September completely flew by! I find it quite hard to believe that the month is already over and, to be completely honest with you, I’m not even sure about what I did with my life for the past 4 weeks (since I wrote my last monthly roundup).
But then there have been a lot of exciting things going on in my life.
First, and as you may have seen on Instagram, I traveled to London/the UK last week and will be staying for a couple more. While I’m here, I’m super excited to visit some of the (many!) exhibitions currently on view, starting with Amber Butchart’s “The Fabric of Democracy” at the Fashion and Textile Museum. I’ll be attending the exhibition opening this evening with some of my fashion friends so do tune in to my Instagram stories to see more.
Apart from my trip and all the preparation that travel requires sometimes, I’ve also finally started to get back to thinking more seriously about fashion and my next “intellectual” moves. And I have to thank my friends at the Beyond Fashion Writing Workshop—especially organizers Sarah Byrd and Keren Ben-Horin—for helping me stay on track, reading and commenting on my work before I send it to anyone else. I honestly swear by these writing groups and can’t recommend them enough!
I’m still not entirely sure of what my next “big” research project will be now that my Ph.D. dissertation is done. But I’ve been exploring more ideas about “non-hegemonic” fashion and trying to think about global connections that help us better understand the legacies of colonialism in contemporary fashion… all while trying to make a stronger case for why designers and brands should care more about the histories and theories of fashion.
I’m still trying to figure that one out, so stay tuned for more. And in the meantime, here’s my selection of “food for thought” for this month:
Food for thought
1. Book:
I spent quite a big part of the month reflecting on Jenny Rintoul’s Integrating Critical and Contextual Studies in Art and Design (2016) and rereading chunks of it, but I’m not sure that’s the kind of book I’d want to recommend here. So instead of sharing one book that I read this month, this time I’m going to go with the 3 books I have on my reading list but haven’t got my hands on them just yet:
First, Hilary Davidson’s brand new Jane Austen’s Wardrobe looks like a (beautifully illustrated) gem. I have to confess here that I’m quite bummed that I’ve missed all of the book launch events but either that’s a sign that I have to make my way back to NYC soon or that maybe I should organize a book launch in Colombia when I’m back if there’s enough audience for that.
Second, Martin Charter, Bernice Pan and Sandy Black’s Accelerating Sustainability in Fashion, Clothing and Textiles looks like a much needed contribution with detailed case studies on how to actually advance towards more sustainable practices in the fashion and textile industry.
Finally, and perhaps unexpectedly because you know I love a good material culture study, I’m dying to read Kate Fletcher’s The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes. The book follows the diary of this young woman and the people around her as she travels from England to Singapore and back in the eighteenth century.
2. Short(ish) read:
Evan Ross Katz wonders if New York Fashion Week needs a (new) home, after running around the city getting soaked, being late, and just generally feeling frustrated for the beginning of the fashion month. I’ve been wondering the same about most fashion weeks in general (including Bogotá’s, which had several events that were held in inconveniently far-away locations this year) and I do wonder where it is all going…
3. Podcast:
I’ve been following Khémaïs Ben Lakhdar for a while now on Instagram and keep wanting to both take him on a “fashion date” so I can talk with him for ages and share pretty much all of what he does—but sadly I’m not sure how many people will understand the French. So you might imagine how excited I was when I saw that he’d been interviewed for The New Paris podcast, in the company of no less than Aja Barber and Esha Chhabra. In episodes 120 and 121 of the podcast, the group talks about the role of colonialism in the development of the fashion industry and muse on the future of Parisian fashion. (And I’ll report back if I even manage to actually have a real life conversation with Khémaïs.)
4. Exhibition:
There are quite a lot of exhibitions that I should mention here, especially because there are a lot of them on view in London (where I’m currently at) and pretty much all over the world. So today I’m only going to mention one that I got to see last Saturday and which was quite a treat: Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I’m still debating whether I should review it for my Instagram (does it even “match” any of the other things I talk about over there?) but I did love how it brings to life all the color that we don’t always see in Victorian fashion, mostly because it’s masked by both black and white images and Queen Victoria’s long mourning period.
Coming up next month
I’m super excited about next month not least because it will start with a guest lecture for my friend Leren Li’s history of British fashion course, where I’ll get to introduce students to object-based research in fashion. This is one of my favorite methodologies and one that I’ve had the privilege of implementing in my own research, so I hope I can get students interested in fashion material culture.
I will still be in London for a bit and, towards the middle of the month, I’ll be traveling back to Colombia. There I hope to be able to focus on organizing some ideas for future research projects and a couple of exhibitions that I am in the process of curating.
As always, follow along on Instagram for my day-to-day adventures as a fashion historian!
Thank you, thank you for reading. Please let me know if you end up reading or listening to some of my “food for thought” in the comments or via email!
Until next time,
—L 🩷
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