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Once-embodied garments take on new life through curation, where they have the potential to reveal histories, pose questions, inspire creativity, and challenge oppressive systems by bringing attention to inequalities and injustices through the lens of fashion. While the garment does this work materially, it is the curator and their team who conceptualize an exhibition, conduct in-depth research, design the display and author interpretive text, all of which empowers artefacts to convey a narrative. However, the very ‘elevation’ of fashion within major museums has been tethered to an ideological fabrication of fashion as a Euromodern phenomenon, which has created, produced, performed and sensationalized an exclusionary narrative of fashion history. At the same time, this narrative is being challenged through curation, especially in smaller institutions like community archives, tribal museums and university fashion collections. The contributors to this Special Issue reflect on the latter within the context of the United States. They write about the challenges of producing curated displays while offering insights into, and evidence of, the possibilities that curatorial practice offers institutions of higher education and the communities they serve. University collections in the United States create a space of learning that offers possibility for rethinking, reimagining and critiquing fashion. Education is the premise of the university collection and therefore world-building becomes possible through curation. While the university fashion collection is not without colonial baggage, corporate and industry connections, ideological interests and neo-liberal pressures, it is ideally a space premised on scholarly pursuit. This Special Issue grapples with the complexities of curating fashion in North American universities, and the potential of this work to agitate, challenge and resist dominant narratives.

Facemasks have become requisite amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore facemasking behaviors, preferences, and attitudes among emerging adults, a “distinct period demographically” within the lifespan. Public opinion polls conducted in May 2020 found that emerging adults were the least compliant when compared to other demographic groups. To understand why, we developed a survey instrument that was administered to a demographically representative quota sample of 1,005 participants. Demographic comparisons revealed that behaviors and attitudes differed significantly by political beliefs, gender, living situation, and race. An exploratory factor analysis revealed six underlying variables: (a) facemask avoidance; (b) concerned adherence (c) vexed faultfinding; (d) statement making; (e) fashion enthusiasm; and (f) hygiene adherence. All factors varied significantly by political affiliation, and in some cases by gender, race, living situation, location, and work/education status. Significant correlations were present between all factors except fashion enthusiasm and vexed faultfinding.

From 1841 to 1844, the Auburn Prison in New York State, now the Auburn Correctional Facility, was the location of an early experiment in the manufacture of sewing silk, a type of thread used in gar...

With the proliferation of digital photographs and the increasing digitization of historical imagery, fashion studies scholars must consider new methods for interpreting large data sets. Computational methods to analyze visual forms of big data have been underway in the field of computer science through computer vision, where computers are trained to “read” images through a process called machine learning. In this study, fashion historians and computer scientists collaborated to explore the practical potential of this emergent method by examining a trend related to one particular fashion item—the baseball cap—across two big data sets—the Vogue Runway database (2000–2018) and the Matzen et al. Streetstyle-27K data set (2013–2016). We illustrate one implementation of high-level concept recognition to map a fashion trend. Tracking trend frequency helps visualize larger patterns and cultural shifts while creating sociohistorical records of aesthetics, which benefits fashion scholars and industry alike.

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

This article discusses the embodiment of making and wearing clothing through a close analysis of the weaving and production practices of a contemporary Maya weaver, Lidia López. The first author lived in San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Sacatepéquez, Guatemala where she studied the back strap loom under the instruction of master weaver, Lidia López, while the second author served as an advisor on the research project and assisted with interpretation of fieldwork data. Anthropologist Daniel Miller has encouraged a research approach that thoroughly integrates the practice of making, arguing that 'the things people make, make people'. When a person weaves cloth using centuries-old techniques and tools passed down across generations, the cloth embodies identities that transcend time and materializes networks of social relations. This brings new possibilities to ethnographic research about processes of making. If we are what we make, as Miller argued, then what are we when we make cloth? In this article we explore the production of cloth as embodied practice: weaving on the back strap loom, bringing goods to market, the practice of teaching weaving, and all of the social relationships and realities that contribute to the production of clothing. The title of this article, 'Her eyes, my body', refers to the relationship between the primary ethnographic interlocutor, Lidia Amanda López de López, and the first author as ethnographer and weaving apprentice. By teaching weaving on the back strap loom in the tradition of her antepasados (ancestors), Lidia facilitated ways of knowing ‐ from the kitchen table to the loom, from her home to the market. Entangled and woven together through dialectics of time and space, private and public, past and present. Warp and weft are woven into cloth, culture and identities.

