Fashion is - and in this I definitely agree with Roland Barthes - a language. Like the French theorist, critic and semiotician I also think that fashion is an image for literature.
We live in a world that, constantly bombarding us with buy/spend messages sent to us via magazines, television, the Internet and mobile phones, seems to be mainly preoccupied with the most superficial aspects connected with fashion, that is trends, it bags/shoes and celebrity styles. Yet there are more vitally interesting aspects surrounding fashion.
Among them there are the financial and social issues behind the fashion industry, but also the more arty sides of fashion that connect it with other fields, such as cinema, dance, theatre or literature.
This aspect of fashion, its connections with fiction, or rather, with a set of fictions, will be explored next week at Philadelphia’s Drexel University, during the Fashion in Fiction - The Dark Side conference.
I will be among the speakers with a presentation on dark Italian comic Diabolik and its adaptation for the big screen by Mario Bava that will touch upon themes such as masks, violence, Italian society in the 60s, and bright artificial Pop Art colours, but I can assure you the event is packed with many different inspiring lectures.
As you can see from the programme (downloadable here), this three-day event will cover different topics and subjects, from art to history, film, literature, music, photography and gender issues, with themes going from Surrealism to vampires, mourning attires, uniforms and deception, tackled by international lecturers and independent scholars with a wide range of backgrounds (looking forward to meeting them and learning more from them).
Patricia Cunningham form the Ohio State University, Susan Kaiser from the University of California and Andrew Bolton from the Metropolitan Museum of Art will also open the event on 8th October. If you want to register and join the conference, you can do so until Thursday.
What you saying, a conference is not as glamorous as a fashion week? Maybe, but then it’s much more interesting and mind-expanding, in fact you can start expanding your minds a bit by reading the intriguing lecture abstracts here.
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looks like i missed registration which is a bummer because i live in Philadelphia. what day are you speaking? is there any way into this thing without dishing out the very hefty reg fee? hehe. UGH! :(
Posted by: Alison Nastasi | October 01, 2010 at 05:16 AM