Fashion Communication

CLASS OF 2020 FASHION COMMUNICATION

As the fashion system is challenged by consumer behaviour, the drive by brands towards sustainability and the development of technology, so are fashion communication channels adapting. And in many cases, it is the communication of fashion that is leading innovative practice. This process was already underway, but Covid-19 has accelerated the transformation.

Fashion communication operates as an intermediary and as direct consumer communication in print, on screen and in space – all contended areas as creative practice and digital technology intersect. It is in these arenas that respect for the craft of communication elides into innovation.

Generating new knowledge, future-facing fashion communication at LCF brings together trans-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary responses to the opportunities that the evolving digital landscape creates. New communication roles in the media, in PR, at creative studios and brands – notably in the field of experience management – are emerging from creative strategist to futurist to creative content manager. Each role demands collaboration. The Fashion Communication programme has responded to lockdown by weaving the pandemic as a topic into the delivery of courses. This has both challenged and enabled students to problem-solve positively in the face of the changing fashion environment.

While fashion communication was already digitally-driven pre-Covid-19, the pandemic has required course teams and students to embrace new practices in a totally digital era. Much of this new practice in digital fashion communication will continue into the post-Covid 19 era when graduates will be able to flex their skills into cross-disciplinary practice and collaboration.

Josephine Collins, Acting Programme Director Fashion Communication, School of Media and Communication

Delali Ayivi

BA Creative Direction for Fashion

CLASS OF 2020 FASHION COMMUNICATION

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BA Fashion Public Relations and Communication

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BA Creative Direction for Fashion

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Karolina Jarosz

BA Fashion Public Relations and Communication

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Lydia Platt

BA Creative Direction for Fashion

Erik Hesselman

BA Creative Direction for Fashion

CULTURAL & HISTORICAL STUDIES

The Cultural and Historical Studies Department at London College of Fashion engages students in cross-disciplinary critical dialogue and research, treating fashion as a social, cultural and political practice that impacts our everyday lives.

Our research spans practice and theory in art and curatorial practice; fashion media and visual culture; critical theory and feminist aesthetics and activism; gender, sexuality and queer studies; costume, performance and moving image; sensory fashion and materialities; fashion consumption, branding and production; and globalisation and transnational fashion.

We explore fashion as it manifests through our visual, digital and material worlds, and how it gives shape to our politics, identities and our communities. We critique fashion’s histories, so that can disrupt the present and take ownership of the future, initiating responsible and responsive actions within the environmental, ethical and global challenges of our times. The last few months have forced rapid change on the fashion industry and its modes of communication, as well as its presence across wider forms of media and performance. From digital catwalks to representations of identity, this is a moment of change and opportunity.

Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion provides a space where these issues can be reflected upon and where new ideas can be tested, so that we can work collectively to build a truly dynamic and inclusive new industry.

Caroline Stevenson, Head of Cultural and Historical Studies, London College of Fashion

Cast-offs and Class: charity shopping and social hierarchy in the UK

Holly Bullock

BA Fashion Journalism

Digital Dysmorphia: how technology is normalising a disorder

Ella D’Aguilar

BA Fashion Styling and Production

Plant-based meat as a means of identity construction in neoliberal culture

Seneca Jeffries

BA Creative Direction for Fashion

Re/Imagining Nigerian Culture and Society through Afrofuturism: how can Nigerian contemporary creatives harness the idea of Afrofuturism?

Jehosafeen James

BA Creative Direction for Fashion

Fashion, Beauty, Colonialism and Identity in Singapore

Energy Crash: ‘Capitalist Realism’, UK dance subculture and ‘Hauntology’ in the contemporary moment

James Moses

BA Fashion Media Practice and Criticism

‘The Female Man’ Science Fiction as Feminist Political Dissent

Sasha Neema Ponte

BA Costume for Performance

VR as a Social Technology: addressing the capabilities and issues of virtual reality in providing a means of digitally-mediated human interaction

Fredric Lipman

BA Creative Direction for Fashion

‘The Universe is just out there giving zero fucks’ Camp culture as an escapist simulation

Olivia Lawrence

BA Fashion Illustration

The Exiled Goddess: How is feminine power represented in Hindu religious discourse?

What does it mean to be a feminist porn filmmaker in the digital era?

