent practice-led female research collective that brings together 11 participants who are close in research and creative spirit united by their interest in clothing cultures, sustainable practices, textile activism and co-creative strategies. The Lab operates in a variety of formats ranging from traditional academic forms such as seminars and discussion groups to practice-based workshops working both within and outside academia. We look at repair as an act of care and attachment, as form of resistance and problem-solving, as a therapeutical and creative gesture, as form of sharing and coping with crisis. Since its foundation the Lab has held dozens of workshops whose aim was to introduce people to mending, its various forms and contexts (visible/invisible, patching, stitching, embroidering, darning, remaking and repurposing etc.) as well as work with communities building a safe co-creative space.
Mendit Research Lab activities and initiatives have demonstrated the potential of mending as art and design strategy, sustainable practice, community building tool and form of activism and resistance. 
Even though we can’t save the world, we can try to mend it!

Liudmila Aliabieva — PhD, Associate Professor and Director of Doctoral Research in Arts & Design at the Higher School of Economics Research University (Moscow); editor-in-chief of Fashion Theory: the Journal of Dress, Body & Culture (Russian version), editor of Fashion Theory Library book series, head of Mendit Research Laboratory, co-director of the Performance Research Lab PeARL (with Anna Furse, Goldsmiths, University of London). She edited the collective monograph The New Normal: Wardrobe and Body Practices of the Quarantine Epoch (NLO, 2021) and was the editor of a special Russian issue of Fashion Theory (2018), co-editor (with Jo Turney) of the issue of Clothing Cultures (2022). Liudmila sits on the editorial boards of Fashion Theory: the Journal of Dress, Body & Culture (Taylor and Francis) and Fashion Studies (Ryerson University’s Centre for Fashion & Systematic Change). She is involved in making two podcasts: Fashion Victims (since 2020, in Russian and English) and Repair and Society (since 2022, in English).


Ophelia Azizyan. (State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia, Yerevan)

«Knots of Identity: The Meanings of National Dress in Preservation cultural heritage and identity»

The topic of this research study is the importance of the Armenian national costume in the preservation of cultural heritage and national identity. The study examines the significance of preserving the national costume during the Armenian Genocide (1915–1917) and the challenge of its preservation among representatives of the Armenian diaspora in the modern world.

The Armenian national costume comprises two main complexes: Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. During the period of the Armenian Genocide, the Western Armenian complex was on the brink of extinction, which prompted researchers and artists to work actively to preserve the national costume. In the first half of the 20th century, the first scientific works and books about the Armenian national costume were created. One can also notice the interest among artists in depicting national themes, especially the frequent use of the costume as part of the national motif in paintings.

During the Genocide, many Armenians were forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in other parts of the world, taking with them only what they could carry. In many cases, this included traditional clothing that became a symbol of their identity and cultural heritage. Preserving national dress has become an essential way for Armenians to maintain ties with their homeland, cultural heritage, and traditions. However, as the Armenian community becomes more globalized, the challenge of preserving national clothes among the diaspora in the modern world becomes more relevant.

Ophelia Azizyan is a PhD student at the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia (SAFAA); a lecturer in Costume History and National Costume History; a curator. Her research focus is national costume in Armenian art in the first half of the 20th century. She collaborates with various museums in Armenia and has also curated several exhibitions and art projects.


Satenik Chookaszian (National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan)

Silver belts and jewelry from the collection of the National Gallery of Armenia

In the XIX–XX centuries, the belt was an important part of Armenian folk costume. Silver belts and other jewelries were created in different historical-ethnographic regions of Western and Eastern Armenia (Van, Karin, Sebastia, Syunik, Shushi, and others), as well as Constantinople, Tbilisi, Lviv, New Julfa, and further centers of the Armenian diaspora.

Belts varied from one another by the form of clasps, decoration, and often in creation techniques. These belts can be divided into groups according to the shape of their buckles: frog, oval, dome and quadrangular, etc. From the structure of the buckle, it is clear for which gender it was intended, for example, butterfly, oval, and frog belts were worn by women.

Armenian belts and jewelry were created mainly of metals and decorated with precious stones. That gems were made by chasing, engraving, granulating, sealing, gilding and niello-plating techniques. These pieces, that received great recognition, are presented in various museums of the world. The National Gallery of Armenia (NGA) has an amazing collection of silver gems and is exceptional in terms of its richness and variety. The purpose of this paper is to present the silver jewelry, mainly belts that testifies the high artistic taste of the skillful silversmiths.

Dr. Satenik Chookaszian is a Professor of Armenian Art history at Yerevan State University (since 2007), Head of the Decorative-Applied arts department of the National Gallery of Armenia (since 2018). One of her major research focuses is Armenian silverworks.


Tatiana Dashkova (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow)

«Carnival of Leaders»: political dressing up in the Сinema of Perestroika and the 1990s

Perestroika and the «crisis» of the 1990s gave rise to a range of carnival practices connected with the parodying/travesting of Soviet symbols and images of Soviet rulers, from Lenin and Stalin to Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Traumatic and tragic reflection on the past has been replaced by a desire to «part from the past with laughter». Street markets, which flourished then, began to sell clothes, but also matryoshkas with images of the leaders, Soviet uniforms, badges, etc. During this cheerful and liberating time, artists of Sots-art set an ironic distance to «images of the Soviet», seen as kitsch; the «Pop Mechanics» show and musical rock bands made fun of the «Soviet Grand style», conceptually working with its ideological clichédness; and the stage of the MSU Student Theatre saw a full house with farce comedy called «Black Man, or I am Poor Soso Djugashvili» by Viktor Korkiya. Later the TV programmes «Kukly» (The Puppets) and «The Multlichnosti», parodies by Mikhail Grushevsky and Maxim Galkin on Soviet and post-Soviet political leaders would appear.

