SPEAKER BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION in alphabetical order (as submitted by each speaker)
Kimberly S. Alexander is principal of Zephyrs10, specializing in 19th century American material culture, art, decorative arts and historic preservation. She earned the Ph.D. in Art History from Boston University and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of History at University of New Hampshire, Durham where she teaches courses in material culture, architecture and American studies. Among Kimberly’s recent publications: ‘Demure Quakeress’: Rebecca Kinsman in China, 1843–1847, In Our Own Words: New England Diaries, 1600 to the Present, Dublin Seminar for New England Folk-life Annual Proceedings, 2006/2007 (Boston: Boston University, 2009): 102-113; Painting Portsmouth: A Brush with the Past, coauthored with Jamie Lafleur (The Blue Tree, 2010. Forthcoming publications include “Thread: The Story of New England Fashion” (2012) and “The Shoe Trilogy” (2013). Founding Curator of Architecture and Design at the MIT Museum, she went on to serve as Curator of Architecture and Design at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. and, most recently, was Chief Curator of Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH. Her current focus is on New England women’s fashion, diaries and travel in the antebellum period.
Co-presenter:
- Emma Hope grew up in Singapore and England and graduated from The Cordwainers College in London. Currently, there are three Emma Hope shops in London; the first Emma Hope flagship store in Japan opened in 2003 in Roppongi Hills, a leading shopping area in Tokyo. Ms. Hope has designed shoes for Paul Smith, Anna Sui and Mulberry. Her shoes and bags are in over 150 stores worldwide including Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Harrods. All the shoes and bags are made in small, family owned factories in Tuscany, where they are specialists in the finest hand crafted shoe making techniques. Emma Hope likes buying beautiful vintage bags, shoes and gloves at jumble sales and flea markets using them to rework and revive the old techniques of how they were originally made. Among her recent work, Ms. Hope has recently launched a new collection of sneaker’s for men and women. The sneakers have an old school feeling and are made in ponyskin, velvets or python and are calf lined. Famous Chelsea footballer, Frank Lampard, Kevin Spacey, Susan Sarandon and singer Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream wear the “joe” sneakers, while Uma Thurman wears low cut ballet flats. She designed the shoes for Kiera Knightly and Rosamund Pike for the award winning film, Pride and Prejudice Ms. Hope has won five Design Council Awards, the Martini Style Award, the Harpers & Queen Design Award, and the Clothes Show TV and D.T.I. accessories award. In 2004 Emma Hope spoke at the Oxford Union against the motion ‘High Fashion – do we pay too high a price?’ defending quality and design against high street mass manufacturing.
Pascale Gorgouet Ballesteros: Chief curator in Musée Galliera, musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris, I am uncharged with the 18th century Fashion Department and the Dolls Department. My latest exhibitions were Modes en miroir. La France et la Hollande au temps des Lumières, 2005, which was presented both in Galliera and in the Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, and Fastes de cour et cérémonies royales which was held in the Palace of Versailles in 2009. Member of the boards of the Centre international des textiles anciens ( CIETA) and of the Icom Costume committee, I am at the moment working on an exhibition about Sports and Fashion from 18th to 21st century which should open in Galliera in fall 2014.
Caroline Marie Bellios is Assistant Director of the Fashion Resource Center and Instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). After completing her education at The University of Chicago (AB) and SAIC (BA), Caroline worked for Alexander McQueen in London before returning to Chicago to teach and research. Her study of 19th Century garment construction and elements and her interest in the importance of sewing skills to a society, lead to the foundation of Silvertown Studio, a community of inquiry and instruction, with Michal Lynn Shumate. She continues her quest to advance camaraderie in the field of dress studies by serving on the Board of the Midwestern Region of the Costume Society of America.
Co-presenter:
- Michal Lynn Shumate is the Special Project Coordinator for the Fashion Resource Center and the Coordinator of Data and Analytics for the Office of Development at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). In 2009, Michal Lynn received her AB in Art History from the University of Chicago with her thesis on the evolving practice and theory of fashion exhibition. She has since co-founded Silvertown Studio with Caroline Bellios, and continues to explore the ways in which dress can be presented and taught.
