Inter-Disciplinary.Net » Jacquelynn

Wessie Ling’s Victoria & Albert Museum Presentation and Exhibit, Jan 28, 2011

Jacquelynn — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:30:19 +0000

IDN Fashion Steering Group member Wessie Ling will be presenting “China through the Looking Glass” at the Victoria & Albert on January 28, 2011. Details below. If you are in London on the 28th, please join her (I’ll be in California, but Wessie will be sending photos, etc, which I will post here). JLF

Date: 28 January 2011

Time: 6.30-10pm
Venue: Victoria & Albert Museum

Talk: Through the Looking Glass of the Chinese Dress: Chineseness and Authenticity

Talk Time: 7.30-8.15pm

Talk venue: National Art Library @ V&A museum

WebLink: www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/events/friday_evenings/friday_late/events/jan2010/index.html

WESSIELING, Senior Lecturer at London College of Fashion, has been commissioned by the Victoria & Albert Museum to make artwork and give a talk for their Late Friday event, China Through the Looking Glass. The event explores and explodes the myths and stereotypes of Chinese culture through fashion, film, music and contemporary art. It looks at China through the murky lenses of chinoiserie, fiction and myth, a vision blurred by tall tales and Chinese whispers.

Besides new installations and the launch of her Fashion Chess, Dr Ling will also take us to a journey from historic to contemporary China through the looking glass of the Chinese dress. What does the Chinese dress tell us about China, authenticity, and Chineseness? Uncover how Chinese identities are expressed through Chinese fashion in her illustrative talk.

Dr Ling is also an invited speaker of Mandarins’ Mantles: The Culture and History of Chinese Dress, a Study Day Conference [29.01.2011 @ Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Center, 10.30-17.00] to coincide with the V&A’s exhibition, Imperial Chinese Robes from the Forbidden City.

More Updates: Photos: 2nd Global Conference Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues, Oriel College, Oxford University, Sept 23-26, 2010

Jacquelynn — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 04:13:52 +0000

To discuss fashion (and have a good time doing so!), we travelled to Oxford University from the UK, the USA, Canada, France, Italy, Greece, Israel, Turkey, Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Japan, China, South Africa, Nigeria, Australia, and New Zealand. More photos coming. Best wishes, Jacque Lynn Foltyn, Fashion Project Leader

Click photo, to see full and larger image: Photos courtesy of Cecilia Winterhalter, Michael Ivy, Elizabeth Kaino Hopper, Karolina Burbach, Flavia Loscialpo, Susan Ingram, Marco Pedroni, Jacque Lynn Foltyn

Program, Abstracts, Papers: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/fashion/conference-programme-abstracts-and-papers/

The September Issue

Jacquelynn — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:14:17 +0000

I finally watched The September Issue, about the making of the famous Vogue autumn edition. Two comments* made by Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour made the film stand out for me: “There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous.” AND: “I often see that people are frightened of fashion. Because it scares them or it makes them feel insecure, they put it down.”

Wintour was brave to say that, but she’s never been lacking it courage (or whatever one calls her decisiveness and projection of confidence).

Today, I was talking with a young woman who told me that she hasn’t been interested much in fashion because she isn’t quite sure what to do with it!

Exactly.

*(And the divine Grace Coddington, who by looks, style, and disposition is posed as the anti-Wintour in the documentary, though the two have been friends and colleagues for decades. It is clear that the two women balance each other.)

Jacque Lynn Foltyn

Age, weight, and fashion…again, and again….