Curated exhibitions are places where research practice, creative design, storytelling, and aesthetics converge. In this article, we use the term “fashion exhibition” to refer to the organized display of extant dress-related items within museums or other public spaces. Curation, as a form of creative design research, produces numerous outcomes including museum exhibitions, digital archives, and associated publications; however, our field has not yet established a method to peer review fashion exhibitions. In this article, we build upon the work of previous scholars to propose criteria for evaluating fashion exhibitions. In doing so, we aim to elevate the scholarly status of fashion exhibitions, particularly those mounted by modestly funded institutions, and use the recent fashion exhibition, “Women Empowered: Fashions from the Frontline,” as an example to illustrate our argument.

The practice of using drawing and image rendering to declare rights and histories is long-standing among Nuu-chah-nulth people on the west coast of Vancouver Island. This article analyzes a collection of images created in 1916 by Douglas Thomas, a Nuu-chah-nulth man from the Tseshaht First Nation. His eldest son, Alex Thomas, sold these drawings to linguistic anthropologist Edward Sapir, who was at the time in charge of the anthropology division of the Geological Survey of Canada. The drawings depict critically important cultural information about ceremonial practices and protocols and are similar in style and content to the much larger-scale cedar screens (kiitsaksuu-ulthim) and cloth curtains (thliitsapilthim) of the same time period. By returning facsimile and digital copies to the family of origin, this research illustrates how anthropologists may play a role in fostering productive and reciprocal relationships between Native source communities and the archives that hold some of their treasured information.

The singer–songwriter–artist Joni Mitchell (nee Anderson, born on November 7, 1943) is recognized in the worlds of music and fashion alike for her creative influences since the late 1960s. In this ...

Bridging theory and practice, this accessible text considers fashion from both cultural studies and fashion studies perspectives, and addresses the growing interaction between the two fields. Kaiser and Green use a wide range of cross-cultural case studies to explore how race, ethnicity, class, gender and other identities intersect and are produced through embodied fashion. Drawing on intersectionality in feminist theory and cultural studies, Fashion and Cultural Studies is essential reading for students and scholars. This revised edition includes updated case studies and two new chapters. The first new chapter explores religion, spirituality, and faith in relation to style, fashion, and dress. The second offers a critique of "beauty" and considers dressed embodiment inclusive of diverse sizes, shapes and dis/abilities. Throughout the text, Kaiser and Green use a range of examples to interrogate the complex entanglements of production, regulation, distribution, consumption, and subject formation within and through fashion.

This research explores the underlying motivations of individuals who use natural dyes as part of their apparel and textile design practice. Methods include interviews, documentary filmmaking, audio recordings, photography, field work, participant observation research, and field notes. I interviewed a total of 20 natural dyers based in the United States from November 2016 to June 2019 and found three main sources of motivation: (a) perceived environmental and health concerns, (b) personal fulfillment and identity, and (c) the opportunity for autonomy over production. Individuals used natural dyes to infuse meanings into cloth, whether their own perceived environmental and health concerns, a sense of personal fulfillment, or autonomy over the production process. Through these motivations to use natural dyes, it appears natural dyers can share aspects of their personal identity in an object they have colored, infusing meaning into the cloth they dye.