Claire Bonavia is a Textile Conservator and works with Heritage Malta which is the agency responsible for Cultural Heritage. Previously she worked for twenty years with the Maltese National Museums Department. Her career started as a Graphic Designer and later she won an Italian Scholarship were she obtained a diploma in textile design and weaving. She was in charge of the Maltese National Costume Collection which incorporates historical costumes, vestments, uniforms and tapestries. She obtained her Bachelor degree in Textile Conservation and later a Masters in Applied Conservation Studies. The title of her research was COUNTRY FOLK COSTUMES IN MALTA: THEIR MANUFACTURE AND PRESERVATION. She has also experience in installations of costume exhibitions.
Alexandra Bosc: Born in 1978, I studied Art History at the Sorbonne in Paris, specializing in the classical area art. Successful candidate in 2004 at the competitive examination for the job of Museum Curator (“Conservateur du patrimoine”), I have been trained at the Institut National du Patrimoine in Paris. As a civil servant, I have been appointed curator at the Galliera museum (Fashion museum of the City of Paris) in July 2006. Since then I have been in charge successively of the department of the Haute couture for the second part of the 20th c., and then of the 19th costumes. I have been working mainly on the 1950’s fashion in France, with a special interest for its economical processes, the questions of the youth and of the new textiles, with an exhibition to be held soon. In 2008-2009, I taught a course at the Ecole du Louvre about fashion during the first half of the 19th c. I published recently an article about the taste for the 18th c. fashion during the 19th c. (exhibition catalogue Le XVIIIe siècle au goût du jour). I am very interested in the interactions between dress and social imperatives, as in the case of mourning for instance.
Mary M. Brooks: After reading English at Cambridge University, I worked in the book world and management consultancy. I then developed my long-term interest in textiles by training as a textile conservator at the Textile Conservation Centre. I next worked as conservator and curator in museums in Europe, USA and England. Exhibitions curated include the award-wining Stop the Rot which aimed to raise public awareness of heritage conservation. I became Head of Studies and Research at the Textile Conservation Centre and then, at the University of Southampton, I was Reader and Programme Leader for the MA Museum & Galleries which included a history of textiles and dress strand. I now work independently as a museum and conservation consultant and am currently a Monument Fellow at York Castle Museum undertaking projects aiming to make the dress and textile collection more accessible to scholars and the public alike. Recent projects include research for Durham and Reading Universities and teaching dress and textile history, conservation and museology at UK universities and abroad. I have undertaken conservation projects for Nottingham Castle Museum, York Castle Museum and Art Gallery and Fairfax House, York. Current research areas include seventeenth century embroideries, textile x-radiography and regenerated protein fibres.
Suzanne Chee works as a conservator at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia. She gained a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney majoring in art history and after graduation she began her full-time work in the conservation department at the Powerhouse Museum. After winning several scholarships, she furthered her studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), New York where she received a Masters of Arts in Museum Studies (conservation of costumes and textiles). Suzanne acquired valuable experience in all aspects of conservation and exhibition work through the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, the galleries at F.I.T, and over 20 years experience at the Powerhouse Museum. She plays an important team member role on many successful Powerhouse exhibitions as well as numerous international shows. She has traveled extensively with many Powerhouse exhibitions across Australia and international locations. As part of her duties, she has presented many lectures on the care of costumes and textiles and conducted tours of the Museum’s storage facilities. She has been fortunate to have attended all the Costume Colloquiums in Florence, Italy.
Joy Spanabel Emery, Professor, Curator of the Commercial Pattern Archive at the University of Rhode Island, is Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Adjunct Professor of Textiles, Merchandising & Design Department. She was the Resident Costume Designer for 32 years and is the author of Stage Costume Techniques (1981). Publications include essays on the pattern industry appear in The Culture of Sewing, Dress, the journal of the Costume Society of America, and Costume, the journal of The Costume Society. A book on pattern history is in press. Emery is the author and administrator of CoPA, a digital catalog of commercial patterns such as Butterick, McCall, Simplicity, Vogue and numerous other companies. The complete database is available on-line and is updated weekly with records and images. The Archive is an official project of Save America’s Treasures. Emery is an active member of the U.S. Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) having served as Costume Commissioner for six years and Vice President of Communications for ten. Her activities for the Costume Society of America (CSA) include serving as President. She is a Fellow of USITT, CSA and the New England Theatre Conference.