Beginning with Tengiz Abuladze's «Pokayanie» (Repentance) (1984), made before perestroika, the cinema started to talk about the Soviet past in the categories of travesty and tragic grotesque. And in the early 90s, several films worked on various levels with the theme of dressing up/transforming into rulers. This theme of the rulers as «comic masks», is well-known from Leonid Gaidai's comedy «Na Deribasovskoj horoshaja pogoda, ili Na Brajton-Bich opjat' idut dozhdi» (It's Nice Weather on Deribasovskaya, or It's Raining Again on Brighton Beach) (1992), was also given a bizarre twist in the films «I chert s nami!» (And Hell with Us!) (1991, A. Pavlovsky), «Osechka» (Misfire) (1993, V. Makarov), «Komedija strogogo rezhima» (Comedy of a Strict Regime) (1992, V. Studennikov), «Kooperativ „Politburo“, ili Budet dolgim proshhanie» (Сooperative «Politburo», or the Long Goodbye) (1992, M. Ptashuk). In this paper, I will explore in how dressing up in a leader changes people's self-perception and self-esteem, how a mask «grows on a face», dictating modes of existence, and how the distinction between «original» and «copy» influences people's strategies of behavior and ideological choices.

Tatiana Dashkova is a researcher of Soviet visual culture (PhD in Philology, assistant professor at the Russian State University of Humanities and the Higher School of Economics). She is the author of more than 70 scientific publications in «Teorija mody: оdezhda, telo, kul'tura», «Fashion Theory», «Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie», «Neprikosnovennyj zapas», «Logos» etc and the book «Telesnost' — Ideologija — Kinematograf. Vizual'nyj kanon i sovetskaja povsednevnost'» (Corporeality — Ideology — Cinema. The Visual Canon and Soviet Everyday Life. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2013). She has appeared as an expert on the TV programmes «Zhizn' kak v kino» (Life as a Cinema), «Kinoteatr Arzamas» (Cinema «Arzamas»), «Tajny kino» (Secrets of Cinema) and the radio stations Mayak and «Govorit Moskva». She has given lectures at the ZIL Cultural Centre, the Jewish Museum and Centre for Tolerance, the Museum of Moscow, the Multimedia Art Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the New Tretyakovka, and others.


Hilary Davidson (Fashion Institute of Technology, New York). The Past is the Future: Dress History and Conservation as Sustainability Expertise

The Past is the Future: Dress History and Conservation as Sustainability Expertise

Sustainability has been an increasingly fashionable watchword in fashion, although with little real change occurring. Over-making, over-buying, and other unsustainable, environmentally destructive practices have become normal, with efforts to curtail them often resulting in more production under the guise of «sustainable» clothing. From the perspective of deep dress history, however, the glut of clothing overproduction which accompanied the twenty-first century’s entrance is a blip in consumption time.

Fashion historians and curators, and textile conservators, have been involved with and have a longer perspective on how clothing can be made effectively and thriftily, treating textiles as the precious resource they were and could be again. Those who work with clothing from the past are engaged in sustainability practices but not identifying them as such, instead focusing on the view backwards. This long view is particularly useful considering current human crises but needs to shift forward as well. Dress history is a way to engage with a diverse range of making techniques, from Western fashion past and global traditional clothing practices generally, including practices of anti-fashion. For example, the «zero waste cutting» movement could learn a lot from ancient and medieval clothing construction techniques. The value, skill and longevity embodied in traditional clothing can be models for future approaches to production and preservation. Accessing the extensive knowledge of conservators can tell designers now how to make their clothes last not five or ten, but 50 or 500 years into the future.

The past is an underutilised resource. Looking back can give ways to look forward, and experts in the dressed past need to start emphasising and sharing their skills to enhance fashion resistance and genuine sustainability as an imperative civilisational technique.

Hilary Davidson is Chair of the MA Fashion and Textile Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York and an honorary associate at the University of Sydney. She was curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London and has lectured, broadcast and taught across a wide range of dress and textile history expertise. Hilary is a consultant in archaeological textiles, and for the Oxford English Dictionary, and is on the editorial board of Fashion Studies. Her extensive study of British Regency dress was published as Dress in the Age of Jane Austen (Yale University Press, 2019). Her next book Jane Austen’s Wardrobe is forthcoming with Yale in 2023.


Anna Furse (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Practice Clothes. Fabric, flesh and the dancer’s world

This paper will explore the relationship between Practice Clothes in professional dance culture and the meanings that arise from what dancers wear when training.

Dancewear covers a broad spectrum of functional clothing from DIY/recycling by the individual, to uniforms, to a highly commercial ready-to-wear sweatshop industry that overlaps with sportswear. Practice clothes speak of the dance gaze: how the dancer’s body is seen by herself, as well as those controlling what her body performs — trainers, choreographers, and intended spectators. How much the body is revealed or concealed (what features of the body must be exposed in a practice studio), speaks of aesthetics and politics, power and presence. Muscle, skin, bone, outline, contour, gender, prowess, touch and sexual politics — as well as the pragmatics of health and safety — are all woven into the text of what a dancer wears to sweat in as she works. In short, a particular aesthetic is generated by what is visible or covered, her sartorial choices being pragmatic, and perforce, due to her livelihood, economic. Practice Clothes wear out fast.

