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This article considers the possibilities and limitations of plus-size clothing— a subcategory of ready-to-wear that is deeply embedded in the history of dieting, exercise, standardized sizing, and the industrialization of clothing manufacturing in the United States. In doing so, it draws on fashion theory and disability theory in exposing how plus-size clothing functions as a normalizing mechanism, thereby inhibiting innovation in this sector. The article concludes with a counterexploration of the possibilities of "fat clothes" and the novel w ays of seeing and existing in the world that they might enable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virgil Abloh: "Figures of Speech". Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, Illinois, June 10-Septemebr 22, 2019 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its beginnings in the mid-1980s as an interdisciplinary field of study indebted to its more entrenched sister disciplines of costume studies and dress history, fashion studies has witnessed scholars adopt a number of innovative methods and approaches, stemming from fields as disparate as economic history and ethnology. Even amid this diversity of approaches, however, the object – and more specifically, the garment – continues to hold a place of special importance in the minds and research of fashion studies scholars. What happens, however, when the material record is lacking or absent? What methods and resources can fashion scholars employ to reconstruct a history of fashion without fashion? With my doctoral research into the history of the stoutwear industry – the early-twentieth-century predecessor to what is today known as plus-size fashion – serving as a case study, this article will examine how the digital may enable scholars to recover histories of fashion; retrace historical self-fashioning practices; retrieve lost memories; and reconstruct bodies that have been lost due to conventional practices of conservation, collecting and archiving. In addition to describing my process and findings, this article will more generally consider the possibilities, but also the perils, of conducting historical fashion research in the digital realm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a mainstay of popular fashion discourse, the notion of "figure flattery" is an enduringly neglected concept in the fashion literature. In seeking to partially fill this gap, this article engages in a close examination of the slenderizing design discourses of the "stoutwear" industry—the historical precursor to today's "plus-size" fashions—in order to flesh out a working theory of figure flattery. Drawing upon a close reading of extant advertisements and design commentary published in the popular fashion press and industry trade journals dating to between the years 1915 and 1930, or the peak of stoutwear production, this article aims to show how stoutwear was not merely made to fit the stout body, but to also help the wearer to fit in, socially and aesthetically. Through this analysis, this article situates fashion as a productive site in which fashions for the stout woman were not only created, but in which the stout body was itself constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

ANDREW ROSSI, THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY Distributed by Magnolia Pictures, New York, 2016 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GLAM! THE PERFORMANCE OF STYLE Curated by Darren Pih, exhibited at Tate Liverpool, 8 February-12 May 2013, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 14 June-22 September 2013, and Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, 19 October 2013-2 February 2014. DAVID TOMAS, CONSIGNED FOR AUCTION Artexte, Montreal, 7 September-26 October 2013; 31 October 2013-11 January 2014 55th VENICE BIENNALE Il Palazzo Enciclopedico, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, along with 88 national pavilions and 47 collateral exhibitions, Venice, 1 June-24 November 2013 ART ON THE UNDERGROUND: CONTEMPORARY ART PROGRAMME ON THE TUBE 15 for 150 and other site-specific projects, various curators led by director Tamsin Dillon, locations throughout the London Underground, June 2013 - ongoing YANG FUDONG, NEW WOMEN Curated by Noah Cowan and Davide Quadrio, commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival as part of A Century of Chinese Cinema, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto, 7 June - 11 August 2013 DAVID BOWIE IS Curated by Geoffrey Marsh and Victoria Broackes, organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 23 March - 11 August 2013. Travelling to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 25 September - 27 November 2013, and other locations. ARTE DE CONTRADICCIONES. POP, REALISMOS Y POLÍTICA. BRASIL-ARGENTINA 1960 Curated by Rodrigo Alonso and Paulo Herkenhoff, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, 14 July - 16 September 2012 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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