75606 - Culture and the Imaginary of Fashion

Academic Year 2019/2020

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Rimini
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Fashion culture and management (cod. 9022)

Learning outcomes

The course aims to analyze the staging and visual performance of fashion within different media: the museum, the academy, and the fashion industry as an integrated formula for exhibition display. It will be discussed the legitimization of fashion as a cultural phenomenon and the role of exhibitions as a unique format in which to present new ideas on both old and new fashions.

Course contents

Clothing is among the most visible and meaningful ways in which we express our identities. At the same time, our clothes are material items produced and consumed through an ever-expanding global fashion industry. This course will explore the various social, cultural, economic, political, and visual meanings associated with the representation of fashion , combining anthropological and historical methods.

Readings/Bibliography

Preliminary Readings Before the Class:

1. S.Segre Reinach (2016) "Ethnicity" in Cultural History of Fashion vol. 8 Bloomsbury. (pdf attached)

2. S. Cliffe (2017) The Social Life of Kimono (the book can be consulted in the Rimini Library Unibo).

3. 'Introduction: Europe and the People without Fashion' in L. Welters and A. Lillethun Fashion History. A Global View, Bloomsbury, London and New York, 2018, pp. 1-10.

4. D.N. Green and S. Kaiser "Fashion and appropriation" in Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, 4, 3, 2017 (pdf attached)



Teaching methods

Lessons, Students presentations, workshops

Assessment methods

The examination will ensure the achievement of the following objectives:  

- critical awareness of the complexity of the representation of  fashion

- survey and analysis of the main conceptual contents examined;  

- ability to establish well-founded relations between the different aspects of the program.

FINAL EXAMS

A. Attending Students only: COSTUME MEETS FASHION PROJECT.

Students will elaborate a personal interpretation of Kimono on the international stage, in collaboration with the students of Prof. Y. Kawamura (FIT Institute New York)

a.1 Kimono Individual Portfolio

a.2 Essay Test during the course on the preliminary readings indicated above.

The final grade is based on the average of the two tests, essay and portfolio

B. All other students written EXAM (Test)

Written Multiple Choice Test (31 questions) based on the following readings:

1. Bruzzi and Church-Gibson (eds) Fashion Culture Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. Introduction

2. Lise Skov and Marie Riegels Melchior: Research Approaches to the Study of Dress and Fashion

3. E. Wilson Adorned in Dreams: Introduction + chapter 4

4. D. Gilbert A new world order? Fashion and Its Capitals in the twenty-first century in Fashion Culture Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. Bruzzi and Church-Gibson. Routledge.

 

Teaching tools

Thematic introductions; classroom presentations by students.

Office hours

See the website of Simona Maria Segre Reinach