Symposium Programme

20th April 2023 Trinity House, The Newarke, De Montfort University, Leicester, LE2 7BY

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stitches-that-speak-biography-through-objects-symposium-tickets-564588628787

Fashion and textiles capture narratives of people’s lives to form a material ‘archive of our intimate existence. Through objects, we can trace biographies and the often-complex stories of human lived experiences. Arjun Appadurai’s formulation of “the social life of things” (1986) established that objects themselves have lives and afterlives of their own; but objects – perhaps especially clothing – can also reveal the lived experiences of their human makers, owners, and wearers. Objects not only have biographies, but they can tell the biographies of people who are otherwise silent in the archival record. While guild records and written accounts tell stories of a white, straight, cis, and patriarchal past, objects themselves can reveal diverse stories from muted voices. Where pens are silent, garments speak.

From sweat stains and blood splatters to the carefully constructed records of a sartorial life, garments tell the emotional, visceral, and corporeal stories of human life. Yet the biographical power of objects stretches beyond the historical record and encourages consumers to reimagine their own sartorial biographies. The activism of the slow fashion movement attempts to recover the intimacy between clothing and wearer. This is a conceptual celebration of human use-value, leading to sustainable consumption, circular economies, and integrated communities of makers, activists, and consumers.

This one-day symposium offers a forum for cross and inter-disciplinary dialogues exploring creative material methods and innovative approaches to revealing biography through objects in the field of fashion and textiles. We welcome papers that explore narratives from the margins of fashion and textiles, and reveal lived experiences that have been fragmented, forgotten, silenced or just never recorded in written record.


STITCHES THAT SPEAK: BIOGRAPHY THROUGH OBJECTS

Symposium in Fashion, Dress and Textiles Programme Schedule

20th April 2023

Trinity House, The Newarke, De Montfort University, Leicester, LE2 7BY

9.30-10.00am – Registration and Coffee

10.00-10.15 – Welcome

10.15-11.15am – Keynote paperDr Bethan Bide, University of Leeds and Dr Lucie Whitmore, Museum of London

Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style – Foregrounding Jewish Experiences in a fashion exhibition

11.15-12.30 – Panel 1: Panel Chair Ruth Jindal

Professor Amanda Briggs-Goode, Dr Gail Baxter and Jayne Childs, Nottingham Trent University

Lace: Hand/machine/home-made objects of production

Dr Liza Foley, Independent Scholar

Animals in Artefacts: Uncovering the Non-Human Lives of Gloves

Ruth Singer, artist, writer and arts and heritage producer

Emotional Repair: personal stories in cloth and stitch

12.30-1.30pm – Lunch

1.30-3.00pm – Panel 2: Panel Chair Dr Rachel Neal

Vanessa Jones, Leeds Museum and Galleries

The clothing of Barbara Priestman: Redefining eighteenth-century sartorial narratives within the museum

Hannah Wroe, University of Lincoln

“The Cape of Hope”: Placing material culture within the archival investigation of interwar British couture house Isobel London & Harrogate Ltd

Veronica Isaac, University of Brighton

Dressing the Part: Ellen Terry (1847-1928)

Melangell Penrhys, Textile Conservator & Derw Thomas, Senior Collections and House Officer, Berrington Hall, National Trust.

Material Memories in Ann Harley’s court mantua

3.00-3.30pm – Coffee Break

3.30pm-4.45pm – Panel 3: Panel Chair Dr Serena Dyer

Diya Wang, De Montfort University, Leicester

The Interpretation of Oriental Collections in Western Museums: a late Qing Dynasty/early Republic Chinese underwear garment mistaken for outerwear

Chelsea Newton Mountney, Worthing Museum Dress Archive

Remaking the 1960s: Homemade Clothing in Britain, 1965-1970

Abigail Jubb, University of York

Altering Fashion: Biographies of Consumer Experience Through the Fitting Alterations of Extant Garment Sizing circa 1870-1930

4.45-5.00pm – Closing remarks