“Ad-Dressing Margins”: Historically Underrepresented Fashion & Style

An ADH International Hybrid and In-Person Conference & Workshop

Philadelphia, PA, USA, Drexel University 26-28 October 2023

For this conference, we seek to center work focusing on historically marginalised communities, fashion, style, and dress in historic and modern contexts. Our intention is to show the myriad ways marginalised communities engage with the fashion system such as in everyday contexts and/or means of resistance. We are seeking scholarship that centers marginalised identities and those who have often been marked as “other” or outsiders.

Fashion and style are broadly defined, and we invite contributions from any discipline and methodological approach. We encourage submissions that use a critical lens (e.g. Black feminist thought; feminist theory; critical race theory; crip theory; postcolonial and decolonial theory) and that consider the numerous intersections of power and oppression at work in race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and nationality.

We welcome submissions for a 15-20 minute research presentation. We also encourage submission of interviews, creative works, and curated exhibitions in digital or physically mounted formats.

We encourage submissions that investigate, but are not limited to, any of the following in relation to fashion, style, and dress:

  • Indigenous nations and communities

  • LatinX and Asian communities

  • Fat bodies and “straight” sizing

  • Corporate Pride and LGBTQ+ anticapitalist critique

  • Trans and gender non-conforming identities

  • Disability studies

  • Religion, dress, and identity

  • Black resistance movements (e.g. Black Lives Matter), collective action, prison abolition, and racial profiling

  • Trans and gender-non-conforming fashion entrepreneurship

  • Decolonising fashion and Indigenous fashion designers

  • Representation of trans identities in the media

  • Critiques of mainstream brands (e.g. Dolce & Gabbana, Ralph Lauren, Uniqlo, Gap, etc.)

  • Modest wear for Muslim women

To submit your proposal, include a 150-word synopsis, a 50-word biography of the presenter(s) and an image with caption to represent either presenters or subject, which you are happy to be published in our online programme and social media channels.

Submissions to: dressingmargins@dresshistorians.org and cc Dr. Joseph H. Hancock, II by 23:59 EST 1 August 2023.

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