I feel like it was yesterday that I was writing last month’s roundup directly from London. And while it was only a month ago, it somehow seems like three lives have passed since then.
As you may have seen on Instagram, I’ve regained inspiration after laying low for most of the summer and recovering from my post-Ph.D. exhaustion and burnout. So I’ve been reading a ton again, writing more frequently and, while in the UK, I did my best to visit as many exhibitions as I could.
Some of my favorite exhibitions were Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion at the Design Museum, The Missing Thread at Somerset House, and Amber Butchart’s fabulous The Fabric of Democracy: Propaganda Textiles from the French Revolution to Brexit at the Fashion and Textile Museum.
Other highlights of my month included seeing some of my favorite “fashion friends” in London and re-launching my Patreon. Here I’m sharing additional loose thoughts and resources, writing monthly book and exhibition notes, hosting a fashion “reading” club (which includes podcasts and audiovisual materials—hence the quotation marks), and having individual coffee chats for the upper tiers. Please, please join if you’re interested in being part of a highly engaged community that is constantly thinking of ways to decolonize fashion and fashion history!
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Food for thought
Journal of the month:
I’ve been slowly rereading every single line of the special issue on “Fashioning Resurgence” of Fashion Studies, as it will be the guiding light of my inaugural reading club next week. I will share more thoughts in my (new!) monthly reading notes next week, but I just want to say that this is a treasure trove of knowledge and I will likely never get over it.
Film:
I am dying to see Killers of the Flower Moon, not exactly because I want to live the trauma of the Osage Nation, but mostly because we need to support Native representation in Hollywood and beyond. Telling the story of the Osage Reign of Terror in the 1920s, the film was created thanks to the exemplary engagement with Osage consultants—so much so that they ended up influencing the angle that director Martin Scorsese took for the film.
In non-fashion stuff:
I’ve been subscribed to Dearest (a newsletter dedicated to antique jewelry) for over a year now but I don’t think I’d taken the time to slow-read a full issue in months! So I adored this month’s Halloween special, featuring a spooky story involving occultist Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats and—perhaps more enticing—a divine bat with diamonds and ruby eyes.
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Coming up next month
As I mentioned above, next week I’ll host the inaugural reading club for my Patreon community and I’m super excited for this new space to engage in thoughtful and expansive conversations about fashion. I’ll also be attending the Association of Dress Historians virtual conference “Ad-Dressing Margins” later this week, with the intention to learn as much as I can about the fascinating research of colleagues (and friends!) from all over the world. And on November 15th I’ll be presenting at the Latin American Sustainable Design Week on how to move past the tropical stereotype in Latin American fashion.
I hope to catch you at some of these events!
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Thank you, thank you for reading and until next time!
—L