Taking in Degas’ infamous sculpture La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, created between 1879–1881 that scandalised Parisians at the time, the paper will explore and problematise the cultural politics of some fashion trends in chosen, or designated, Practice Clothes historical and present. From Ballet to Contemporary Dance to Post Modern and New Dance, it will uncover tropes in the relationship between decorum and exposure, the worn and the wearer in the (normally hidden from view) professional dance environment.

Anna Furse, Professor Emeritus, Theatre and Performance, Goldsmiths, University of London is an award-winning theatre director and writer from the UK. Trained at the Royal Ballet in the 1960s, and at Bristol, Paris and London Universities, she has for over two decades balanced an academic and creative career. For 20 years she directed the international MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths. Current projects include her Anglo-Greek duet a crack, and an audio-visual installation on women’s strength, MUSCLE: a Question of Power, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland (till August 2023). She is a published author of books, articles and plays, frequent speaker at conferences and events, co-director of the Performance Research Lab PeARL (with Liudmila Aliabieva, HSE, Moscow) and Visiting Fellow: The American College of Greece and the Institute for Hellenic Culture and the Liberal Arts, Athens, Greece.

Anna Ganzha (Higher School of Economics Research University, Moscow)

Signs of Suspicion and Suspicious Signs: The Circulation of Fashion in the Context of Socio-Political Polarization

The fashion sign, whose main condition for circulation is the «podium of street space» — an open, transparent, providing an opportunity to look at each other's infinitely diverse urban environment, under legal and informal restrictions and prohibitions on expression, self-expression and «displaying prohibited symbols» finds itself in a unique position where the factory of design thought and industrial production continues to function, but with «dangerous» and «unwanted» combinations of colors, letters, symbols appear. On the one hand, such bans have a long history, showing us plots with cross-dressing, mimicry, appropriation of alien or appropriated by special social groups special fashion signs, on the other hand, all these plots come from historical periods when fashion had less flexible status, being in the stage of costume or being direct action fashion — intensively renewing, total, inevitable and unavoidable, as it appeared before consumers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Faced first with pandemic and then with colossal events on a tragic scale, fashion, whose post-Soviet specificity was associated with inequality and consumerism drawn from late Soviet society, was confronted with the problem of a new interpretation of basic identities, forcing a fresh look at the understanding of relevance, originality, novelty, expressiveness and its own semantic range. The background to these changes is the practice of suspicion and self-suspicion, forcing the formation of an alienated view of color and letter combinations and forms, framing them as a challenge or, conversely, as a risky declaration of one's own or others' political views.

Anna Ganzha is PhD, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, School of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. She teaches courses such as «Sociology of Fashion», «Theory and History of Art», «History and Methods of Cultural Sciences», «Musical Romanticism», «Sociology of City», «Soviet Urban Modernization», «Soviet Art Culture», «History of Sound and Voice», etc.


Linor Goralik (independent researcher, Tel Aviv)

A Boy in A Buttoned Shirt: Towards the Subject of Late-Soviet Clothes in the Space of 1989–1991 Emigration

The wave of emigration from the late Soviet Union (the so-called «fourth wave of emigration»), which began in 1989 with the easing of the rules for leaving the country, gave rise to a number of very special vestimentary phenomena of a liminal nature, associated with the need to collect, transport, adapt, rethink, and replenish the wardrobe of each moving person in accordance with the individual conditions in which this person found themselves. For the author of this report, who is taking the first steps in researching the topic of late Soviet clothing in the space of emigration, of particular interest are the «departure» wardrobes of emigrants in 1989–1991, that is, those who left the still existing Soviet Union, in the overwhelming majority of cases: 1) having never been abroad before; 2) being sure that emigration is a departure without a chance of returning. In this situation, things taken along, on the one hand, to an imaginary world constructed from cultural narratives, rumors and testimonies of those who were already on the other side of the border (if there were such witnesses), and on the other hand, they were either packed or left «forever», without the thought that it will still be possible to reunite with them. In these circumstances, people leaving for emigration often faced the most difficult practical and emotional choices, and the results of these choices on the other side of the border could lead to serious reflection related to issues of gender, ethnicity, age, family, and personal identity. This report is an attempt by the author to outline the main issues of a huge topic, which is clothing in the space of emigration as a whole, based on the large-scale, but slightly more «reviewable» topic of late Soviet clothing in the space of emigration in 1989–1991.

Linor Goralik is a writer and an independent researcher specializing in contemporary everyday costume and costume in times of crisis. She is a regular contributor to the Russian Fashion Theory Journal. She taught at the Higher School of Economics Research University and St. Petersburg State University.


