West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network 31st Annual Conference
Women and Fashion: A Historical Perspective
Date: Saturday 12 October 2024
Venue: Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath BA1 2HN
Call for Papers, deadline – 24 May 2024
Keynote Speaker: Dr Serena Dyer, Associate Professor of Fashion History & Material Culture, De Montfort University (https://www.serenadyer.co.uk/)
We invite papers on any aspect of the history of Women and Fashion. Fashion covers not only clothes, costume, cosmetics and beauty trends, but applies to both material and immaterial things, such as decorative arts, architectural styles, interior design, literature, entertainment, travel and culture. Topics could include, but are not limited to:-
- How did women influence fashion/trends/styles – as designers, producers, models, sales women, consumers, etc?
- How were women influenced by fashion/trends/styles?
- How did women use fashion as a form of self-expression?
- Trend setters: how were fashions disseminated and received? Who started them and how? How were women involved/affected?
- A focus on an object or set of objects (designed by, used by, or somehow connected with women/women’s assumed sphere).
- Fashion in print – magazines, newspaper pages.
- Gender and fashion (eg fashion as reinforcing/challenging stereotypes).
- The life/work of individual women eg as makers of fashion (eg Coco Chanel); consumers and leaders of fashion including celebrity culture (e.g. Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire); as designers/artists (eg Gertrude Jekyll, garden designer).
- Fashion as experienced by commoners and aristocrats, rich and poor (eg sumptuary laws, court fashions, sweated industries & labour conditions, access to fashion/trends).
- Fashion as feminist protest (eg the rational dress movement) or as an expression of a specific identity (eg migrant populations).
Papers should be of not more than 20 minutes in length. Suggestions for presentations in film or other non-standard formats will be considered. Please send an abstract of up to 300 words to Lucienne Boyce (lucienneboy@gmail.com) by Friday 24 May 2024.
Picture Credit: ‘The Fashion Behind but not Behind the Fashion: 1829 – T’is Thus to Follow the Mode’, William Heath (‘Paul Pry’); Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain