Luxury Studies: The In Pursuit of Luxury Journal

I am pleased to announce that I am an editorial board member of: Luxury Studies: The In Pursuit of Luxury Journal. “As a term which has made its way into everyday language, the idea of luxury has secured a place in contemporary society. Luxury Studies: The In Pursuit of Luxury Journal explores the many issues and debates surrounding the idea of luxury as a historical and contemporary phenomenon, both critically and commercially.” For me the concept of “luxury” is what drives theRead more

Succès de Scandale: Homophobia, Racism and Abject Marketing in Fashion

Succès de Scandale, the manipulation of outcry over the deliberately shocking, has been used frequently to garner notoriety and fame in the past. Currently, fashion brands are notorious for dropping crypto-offensive items into their marketing and then backing off with a meagre apology when customers react with legitimate offence. Social media hashtags generate viral visibility, and the associated brand is amplified exponentially. Engaging in this dance between the edgy and the truly offensive becomes tactical for brands to appear ‘cool’,Read more

“Cosmetics, Glamour and AIDS: Way Bandy, Scott Barrie and Halston”

“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I presented “Cosmetics, Glamour and AIDS: Way Bandy, Scott Barrie and Halston” Thursday, July 1st at 1pm Toronto time for the Sartorial Society Series @SartorialSeries https://www.sartorialsocietyseries.com/ Here is the recording: https://www.sartorialsocietyseries.com/ My talk was part of week 5: Week Five: Trauma & the Legacies of Loss 1st July 2021 ​ Lucy Adlington (20-minute paper) The Apple-Green Gown: Ghosts of ADEFA and Nazi Germany ​ Mark O’Connell (20-minute paper)Read more

Redefining Design 2019, Seneca College Fashion Arts (FAA) Graduate Collections

Congratulations to our class of 2019 graduating Fashion Arts students (FAA) of Seneca College. The collections that were seen on the runway at Daniel’s Spectrum on the evening of Thursday, April 25th were truly outstanding. On display-aside from the excellent construction and design expertise-were sustainability innovations, clever subversion of cultural tropes and stereotypes, intriguing exploration of proportion, as well as gender subversive design concepts. It was exciting to see the end result of all the hard work, creativity and skillRead more

“Items: Is Fashion Modern?” at the MOMA

Visited the “Items: Is Fashion Modern” Exhibition at MOMA which is described on the museum website as an exhibit that “explores the present, past—and sometimes the future—of 111 items of clothing and accessories that have had a strong impact on the world in the 20th and 21st centuries—and continue to hold currency today”. Some of these items are of modern vintage like Levi’s 501s, the Breton shirt, and “the Little Black Dress”, and there also ancient and “culturally charged” items likeRead more
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Stolen Goods: Plagiarism and Fashion Scholarship

“Arsenic Dress”: English or French, c. 1860s The Fashion Research Collection at Ryerson University. Gift The Racked website, recently published a piece on toxic clothing that appears to be an unattributed reproduction of a body of work by Ryerson University fashion scholar Dr. Alison Matthews David. The Racked post even includes a photo of the arsenic dress from the popular “Fashion Victims” exhibition at the Bata Shoe museum in Toronto that Matthews David and Bata head curator Elizabeth Semmelhack co-curated. http://www.batashoemuseum.ca/fashion-victims/Read more