Talinn Grigor (University of California, Davis)

Tehran ’74: the Modernity of «Tradition» and «Folklore» in Costumes of Armenian Women Exhibition

On the evening of May 12, 1974, forty-four Armenian women posed in their exquisite and heavy «traditional» dresses as models for a special viewing by Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran. Organized by one of Tehran’s rare feminist women’s organizations — Armenian Woman Union (AWU, Hay Kin Miut‘iwn) — the five-day public exhibition of «Costumes of Armenian Women» was a byproduct of several years of intense volunteer work by women. In fact, AWU had poured its efforts into completing the steps ordinarily undertaken by a major museum: the art history research on women’s costumes, selection of specific artifacts as originals to be reproduced, choosing of models, creation of dresses, collection of costume accessories, construction of a stage set, choreographing and photographing of models, composition and translations of the academic text, and final publication of two exhibition catalogs. The entirety of the project, with its various moving parts, was driven by systemic order and aesthetic priority, now public-facing and honed to perfection by the AWU. By tracing the history of this era-defining exhibition in the broader context of late Pahlavi reign, this talk demonstrates how the doubly liminal Armenian women of Iran deployed the discourse of domesticity and traditionalism of dressmaking and hat-making to interject women’s agency in mainstream Armenian histories, while at once, to interpose their own narrative into the wider Pahlavi promotion of «folklore» as an expression of cosmopolitan modernity.

Talinn Grigor is a professor of art history in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century art and architectural histories through postcolonial and critical theories grounded in Iran, Armeno-Iran, and Parsi India. Her books include the winner of the Saidi-Sirjani Book Award, The Persian Revival: The Imperialism of the Copy in Iranian and Parsi Architecture (2021); Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (2014); and Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (2009).


Ksenia Gusarova (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow)

Packing for the end of the world: girlhood and consumer dreams in wartime Zagreb

What would you put into your suitcase, preparing for the end of the world? The pre-teen protagonist of Maša Kolanović’s autobiographic novel Sloboština Barbie (2008) has all her Barbie dolls and their outfits ready as she has to descend for the first time to the improvised bomb shelter in the basement during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991. Only tangentially touching on the horrors of war, the childhood world of the novel revolves around «really important» things instead — relationships, sassy pranks and, not least, consumer dreams. The collection of Barbies gradually acquired by the narrator-protagonist epitomizes the erosion of anti-consumerist socialist ideology and the transition to post-socialism; what is more, it becomes a symbolic lifebelt, a carrier of meaning and continuity, which helps the girl survive through the dangers and uncertainties of war.

A scathing satire of consumerism, the novel nevertheless fully validates consumer experiences, joys and longings, recognizing their role as coping mechanisms and engines of creativity. The proposed paper will highlight the analytical value of Kolanović’s fiction in its exploration of the local appeal and metamorphoses of globalized commodities, the everyday tactics of preserving a girl’s lifeworld in disastrous circumstances, the power of dreaming about fashion and the limits of the escape it offers.

Ksenia Gusarova is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Humanities of the Russian State University for the Humanities. Her field of research interests encompasses the cultural history of the body in western modernity, with a focus on fashion and beauty culture, which she views as an intersection of aesthetical, medical, moral, and political concerns. Her work has been published in Fashion Theory, Clothing Cultures, and Journal of Design History, as well as several leading Russian academic journals in the humanities.

Galina Ignatenko (Higher School of Economics Research University, Moscow)

Stitching Identities: Embroidery on clothes as a Form of Self-Expression

Embroidery on clothes has been a form of self-expression for centuries, and it continues to be a popular art form today. Embroidery allows individuals to express their creativity and personal style, as well as to communicate their cultural and social identities. In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a renewed interest in embroidery and other crafts, as people seek solace and comfort in creative activities. Embroidery has become a form of self-care, as well as a way to connect with others through online communities and social media.

Embroidery on clothes can also be a way to address social and political issues. For example, the use of embroidery to create protest banners and clothing has become increasingly common in recent years, as people seek to express their opinions and stand up for their rights. However, embroidery on clothes can also be a problematic form of self-expression in the context of self-censorship and the current political situation. Embroidery has been reinterpreted as a practice, with a particular focus on collaborative work and action. Drawing on the conceptual idea of embroidery as a specific language on cloth, the paper seeks to connect this concept with the analysis of needlework and collective stitching practices as part of activism, memorialisation and the experience of trauma.

Galina Ignatenko, Researcher of Embroidery in Contemporary Art, PhD student at the Doctoral School of Art and Design, HSE University Exploring embroidery, textile art, and craft. PhD research focuses on female needlework techniques in contemporary art, with a particular interest in how embroidery is used as a language by contemporary Russian artists.

The Global Fashioning Assembly: Decentralising Fashion Knowledge Creation & Sharing (Angela Jansen, Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion, et al.)

In October 2022, the Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion (RCDF) initiated the first Global Fashioning Assembly (GFA22), an online coalitional gathering beyond institutional, disciplinary and geographical boundaries aimed at decentralising knowledge creation and sharing regarding body fashioning. It was hosted by 12 coalitions in 14 countries, across 6 continents, over a period of 3 days, for 36 hours. Following the sun as it moved from one time zone to the next, the hosting was passed on from New Zealand to Kazakhstan, Pakistan, South Africa, Kenya, Croatia, Netherlands, Egypt, Morocco, Wales, Brazil, Ghana, USA and Peru.

Its multi-stakeholder programme, combining online and offline formats, was created collectively through monthly online meetings over the period of one year. Each local programme was self-determined, activated and represented, involving local stakeholders, communities and audiences in a combination of local languages and English. Programmes ranged from conversations, screenings and workshops to performances, visits and crafts practices, both online and offline, addressing topics around museum collections, artisan knowledges, decolonial creative practices and critical research. In-between hosting sessions, one-hour Sharing Councils offered crucial opportunities for participants to be deeply present and listen intentionally to each other, to speak with each other, rather than at each other.

Several GFA22 hosting coalitions will be sharing their experiences and (embodied) knowledges to formulate possibilities for our shared futures. Intended as a biennial, the GFA is a recurring event aimed at building trust and sustainable long-term relationships between communities from different parts of the world. Inspired by around-the-world assemblies sparked by the grassroots-to-global possibilities of the digital, self-determination at every level of decision-making, content selection, organisational planning, and audience reach ensures that who is speaking, and in what forms these exchanges are happening, disrupts the unequal and exclusionary gatekeeping of conventional academic conferences. Beyond content, systemic changes demand changing the framework by having participants host the event, rather than the event host participants.

Angela Jansen is a decolonial researcher, educator, consultant, curator and initiator of the Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion (RCDF). Her scholarship grows out of an effort to critique the denial and erasure of a diversity of fashioning systems due to eurocentricity, unequal global power relations based on the modern-colonial order and the Euro-American canon of normativity. The RCDF is an experimental platform beyond institutional, disciplinary and geographical boundaries and a global network of local fashion coalitions that aim to decentralise knowledge-creation and sharing concerning fashion, engender solidarity across multiple lines of difference and activate self-representation, self-activation and self-determination based on «nothing about us without us». For the GFA22, she invited The Linen Project, a project for reactivating the economic viability of small-scale local flax cultivation and linen production in the Netherlands.

Doris de Pont is the initiator and director of the New Zealand Fashion Museum (NZFM), a virtual fashion museum initiated in 2010. With no fixed physical location, it is a museum dedicated to the documentation and sharing of New Zealand’s rich fashion past, making it relevant for the present and future. Established as a charitable trust, the museum holds «pop-up» exhibitions around New Zealand, produces relevant publications and runs as an online museum making New Zealand's unique fashion identity visible and accessible to a broad audience. For the GFA22, she created the Fashioning Assembly Aotearoa, with a ritual blessing and a series of talks, workshops and presentations that explored diverse ways of self-fashioning and communal care for future generations.

Erica de Greef is a researcher, educator and curator based in South-Africa and the co-founder of The African Fashion Research Institute (AFRI), a community of critical Southern African fashion thinkers co-founded in 2019. This community of artists, designers, academics, filmmakers, writers and activists aims to challenge, confront, explore and expand on definitions and archives of fashion. All its members work with fashion in ways that interrupt coloniality in terms of fashioning memory, making, wearing and meanings in the Global South. For the GFA22, she presented «AFRI_inConversation: Threads of Thought», an immersive dialogue between four South African creatives, Erica de Greef, King Debs, Lesiba Mabitsela and Scott Williams, about how they meet as South African creatives, why they do what they do and how they navigating contemporary, decentred praxis and critical pedagogies.

Chepkemboi Mang'ira is a journalist and researcher based in Kenya and the initiator of Own Your Culture (OYC), an online platform that aims to promote, preserve and educate youth in Kenya and beyond on traditional jewellery and its relevance in the fashion of today. This virtual community is aimed at reimagining what fashion is when traditional jewellery is included and true to its own local context. There is an urgent need for self-representation and the influential power of digital media enables others to see themselves accurately represented. For the GFA22, she brought together cultural change makers and social entrepreneurs who shared stories about their work aimed at restoring Kenyan culture and craftsmanship through a digital platform.

Amanda M. Maples is Curator of Global African Arts at the North Carolina Museum of Art and periodically serves as visiting faculty in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has written essays, books, and articles and curated a range of exhibitions on historical and contemporary African arts, decoloniality and self-fashioning, museum policies, collecting practices, and restitutions. Maples holds a PhD in Visual Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. For the GFA22, she organised «Mute the Dominant» at the North Carolina Museum of Art on practices of communal healing with mindful fashioning, tea-drinking and henna painting.

Teleica Kirkland (London College of Fashion University of the Arts London)

Cultural Bricolage: Compounded Identities of African Diaspora Existence

The Costume Institute of the African Diaspora (CIAD) recognises that the expanse of a perceivable African Diaspora is not and cannot be attributed to any particular geographical landmass. Instead, it is very much held within people of African heritage who have found themselves in various parts of the world due to a number of socioeconomic and subjugatory factors. As such, there are «levels» of membership to the African diaspora. There are «traditional» diasporas which have developed through the forced migration of 20+ million people through the transatlantic and trans-Saharan slave trades; the educational and economic diasporas who travelled for higher education and work from various countries on the continent; and the current diaspora of people who are fleeing persecution and war and are risking the lives of themselves and their families attempting to cross the seas to Europe in oversubscribed boat journeys. Each experiential level develops an internal dialogue between the persons sense of self, their cultural identity, and their inevitable creolisation.

In order to mitigate against identity conflict, transmigratory peoples and their descendants attempt to anchor themselves and develop deep connections to their new environments in order to establish a sense of home within unknown and often difficult places. However, the sharp juxtaposition between their environments and themselves constitute a hybridised reality that often requires continual varying levels of sociocultural adjustment that determines the transmigratory creolised African is often in a state of unease or seeking wider community approval. This paper will discuss and compare the hybridised existences and the impact of sociocultural factors on Black Armenian and African Caribbean people in order to highlight their lived experience and discuss the multi-layered and often complicated relationships they have to their cultural identities.