Jonathan Faiers: My work is always interdisciplinary in nature and regularly uses fashion and textiles, and their representation in popular culture as a means to explore complex cultural shifts in society. I am currently working on a new book for Yale University Press entitled Dressing Dangerously: Dysfunctional Fashion in Film which examines the representation of clothing in mainstream cinema and the establishment of the concept of a ‘negative wardrobe’. My previous publications include Tartan published by Berg Publishers and the Victoria & Albert Museum – the first interdisciplinary study of the textile, as well as numerous catalogue essays including those for publications accompanying the Unravel exhibition at MOMU Antwerp, and the Future That Never Was exhibition at the Mode Museum, Hasselt, both in Belgium. I regularly attend and give papers at conferences most recently at the Bath Spa Conference on TransNational Clothing, and at the first Fashion Colloquium held at the London College of Fashion both held in 2011. I am also preparing a new journal devoted to Luxury and a film/documentary on two forgotten British couturiers the Rahvis Sisters.
Michelle Tolini Finamore holds her Ph.D. the history of decorative arts, design and material culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. She is currently employed as a Curatorial Research Associate in the department of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has also worked in a curatorial capacity at a number of major museums including the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as a fashion specialist at Sotheby’s auction house. She has taught courses on fashion, design, and film history at the Rhode Island School of Design and Massachusetts College of Art. She most recently co-authored a book on the history of studio jewelry, Jewelry by Artists: In the Studio, 1940-2000 and is working on a forthcoming book on fashion in silent film (Palgrave). She has written numerous articles for both the scholarly and popular press, including Fashion Theory, Architecture Boston, and Gastronomica.
Jeannie Marie Galioto has a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Costume Design from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She earned her Master’s of Fine Arts in Costume Design from San Diego State University. She has worked as a freelance costume designer for twenty years on everything from theatrical productions, film, television, costumes for musical performers, commercials, dance, as well as private clients. She assisted the Broadway designer, Paul Tazewell, on the multi-Tony award winning show, Memphis that is currently running on Broadway. She also has assisted the Oscar nominated film designer, Ruth Carter. She has taught at The Arts Institutes International, Palomar College, and San Diego State University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Theater Arts Department at the University of San Diego and teaches the History of Costume at The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. She is the winner of the Patte Award for Best Costume Design in 2009 and was a guest lecturer at the Victoriana and Steampunk Convention this past spring.
Joanna Hashagen: As Keeper of Textiles at The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, I am currently researching Madame Paquin and an evening dress in our collection labelled ‘Paquin Hiver 1911’, the centrepiece of an exhibition which opens in December 2011. From 2007-2010, I project led a £800,000 project for a new permanent gallery for dress and textiles. This new Fashion & Textile Gallery has received a Museum & Heritage Award, ‘Highly Commended’ for best permanent Exhibition in UK, 2010. I was previously Assistant Keeper, The Gallery of Costume, Manchester, 1978- 1981. Since then, I have been responsible for The Bowes Museum’s large collection of European textiles and British costume. Special exhibitions have included ‘Royal Style’ (1992)*, ‘People and Patterns’ (1996) *, ‘Fifties Frocks’ (2000), North Country Quilts (2000)*, ‘Royal Milliners’ (2001), ‘Wedding Belles’ (2003)*. Associated with these exhibitions marked *are published catalogues. In 2006 I curated a temporary exhibition ‘Fine & Fashionable – Lace from The Blackborne Collection’, with a publication of same name, co-authored with Santina Levey. I am an active member of CIETA and Dress & Textile Specialists Group, UK.
Claudia P. Iannuccilli joined the Gabrielle and Leo Beranek Textile Laboratory at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1994; she is presently the Associate Textile and Costume Conservator. Claudia specializes in costumes as well as the Japanese costume and textile collections and has worked on numerous exhibitions and treatments during her tenure at the MFA. Highlights include: Fashion Show: Paris Collection and High Style and Hoop Skirts: 1850”s Fashion as well as numerous Japanese Gallery Rotations. She has a BS and MS in Historic Textiles and Fashion Arts with a specialization in Conservation from the University of Rhode Island. She has been active in numerous professional organizations and is presently on the board for the North American Textile Conservation Conference and a member of the American Institute of Conservation’s Cultural Emergency Response Team. Claudia has been an active member of the emergency preparedness team at the MFA, Boston.