Camilla Liconti

BA Fashion Photography

The Supremacy of Supreme: studying supreme through the lens of exclusivity in fashion and subculture

Meng Tong Yu

BA Fashion Illustration

An exploration of the Air Max trainer: how do they shape male identity and what do they reveal about society?

Luke Addo

BA Fashion Styling and Production

Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations: how can a book of photographs of gas stations be considered art?

Federico Fossati

BA Fashion Photography

Ugliness in Fashion: can ugliness be beautiful?

RESEARCH

The School of Media & Communication has a thriving Research Community comprising academic staff, students and a number of aligned internationally acclaimed researchers. In the School, approaches to research are both practice and theory-based and span a range of areas relating to fashion media, communication and performance.

The School’s Fashion Media and Communication Hub provides a space for the exploration of research ideas connected to traditional media – fashion photography, fashion writing, fashion film and illustration, as well as digital technologies. Connected to the School is one of UAL world-leading research centres, the Centre for Fashion Curation, an international centre, co-directed by Professors Judith Clark and Amy de la Haye, which explores all elements of exhibition-making and archival research.

The Performing Dress Lab, an International Research Study Laboratory for doctoral study, evolved in partnership with University of the Arts London, Aalto University, Finland and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Australia is also affiliated with the School of Media & Communication creating a rich and diverse pool of opportunity.

Integration of research into the curriculum is central to the learning and teaching strategies of the School for an enriched student learning experience. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the School’s aligned Researchers have been working closely with course teams to offer additional support to their students in the form of specialist lectures, Master Classes on Drawing Strategies and individual tutorial support. They have also been assisting in the development of online resources for students.

Dr Michèle Danjoux, School Research Coordinator, School of Media and Communication

DELMONICO PRESTEL

Professor Reina Lewis, ArtsCom Centenary Professor of Cultural Studies

Contemporary Muslim Fashions, an exhibition on which Professor Reina Lewis was consulting curator for the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco in 2018, opened this spring at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.

The exhibition was the 2020 winner of the Richard Martin Award, from the Costume Society of America (the highest award available to fashion exhibitions), and had previously, for its opening run in San Francisco, won the 2018 Enhancing Understanding Award, from Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Djurdja Bartlett, Reader Histories & Cultures of Fashion

Djurdja Bartlett’s edited book on Fashion and Politics, Yale University Press, Autumn (2019), to which she also contributed a chapter Can Fashion Be Defended? was launched on October 2, 2019.

Bartlett was also the Keynote Speaker at the conference Diors of the Eastern Bloc, 20 February 2020: Hungarian National Museum, Budapest.

Professor Judith Clark, Director of Centre for Fashion Curation, Professor of Fashion and Museology

Professor Judith Clark curated and designed an exhibition for the iconic French fashion house Lanvin entitled Dialogues: 130 Years of Lanvin, which opened at the Fosun Foundation, Shanghai in December 2019.

Lanvin also invited Clark to create a small series for Instagram’s IGTV #LanvinDialogues during lockdown celebrating their historic archive.

Charlotte Hodes, Professor of Fine Art

Charlotte Hodes presented an installation called After the Taking of Tea at Hestercombe, Somerset, 2 March – 28 June 2020 and The Errant Muse at the Victoria Gallery & Museum, University of Liverpool (VG&M).

The two-venue exhibition titled Inspiration – Contemporary Art & Classics, co-curated by James Putnam with Susanna Pettersson, the Director of the National Museum in Stockholm, opened at Ateneum Finnish National Gallery on the June 18, 2020.

This major exhibition featuring 40 Contemporary artists, selected and commissioned by Putnam, first opened in Stockholm on February 20, 2020.

Pamela Church Gibson, Reader Film & Media

Pamela Church Gibson was invited to present as a Keynote Speaker at the conference Millennial Masculinities: Queers, Pimp Daddies and Lumbersexuals, Massey University, Wellington New Zealand, December 2019.

Hannah Zeilig, Fellow Gerontology and Arts

Hannah Zeilig’s paper on Foregrounding the perspectives of mental health service users during the COVID-19 was published in the Mental Health and Social Inclusion Journal.

Zeilig has been funded as a coinvestigator to undertake a study on COVID-19: Using multisensory culture boxes to promote public health guidance.

Donatella Barbieri. Fellow Costume for Performance Theatre

Donatella Barbieri was awarded the Prague Quadrennial 2019 Best Publication award for her book Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture and the Body (2017).