In this paper, we critically examine the creation of lantern slides for a lecture series on the design and construction of ethnological clothing and textiles organized by Morris de Camp Crawford and Dr. Clark Wissler of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in 1916. Since the late nineteenth century, museums of art, history, design, and anthropology have shaped the way we view, value, and experience fashion. Critical readings of fashion in the museum, however, tend to focus on the ways in which curators have collected and displayed extant objects within museum exhibitions. By contrast, we investigate another way curators produced culturally recognizable meanings of fashion: through photography and its circulation. Drawing upon primary sources found within the archives of the AMNH, this paper brings to light how several of the museum's curators chose to represent their anthropological collections as primary sources for design research within illustrated lectures. We argue that lantern slides not only became an important technology used to demonstrate the value of their collections, but also led to the normalization of cultural appropriation within the American fashion industry. @font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:auto;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-parent:"";margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.Section1{page:Section1;}

In the United States, about one percent of the population identifies in the trans and gender non-binary community (TNB), meaning their gender identity does not align with the cultural expectations of their sex assigned at birth. One common way trans men or trans masculine individuals negotiate their gender identity through dress is via chest binding, which involves compressing the chest tissue to achieve a flattened, masculine aesthetic. We examined the spaces where people bind their chest to unearth why TNB individuals do or do not bind in relation to their situation and what influences these decisions. We identified numerous themes and sub themes for decisions influencing chest binding practices in the public, private, and secret sphere. Movement between private and public spheres is sometimes facilitated by the secret practice of binding, thus for some TNB individuals, chest binding via the secret-self is used to negotiate the public-self.

In this study, we examined emotional and physical aspects of chest binding by surveying 61 trans and gender non-binary (TNB) individuals who currently practice compression of mammary tissue through structural undergarments. Participants believed that binding produced better connections with and/or expression of their gender identity (92%, n=52). Through thematic analysis of qualitative responses, we found three non-mutually exclusive reasons for binding: (a) positive emotional feelings elicited by the practice, such as confidence, comfort, and safety (56%, n = 34); (b) aesthetic and visual improvements, like better fit of menswear (51%, n =31); and (c) greater satisfaction with gender expression and amelioration of dysphoria (69%, n = 42). One third of participants were ambivalent about binding, noting both positive and negative aspects. One-quarter said that binding made them feel anxious, sad, or upset, and another quarter mentioned physical difficulties like discomfort, back pain, constraint, and trouble breathing.

Fashion curation is an integral form of public scholarship within our field and yet has historically been overlooked as such. Unlike creative design scholarship, we have not collectively developed nor agreed upon methods for peer review. As a result, curatorial work is often not considered in tenure-review processes, despite fashion exhibitions meeting the core principles of disseminating scholarship beyond the academy. A recent article in the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, “Fashion Exhibitions as Scholarship,” challenged members of our field to implement peer review of fashion curation as a way to encourage and elevate this important form of scholarship (Green, et al., 2019). In this experimental salon session, we built upon Green et al.’s (2019) work by using the innovative salon session format as a juried venue for presenting fashion exhibitions rooted in rigor and research. Five fashion exhibitions were presented and discussed during the session.

Thliitsapilthim (designed ceremonial partitions) are textiles used by Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations families to display their crests, which declare rights, responsibilities, and prestige. These large painted murals adorn and transform spaces, from secular to ceremonial, during potlatches and other significant events. This paper combines nearly a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with archival- and museum-based research to argue that thliitsapilthim function as important legal documents for Nuu-chah-nulth peoples and make declarations about rights to territories, natural resources, ceremonial privileges, and family histories.

The 2017 CSA Scholars’ Roundtable considered the impact of technology on research, teaching, and museums. This paper documents the authors’ panel presentations and selected aspects of the audience’...

In the field of dress history, the name Irene Castle is synonymous with 1910s and early 1920s fashion. During this period, Irene was a household name and considered a style authority. Fashion historians previously have focused on her fashion influence in the early 1910s when she was dancing with her first husband, Vernon Castle; however, this paper argues that Irene’s greatest fashion impact occurred later, during her silent film career. Film, as a new medium, brought moving, fashioned, celebrity bodies to cities and towns across the United States, becoming an important vehicle for conveying fashion. Not only did Irene use her silver screen presence and stardom to become the “Best Known and Best Dressed Woman in America,” she was the first film star with an eponymous fashion line.