Jacquelynn — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:55:23 +0000

I have been thinking about the comments under Anna Wintour and American Fashion: Lots of thoughts about the intersection of weight, age, and fashion, and my thoughts are all over the place, but I’m a sociologist, not a philosopher (Rob!) and I am in a bit of hurry, so here goes. Rob is correct about the press needing to better separate out the issues…and there are a number of them besides size and age (alone). There are the problems of branding and rabid consumerism; fashion is aimed at the youth market (and those determined to stay ‘young’), in part, because younger people are more likely to buy not save, and to purchase trendy clothing and luxury brand accessories, even if they have to go into debt to buy them. Accessories are where the ‘real’ money is. There is also the conventional wisdom of designers & editors that fashion/beauty is aspirational and that women are hypocritical when they complain about the hegemony of skinny young models on the catwalk because when women like themselves are selected to model the fashions they are being sold, they reject them for not being beautiful, tall, young, or skinny enough! Ageism is rampant in pop culture where there is a general rejoicing of the aging of beauty icons and celebrities, who come to ‘power’ in their unlined, slender youth but like everyone else gradually show wear and tear, cellulite and wrinkles. The glad rag tabloids eviscerate Kate Moss for glamorizing skinny, true, but more often now for looking her age, or “worse,” looking older than her age, i.e., haggard, ‘past her prime,’ ‘replaced’ by younger models at Burberry. Consumers, entertainment, and pop culture since the 1960s have been focused on youth culture–in film, tv, art, and music, as well as fashion. Youth is status and aging is viewed as a ‘deformity’ which can be corrected by surgery, injections, exercise and diet. Signs of aging–absent from the catwalk–are thought ’unnatural,’ scary reminders of mortality in secular society where the older you are the closer you are to meeting the grim reaper and annihilation of self, and being replaced by someone younger and less expensive at work. The very young are also less likely to be fat, and fat is another source of morbid fear in societies where a chubby figure is easy to achieve simply by getting older in the sedentary land of plenty, and a slender one more of a challenge to obtain or retain. There is also an aesthetic-based sexism on the part of some designers, stylists, and photographers, who let’s face it, are not particularly enamoured of the female form, who favor the male or the androgynous body over the curves of a woman. For them the model is an inverted triangle, a hanger (no hips, wide shoulders). She must not upstage the fashions on the catwalk. Hence the overall more anonymous look of runway models with interchangeable figures and faces, a response to the 90s supermodels, who did upstage the fashions they wore with their unique characteristics. Isn’t it interesting that style guides for the over 40 and for the average to plus size figure complain about the design formula of young and skinny while selling advice about how to appear younger and slimmer, not fleshy, middle-aged, or, for heaven’s sake, old and/or fat?

Jacque Lynn Foltyn

Sad News about Alexander McQueen

Jacquelynn — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:08:18 +0000

I woke up this morning to the sad news about the death of the extraordinary Alexander McQueen. London Fashion Week site provides the below link. Succinct, gracious, no rumors.

http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/news_details.aspx?ID=181

Rest in Peace.

Jacque Lynn Foltyn

Project Leader, Fashion

Anna Wintour on American Fashion

Jacquelynn — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:47:56 +0000

In a response to a contributor who posted a comment under Fashion-Wise, I mentioned cultural values affecting American fashion. Last night, while reading Anna Wintour’s Letter from the Editor in the Feb 2010 Vogue (pp. 70, 76), I was reminded of other American fashion influences. Writing about the actor Jessica Biel, Wintour notes that “she symbolizes everything that American fashion stands for: health, beauty, fitness, and grace.” While beauty and grace are staples of fashion, everywhere, health and fitness are not. But they have been infused in American fashion from its modern inception. The Gibson girl, Suzy Parker, Lauren Hutton, Ali MacGraw, Patti Hansen, and Cover Girl cosmetics and Ralph Lauren models (whether they are Americans or not!) have glowingly embodied it. And then there is the American popularization of athletic sportswear worn not only as comfortable clothing, but as fashion, reflections of the health and fitness (and outdoorsy) aesthetic and lifestyle.

We would love to read your thoughts about national fashion, American or otherwise.

Jacque Lynn Foltyn

Project Leader, Fashion

Program Archive, 1st Global Conference Fashion, Sept 2009

Jacquelynn — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:45:42 +0000

For those of you seeking information about our first meeting, which took place in September of 2009, please use the link to the archive for the program.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/fashion/project-archives/1st/

Best, Jacque Lynn Foltyn

Project Leader

Fashion-Wise

Jacquelynn — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:44:49 +0000

Hello!

It’s been several months since the 1^st Global Conference Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues ended (held at Mansfield College, Oxford University, Sept 25-27, 2009). The post- conference time has been full of activities–keeping in touch with new colleagues and friends, organizing publications emerging from the meeting; teaching and administrative duties; and weathering that rare phenomenon, a system of hard-hitting Southern California rainstorms.

If you would like to read more about what was presented at the 2009 conference, an eBook will soon be available online. 1^st Global Conference delegate Lucy Collins, of Temple University, USA (philosophy) posted a recap of papers she was engaged by—and some photos from the meeting, as well–at wornthrough.com. http://www.wornthrough.com/2009/10/15/fashion-exploring-critical-issues-conference-recap/

Another delegate, Erica de Greef, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department (Theory) at LISOF, Johannesburg, South Africa, provided a thorough overview of all of the papers presented.

http://www.ifashion.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2250&Itemid=272

The call-for-papers for the 2^nd Global Conference has just gone out. Our next conference will be held Sept 23-26, 2010, at Oriel College, Oxford University. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/fashion/call-for-papers/

I’ll be writing at this blog site regularly, sharing some of my thoughts and observations, fashion-wise. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Jacque Lynn Foltyn

Project Leader, Fashions: Exploring Critical Issues