Teleica Kirkland is a fashion historian, Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies (CHS) at University of the Arts London: London College of Fashion, a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths University and the founder and Creative Director of the Costume Institute of the African Diaspora (CIAD); an organisation dedicated to developing resources and building curricula about dress and adornment cultures from the African Diaspora. Her research focusses on the intersections between diverse material cultures, identities and dress practices within the African Diaspora and to date has produced a number of publications including Methodologies for the Creolisation of Fashion Studies in the State of the Field, Fashion Studies Journal special issue.


Elizabeth Kutesko (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London)

Fashion on the Devil’s Railroad: The Materialities of Working, Wearing and Caring for Clothes in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper is concerned with the relationship between fashion, time, global experiences of modernity and the complexity of transnational relations within the context of early twentieth-century United States-Brazilian visual culture. It presents a set of glass plate negatives which document the global migrant workforce who helped to build the Madeira-Mamoré railroad deep in the Amazon jungle between1907 and 1912. Taken by New York fashion photographer, Dana B. Merrill, the click of the camera’s shutter marks a literal pause in the working day. Merrill’s intricate documentation of worn and weathered overalls and dungarees, cotton shirts, functional trousers, and utilitarian jackets are punctuated with occasional global accents, whether a Balkan waistcoat or an Indian turban, that cast light upon the geographic networks of industrial modernity. Nicknamed the «Devil’s Railroad», due to the vast numbers of workers who died from a catalogue of disaster and disease, the railroad was an American-Brazilian venture intended to expedite the global exportation of rubber and other tropical commodities from landlocked Bolivia. The anonymous workforce elevated within these portraits had travelled to the Amazon from over 52 nations. They were exposed to all the elements, while responsible for the hard manual labour of culling the jungle, laying the tracks, building bridges and maintaining the right of way. Given the considerable dearth of everyday and working dress preserved in museum collections in the U.S. and Brazil, this paper uses poetry, diary extracts and memoirs to breathe life into the visual.

Personal accounts of life in frontier societies such as the Madeira-Mamoré railroad and Panama Canal facilitate our understanding of the embodied and experiential memories of wearing, working and caring for clothes, but also highlight how salient aspects of dress were for social distinction and identity construction.

Elizabeth Kutesko is a cultural historian and alumna of the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she obtained her PhD in 2016. She leads the BA in Fashion Histories & Theories and the MA in Fashion Critical Studies at Central Saint Martins. She is the author of Fashioning Brazil: Globalization and the Representation of Brazilian Dress in National Geographic (2018) and is currently working on new monograph titled Fashion and the Devil’s Railroad: Dress, Temporality and Modernities in the Brazilian Amazon. Further information on her projects can be viewed at elizabethkutesko.com.


Elizaveta Kuznetsova (independent researcher)

Aesthetics of kidcore: an escape to childhood in times of crisis

The term «kidcore» is related to a fusion of various fashion trends, united by a naive, «childish» aesthetics as a core factor. The style is expressed both in separate elements, for example, jewelry and accessories, and in an overall choice of colors and ways of combining clothes that refer to children’s garments.

Based on the subjective experience and other testimonies, a connection between the appeal to such aesthetics after the events of February 24 in Russia has been recorded, as well as a turn to kidcore in fashion collections and consumer preferences in other countries. In the report we set a goal to define reasons for increased appeal to the aesthetics in a crisis and describe how a childish way of dressing affects self-perception. To investigate the phenomenon, we refer to the affect theory and a set of self-representation strategies, which can shed light on the motives behind fashion choices during challenging life periods.
As a result, we arrive at the conclusion that a childish manner of dressing may be seen as one of the variations of an emotional armor, which an individual builds to cope with severe political and social crises. The symbolic return to childhood allows an individual to get rid of an emotional tension associated with the inability to control one’s routine and destiny by distancing oneself from the role of an omnipotent adult.

Elizaveta Kuznetsova is an independent researcher, MA in fashion studies (MSSES), member of Mendit Research Lab. Her research interests include topics of vestimentary metaphors and the use of clothing as «emotional armor» in crisis times.

Morna Laing (The New School, Parsons Paris)

Storytelling Sustainability: Niche fashion media as micro-utopian network

In the current media landscape, communication about sustainability is so pervasive that it risks becoming background noise: a sea of «studium» which fails to «prick» the reader (Barthes 1980), regardless of the stakes. This paper asks how we might tell better stories about sustainability through the fashion media, drawing from insights in the field of Environmental Communication. Swaying «hearts and minds» has been shown as more effective in bringing about social change than communicating about the environment through facts and figures (Hansen 2018). The latter approach can foster a sense of dread or dryness, which feels at odds fashion and the idea of being «adorned in dreams» (Wilson 1985). Social dreaming thus becomes essential if we are to make sustainable approaches to fashion desirable, coaxing citizens towards the idea of «fashion-as-culture» rather than «fashion-as-industry» (Payne 2019). Allowing space for multiple narratives and visions of sustainable futures is fundamental if we are to avoid authoritarian solutions, instead respecting the diversity of local contexts and plurality of sartorial expressions. The concept of micro-utopia (Wood 2007; Rissanen 2017) is thus introduced as a way of thinking about how niche forms of fashion media — spanning educational, activist and independently produced content — can gain critical mass through their networked nature, in turn working to address macro-level environmental issues in localized ways, allowing citizens to collectively elaborate dreams of hopeful, and less dystopian, futures.

