Call for Papers

Stitches that Speak: Biography Through Objects

Dress, Fashion and Textiles Symposium

20th April 2023

De Montfort University, Leicester

Organised by Design Cultures, The School of Fashion and Textiles and the Faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities, De Montfort University, Leicester

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.

We invite both experienced and new speakers including students to submit a proposal for a 15-minute paper relating, but not limited to the following themes:

  • Histories and theories of biography through objects in fashion and textiles
  • The creation of haptic and tacit knowledge through objects
  • The use of biography through objects in the museum for diverse audiences
  • Biographies through museum and collection objects in storage
  • The role of oral history and written histories in biographies through objects
  • Biography through objects as a methodology
  • Biography through objects and recreative practices
  • Biography through objects and digital representations
  • Pedagogical approaches that use biography through objects as a framework

To submit a proposal, please send title, an abstract of 300 words and a 100 word biography, to Rachel Neal, at rachel.neal@dmu.ac.uk by 5pm 5th February 2023.