Roller derby began as a sport in the 1920s, fell out of popularity in the 1970s, and garnered interest again in the 2000s, with 1500 leagues worldwide today. In the United States today, the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) serves as governing body for 236 leagues, each with a unique logo that serves as a visual representation of the team. In this study, we critically analyzed roller derby logos for WFTDA-member leagues (N=296, 100%) across the United States over a period of three weeks in January 2019. WFTDA-member league logos represent mostly cisgender, youthful bodies that were both feminized and violent, with more than half of the logos white- and thin-appearing. Given the power of imagery, WFTDA and roller derby leagues should think through the messages they are sending and whether or not they reflect the women who play the sport and the inclusivity they are trying to create.

The material culture of slave life has been an increasingly important topic for the past few years. Many studies have been done on several aspects of slave life, but research on dress is relatively scarce considering how much we now know about things such as diet, housing, and religious practices. By combining written, visual, and material sources, this project brings dress studies into this recent trend and increases our knowledge of the relationships slaves had to the clothing they made and wore.

Historic research is an important area of exploration in the field of fashion and textiles. It is important, however, to ensure that historical research maintains a high level of quality by utilizing sound methodology and theory. This panel seeks to address the role of methodology and theory in historical research and discuss how these can be better implemented and communicated to improve research productivity, presentations, and publications.

This paper examines Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations' traditions of producing bodily adornments and clothing for trade with outsiders, from the 1700s through today, by looking at early examples in museum and archival collections and concluding with an ethnography of contemporary artists and designers. The earliest Nuu-chah-nulth dress and adornment artifacts currently held in museums were collected during Captain Cook's third expedition in 1778. These collections show that the Nuu-chah-nulth maintained extensive trade networks as Aleutian textiles and dress and Tlingit masks, armor, and hats are part of Cook's collection. Nuu-chah-nulth people began changing their designs to target European and American markets by the mid 19th century when women began producing pika-uu (decorative basketry). Merchant and cruise ships alike stopped along the coast and passengers purchased curio basketry in all shapes and forms: mats, covered bottles and abalone shells, baskets, hats, earrings, and pendants. Art history scholars refer to the 1920s - 1950s as the “dark period” of Northwest Coast art, as First Nations people struggled with residential schooling, Indian hospitals and the spread of disease, and aggressive assimilationist policies adopted in Canada (Cole 1985). As legislation changed and Canada accepted multiculturalism, Northwest Coast art exploded in the 1970s and continues to play a critical role in fashioning the bodies of both tourists and Nuu-chah-nulth people alike. In recent years, Nuu-chah-nulth designers have embraced new technologies, like silk screen printing, while retaining traditional production techniques in order to produce fashions that are exceedingly popular among tourists.

Primaries in Square is a dress and cloak ensemble that uses simple shapes and minimal-waste pattern cutting to sustainably celebrate the productive tension between control and chaos. The primaries -- blue, yellow and red -- were created using Indigofera tinctoria (indigo), Curcuma longa (turmeric), and Rubia tinctorum (common madder) and applied to silk charmeuse and dupioni (both 19mm), with the latter two dyes applied to silk mordanted with aluminum potassium sulfate at 6% owf. The design pays homage to complex simplicity by using primary colors derived from plants and applying colors to simple shapes like squares and rectangles. Stream of consciousness surface design was created through batikaction painting, and combined with mokume shibori, a more controlled stitched resist technique. Surface design techniques disrupt basic shapes and colors to add aesthetic complexity and to conceptually remind us of the water used and often abused in textile production.

This paper explores how first-hand experience of an ephemeral, alternative community—which we are theorizing as a transformative space —may affect how men (re)conceptualize masculine appearance style in more plural or open-ended terms. In particular, we are interested in how men have experienced the community created by the Burning Man Project, an annual eight-day gathering of nearly 50,000 men and women in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Based on two years of participant observation research in 2007 and 2008, qualitative interviews, and photographic and video documentation, we will illustrate how men renegotiate masculinity and self-expression through outfits worn at Burning Man and secondly, explore how the Burning Man space influences participants' appearances in their everyday lives.

This paper examines the social-psychological influences of dress within the furry fandom. Using observations, surveys, and interviews at two fur conventions, I explore how individuals’ various identities are developed through costuming. The results reveal a spectrum of identities within the fandom; costuming and “dressing-up” enable individuals to safely explore, express, and negotiate these identities through as-animal performance.