Dr. Morna Laing is Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies at The New School, Parsons Paris. She has published widely on gender and spectatorship, including the monograph, Picturing the Woman-child (2020) and the co-edited volume, Revisiting the Gaze: The Fashioned Body and the Politics of Looking (2020). Her current research focuses on the culture of sustainability and will be published in a book entitled Sustainability and the Fashion Media: Spectatorship, Affect and Social Change (Routledge, forthcoming).

Susan Marshall (Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, Milan Polytechnic)

Constructed, Deconstructed, Reconstructed

Reflecting on my doctoral research into Insubordinate Costume and my current practice research into Performative Pockets, this paper proposes to discuss the agentic and ecological possibilities of my flat-pack modular «phoenix» costumes in performance and discuss their future as an ecological alternative in fashion. Modular Insubordinate Costumes can be constructed, deconstructed, reconstructed in numerous different combinations and variations, constantly recycled and recyclable. The modular pieces connect to each other and to the body in movement in a collaborative synergy which is both visual and sensorial. Originally developed to investigate how costume has the ability to act as an impetus to creativity, theatre making and dramaturgy, the concept of construction modules can also be proposed in the context of fashion. Modules which can be joined in different ways to create different three-dimensional shapes are potentials which fulfil the persistent desire for change within the fashion industry whilst their recyclable nature remains an ethical choice and a powerful form of everyday creativity.

The costumes for Performative Pockets are formed of numerous modular pockets, each containing a unique secret or story to be told. From being outlawed during the French Revolution, to keep women from concealing revolutionary material, to becoming a symbol of independence and rebellion for the Suffragettes, the history of the pocket is fascinating, full of secrecy, questions of equality and subversion. While men’s clothes already began to have pockets sewn into waistcoats, coats and breeches in the 17th century, women’s clothing frequently doesn’t have pockets even today. For hundreds of years women wore a separate pocket or pair of pockets tied around their waists, hidden under their skirts. The Performative Pocket project deconstructs the ‘inner mechanics’ of dress as an item frequently hidden from sight, is brought to the foreground and celebrated both visually and as a way to recount small, personal narratives as well as more widely historical, humorous or tragic episodes.

Susan Marshall is an adjunct professor of Twentieth Century Fashion in the Fashion Institute of Technology (New York) at Milan Polytechnic and lectures on costume design and history of fashion at AFOL Moda Milan. Working as a costume designer with Teater Asterions Hus, Copenhagen, La Dual Band, Milan, and the prison theatre company PuntoZero in Milan, she recently completed a practice-based Ph.D. at Goldsmiths University of London, in the Theatre and Performance department, with a thesis on «Insubordinate Costume», exploring the pivotal role of scenographic costume in performance and the fundamental importance of play in the performers’ creative approach to the costumes. She is currently writing a book on «Insubordinate Costume» to be published with Routledge in early 2024.


Ilya Parkins (University of British Columbia, Okanagan)

Relational Fit: Belonging and the Wedding Suit

This presentation theorizes findings from a study of 2SLGBTQQIA+ (hereafter, queer and transgender) people’s relationships to wedding their wedding attire. It draws on minimally structured interviews with 50 participants from Canada, the United States, and the UK. The interviews, which were both with people planning a wedding and those who had already had one, prioritized participants’ affective relationships with dress. Wedding suits emerged as a rich theme for many participants who identified as cisgender lesbians, transmasculine, and non-binary; participants recounted their personal histories with clothing including suiting, their navigation of representations of suits as they planned a wedding, the shopping or tailoring processes they engaged or planned to engage in, and the wearing of the suit they chose — either on the wedding day or in the lead-up to the wedding. In this analysis, I will examine queer and trans participants’ discussions of the fit of suits, tracing its relationship to their sense of social fit in a hetero- and cis-normative world. While the connection between fit and «fitting in» has been made by other scholars, the relational dimension of what it means to belong via fit has been somewhat overlooked, mirroring a wider tendency in writing about dress to prioritize the individual experience of fit over its reality as a nodal point in a social world. Drawing on the queer and feminist literature on belonging in conjunction with research participants’ theorizations of their experience of fit as an experience of belonging with others — their gazes, their feelings, their touch — I argue that clothing fit needs to be recognized as a networked, rather than individual, experience.

Ilya Parkins is Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Columbia. She has research interests in feminist and queer theory, the history and theory of fashion, femininities, and periodical studies. She is the author of Poiret, Schiaparelli and Dior: Fashion, Femininity and Modernity and the co-editor of three fashion-related essay collections, including the forthcoming Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress (May 2023). She has also co-edited fashion-themed special issues for Australian Feminist Studies, the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies and Feminist Theory. Her work on fashion and feminist theory has been published in Fashion Theory, Feminist Review, Time and Society, and Biography, among other journals and essay collections. She is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Fashion Studies and Australian Feminist Studies.


Svetlana Salnikova (Higher School of Economics Research University, Moscow)

Identity in a suitcase: the experience of packing to live in a different culture as a construction of a new identity

Recent events including the pandemic and foreign policies resulted in the expansion of opportunities to work online and provoked new waves of internal and external immigration throughout the world in search of better life. The experience of diving in a new social environment forces us to reconsider our attitudes to life. In the report we want to focus on the stage of packing clothes researching what kind of clothes and why people take with them into their new life. While packing a person carries out a research of their own wardrobe not only choosing clothes that already reflects their identity but imagining themselves in the country with the new cultural environment. Our ideas and stereotypes about the country of relocation mixing with the fear of feeling outcast influence the choice of clothes we take with us.

