CCD2019: Culture Costume and Dress: Regarding Fashionable Society Birmingham City University, City Centre Campus Birmingham, UK, June 5-7, 2019 |
Conference website | http://ccd2019.org |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ccd2019 |
Abstract registration deadline | February 8, 2019 |
Submission deadline | February 8, 2019 |
Culture Costume and Dress: Regarding Fashionable Society
Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Birmingham City University
5-7 June 2019
The Dress in Context Research Centre is pleased to announce its second international conference. This year’s theme will be the role of dress in fashionable society, whether that is through fashion itself, or as an expression of society in history, literature, and other fields.
Dress in all its manifestations – clothing, jewellery, accessories or body adornment - is necessarily related to fashion, and this relationship is one that culture references. The clothes we choose to wear act as social and cultural signifiers, by which others know us, and one of the most prominent indicators is whether or not they are fashionable. As individuals, we cannot escape fashion: whether we choose to embrace or ignore it, we make a statement about where we stand, and how we wish to be valued.
Membership of fashionable society feeds our psychological need to belong, and can provide the key to power and influence, fuelling our fascination and making it difficult to resist. In literature, fashionable society is often used as a metaphor for superficiality and self-obsessiveness. In his novels, Thackeray often attacked the frivolity of fashionable society, yet he was drawn to it and was very much a part of it himself. We have seen its impact throughout history and across cultures. Its influence is pervasive; it has, for example, shaped the development of cities: parks, pleasure gardens, theatres, have all been prompted by the prevailing nature of social assembly – and fashion has responded by inventing new modes of dress for all of these activities.
Fashionable society, then, embraces a wide range of activities and relates to many subject areas. We invite submissions from any discipline for academic papers or posters that address the conference theme. Topics include, but are not restricted to:
- Fashion, society and power
- Fashion tribes
- Fashionable society in history
- Fashion and character in literature
- Costume and the depiction of fashionable society
- Representations of fashion in painting, photography and film
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 28 February 2019
For more details, visit our website