Programme – all welcome!
1000-1015
Introduction:
Dr Jude Browne and Dr Ulinka Rublack
University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies
1015-1045
Professor Amy de la Haye
Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Dress History and Curatorship, London College of Fashion
‘Cinderellas in Breeches’: A material culture analysis of the uniforms worn by members of the Women’s Land Army
Chair:
Dr Lucy Delap, St Catharine’s College, Cambridge
Abstract:
The role of the land girls (as they were known and still describe themselves) as part of Britain’s Women’s Land Army (WLA) changed them both experientially and physically. Friendships were forged, and are today made, on the basis of their shared rewards and challenges. The distinctive breeched uniform the land girls wore formed part of their daily lives, shaped their identities and influenced broader perceptions of them.
1045-1100 Q&A
1100-1115 Coffee/Tea
1115-1145
Professor Amanda Vickery
Professor of History, Queen Mary, University of London
Mutton dressed as Lamb? Women, Middle-Age and Dress in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Chair:
Dr Ruth Scurr, Caius College, Cambridge 2
Abstract:
Mutton Dressed as Lamb is a vintage dish. By the eighteenth century, ‘mutton drest lamb fashion’ was a stock joke ridiculing the frills and futile artifice of older women. The misogynist attack on dressy older women was pungent, but middle-aged women still had to clothe themselves. The risks of being accused of frolicking in a lamb fashion were mortifying, as we shall see, but keeping up appearances was vital too. Who was fashion for in British history? Professor Christopher Breward
1145-1200 Artistic intervention by: Maisie Broadhead (London)
1200-1215 Q&A
1215-1245
Professor Christopher Breward
Principal, Edinburgh College of Art and former Head of Research, V&A
Contemporary Fashion, Gender and the Cultural Turn
Chair:
Professor Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Abstract:
Reflecting on case-studies from recent published work, this presentation summarizes and evaluates advances in the study of contemporary fashion as they have emerged in the art and design college, the university humanities department, and the museum over the past decade. Drawing on my own experience in the United Kingdom Higher Education and Gallery Sectors, I offer thoughts on future directions in a shifting field and consider the power of fashion to provoke debate and enquiry.
1245-1300 Q&A
1300-1400 Lunch break
1400-1430
Dr Alyce Mahon
Senior Lecturer in History of Art, University of CambridgeThe Self-Fashioning of Frida Kahlo and Yasumasa Morimura
Chair:
Professor Juliet Mitchell, Jesus College, Cambridge
Abstract:
This paper will focus on the self-portraits of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and contemporary Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura’s ‘inner dialogue’ with them in a series of works produced in 2001. Employing surrealist strategies of bizarre juxtaposition and appropriation in their art, both Kahlo and Morimura engage in a powerful dialogue with the past in their portraits, bringing sexual, gender and racial politics into the frame. And yet critics have all too often fetishized their difference. Through a comparative study of their respective self-fashioning, their role as ‘daughters’ of art history will be critically assessed.
1430-1445 Q&A
1445-1515
Dr Emma Tarlo
Reader in Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of LondonVisibly Muslim: Articulations of Fashion, Faith and Feminism in Contemporary British Muslim Dress
Chair:
Dr Jude Browne, University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies
Abstract:
Based on anthropological research amongst Muslim women in Britain, Emma Tarlo will discuss how ideas of fashion, faith, femininity and feminism are articulated and expressed in visibly Muslim dress practices. Drawing on the research for and reception of her recent book, Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith (Berg 2010), she will suggest that Visibly Muslim fashion disrupt popular and scholarly assumptions about the relationship between gender, religion and fashion. Focusing on Muslim women’s understandings of their own dress practices, she will show how ideas of fashion, faith and femininity are self-consciously articulated in dress practices.
1515-1530 Q&A
1530-1600
Professor Evelyn Welch
Professor of Renaissance Studies and Vice-Principal of Research, Queen Mary, University of London‘Muy Lindo’: The Smell of Masculinity in the Renaissance
Chair:
Dr Ulinka Rublack, St John’s College, Cambridge
Abstract:
Perfume is now closely associated with femininity. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was also an important part of protecting the vulnerable body from diseases such as plague. Both men and women wore perfumed buttons, scented gloves and lace and carried silver and gold pomanders. Numerous publications provided recipes based on floral and animal scents for both cosmetic and health purposes. This combination of recipes that crossed the barrier between a desire to beautify and a desire to protect the body caused increased anxiety about what was appropriate and what was inappropriate in terms of male adornment. When did elegance slip into effeminacy? When did an emphasis on body care become vanity? This paper concludes by looking at moments such as dancing and dining when bodily smells came to the foreground of social relationships.
1600-1615 Q&A
1615 Close