Individual possibilities reflect the size of a suitcase, and make person think about the need for each item of clothing in their future. Leaving a part of the wardrobe in the previous home, they consciously refuse a part of their identity, creating opportunities to form a new one and starting to construct it already at the stage of packaging. Strategies vary from the minimum number of clothes, representing the desire to «start life from scratch», to trying to predict as many situations and clothes for it as possible in order to control at least how we will look in a new life. In stressful conditions of moving, well-chosen clothing allows a person to create a sense of security, saving the energy to tackle new challenges. A sense of security is given not only by the clothing appearance and symbolic attributes associated with the lived in moments, but also by its tactile properties. The study is based on in-depth interviews with those who emigrated to other countries in 2022.

Svetlana Salnikova is a PhD student at the Higher School of Economics, designer and founder of the fashion brand «fy:r». In her research Svetlana looks at how local cultural codes of European North of Russia can be investigated through daily wardrobe practices of the Arkhangelsk city residents.


Ellen Sampson (Northumbria University)

Why wornness: imperfection, embodiment and the radical power of the worn

At the opening the 2018 FIT symposium-Fashion Unravelled I posed the questions; why wornness? why do worn things mater? why should we as makers researchers, curators and consumers attend to damaged and imperfect things? In the period since there has been a resurgence of interest in damaged and imperfect garments(Ref) which builds upon the earlier work of researchers such as Stallybrass, De La Haye, Palmer and Evans. This paper returns to these questions to present wornness at a critical tool — a way of approaching the complex intersections of bodies, sensations and things.

Worn is an interesting word-both a verb and an adjective — with dual but interlinked meanings — a garment is worn by putting it on and using it and in doing so it becomes worn, altered through use. Thus worn and used clothes sit on the peripheries of conventional understandings of fashion, which is so often concerned with newness, with reinvention through the acquisition of goods. Often the more a garment is worn, the less in relates to an original ideal — the less fashionable and more bodily it becomes. Thus, worn garments subvert conventional notions of glamour and desire, by being appealing and powerful because rather than in spite of their imperfections. Taking the dual meanings of worn — the linked bodily experiences of wearing and the material outcomes of wear — as it’s starting point, this paper frames worn garments as a powerful a site to critique and reframe understandings of value and connectedness in fashion.

Ellen Sampson is an artist and material culture researcher whose work uses film, photography, and writing to explore the relationships between bodies, memory and garments, both in museums and archives, and in everyday life. She is a Senior Fellow in Design at Northumbria University and was previously a Curatorial Fellow at The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Professorial Fellow at UCA. Her book Worn: Footwear Attachment and the Affects of Wear was published by Bloomsbury in 2020.


Jo Turney (Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton)

New Looks for Old Clothes: Reinvention in the Wardrobe

This paper considers the way in which everyday creative practices such as getting dressed can enhance a sense of self, and self-confidence, and address one of the key elements of sustainability narratives — the over consumption of clothing. By case studying a wardrobe studies project undertaken with undergraduate fashion design students at Winchester School of Art over 3 years, the paper will outline the long-standing impact and benefits of the somewhat fashionable and vacuous notion of «shopping from one's wardrobe». In considering how a project has the potential to change systems of belief, shopping habits, and self esteem, it is anticipated that the value of celebrating these small creative acts will be demonstrated.

Dr Jo Turney is Professor of Fashion & Textiles at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Her research focuses on the everyday — the praxis at which the ordinary becomes extraordinary — and how these frequently hidden moments can be catalysts for social change. These concerns inform her publications. She is the founder and editor of Clothing Cultures, sits on the editorial board of Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, and is a member of the advisory board of the Dress and Bodies Association. She likes crime fiction and her cat. 

Olga Vainshtein (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow)

My clothes complex: fashion contexts of Virginia Woolf

The paper is focused around Virginia Woolf’s relationship with fashion. The writer avowed «the eternal and insoluble question of clothes» but also called fashion a «trivial concern», and these dilemmas constantly influenced her vestimentary practice. Woolf’s paradoxical thinking on clothes seems to be resonant with the «affective turn» in the contemporary humanities.

The central case study is based on Virginia Woolf’s involvement in fashion in 1924–1925, when she wrote several articles for British Vogue and was photographed in her mother’s Victorian dress. The paper also examines the influence of British Vogue’s editor Dorothy Todd on Woolf’s sartorial style. This cultural context offers a useful framework to explore the origin of the short story «The New Dress», demonstrating women’s far-reaching insecurity in dealing with fashion.

Olga Vainshtein is Senior Researcher, Ph.D., at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow. She was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and Stockholm University. Her research interests include history of fashion and body, beauty and gender, European dandyism, fashion and literature. She has written for The Fashion History Reader and Men’s Fashion Reader, Fashion’s World Cities and Fashion Theory: the Journal on Dress, Body & Culture. She is the author of the book Dandy: Fashion, Literature, Lifestyle (in Russian) and the editor of Smells and Perfumes in the History of Culture. She is a member of editorial boards of the journals: Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion; Fashion Theory: the Journal on Dress, Body & Culture and Russian Fashion Theory journal. Currently Olga Vainshtein is working on the English edition of the book Fashioning the Dandy: Style and Manners, to be published by Anthem Press in July 2023.