Christina Johnson received her B. A. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2001 and her M. A. in Visual Culture (Costume Studies) from New York University in 2003. She began her career as Collections Manager at the FIDM Museum/ Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles, that same year. She was promoted to Associate Curator in 2010, after co-curating the Richard Martin Exhibition Award-winning High Style: Betsy Bloomingdale and the Haute Couture. Most recently she co-curated Fabulous! Ten Years of FIDM Museum Acquisitions, 2000-2010 with a corresponding 370 page catalogue. She has presented papers at the Costume Society of America Symposia (2005-2008, 2010), the Stockholm Centre for Fashion Studies Annual Symposium (2009), was a Los Angeles County Museum of Art “In Search of Content” Speaker (2007), and will be speaking at the upcoming Modern Monarchy Symposium, London (2011). She has published articles in Dress: The Journal of the Costume Society of America and The Daguerreian Annual. Her areas of expertise include Victorian era fashion, the historiography of fashion studies, early photographic portraiture, women’s history, and the psychological aspects of appearance.
Bonnie Kruger is a Professor of the Practice and Costume Director for the Performing Arts Department of Washington University, St. Louis and has designed costumes for over 200 productions of theatre, opera, dance and film for companies throughout the United States and Europe. Her principle research is the reconstruction of Baroque opera for Nicholas McGegan, conductor of the Philharmonia Baroque, San Francisco. She has designed for Boston Early Music Festival, PepsiCo Summerfare in NY, the E. Nakamichi Baroque Festival in Los Angeles, the Marseilles Opera, France, NY Baroque Dance Co. and finally fulfilled a dream of designing Orlando in a real baroque Court Theatre in Drottningholm, Sweden. She has also enjoyed twenty years as principal costume designer for the Gottingen Handel Festival in Germany. She and Holly Poe Durbin are currently writing a monograph on Ann Roth for the United States Institute of Theatre Technology. In addition to teaching costume design and construction, millinery, makeup, period style and design history at Washington University, she teaches regularly in a Design for Dance program called MADE in France in the summers in Paris and Burgundy.
Co-presenter:
- Holly Poe Durbin is an award winning entertainment costume designer and historian specializing in entertainment design as a reflection of material culture. Her costume designs have been seen in film, television, theater and opera, including Off- Broadway, London’s West End, national tours of the UK, Spain, Shanghai, Israel, Italy, and Universal Studios theme park in Japan. Recent work includes the independent film How to get to Candybar, expected to appear in the Sundance Festival 2013, and a special event version of Much Ado About Nothing with Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor Julie Roberts. As a costume historian, she writes for the Journal of Theater Design & Technology. She has delivered papers for the British Costume Society and the US Institute of Theater Technology. In 2010 she received USITT’s highest writing award for authoring a three part series of articles Seeing With Three Eyes- Designing for Different Media. Holly received her BA in Art History from Vanderbilt University and her MFA in Costume Design from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. In 2007, she joined the faculty at the University of California-Irvine where she directs graduate costume design studies.
Marie LcLoughlin trained initially as a fashion designer at St Martin’s School of Art in London, where alumni include Galliano and McQueen. As a freelance designer she specialized in knitwear with her own shop in London’s Portobello Road and sold her children’s wear collection in the Conran shop. She went on to develop a business researching and making period knitwear for film, television and the theatre. Credits include ‘Reds’ (1981), ‘Out of Africa’ (1985) and ‘Queen of Spades’ (1995) for New York Metropolitan Opera. In addition to a degree in Fashion Design from St Martin’s she has a MA from Winchester School of Art and a PhD from the University of Brighton. (See below.)
1993 MA : Austerity and Utility Clothing: Class and controls in Britain in the 1940s. Winchester School of Art (Southampton University)
2010 PhD: Fashion, the art school and the role of Muriel Pemberton in the development of degree level fashion education in the UK. University of Brighton Marie is currently working as a lecturer at the University of Brighton.
Her publications include:’Drawing Dreams: Fashion Illustration’ Book Chapter in Sylvia Backemeyer, ed. Picture This. The Artist as Illustrator. London A & C Black, 2005.
Deirdre Murphy is Collections Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, working mainly with the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection at Kensington Palace. Deirdre is lead curator of Victoria Revealed, a new permanent display about Queen Victoria which will open as part of a major new re-presentation project at Kensington Palace in March 2012. Deirdre has curated exhibitions including Future Fashion Now (V&A, 2009), The Last Débutantes (Kensington Palace 2008), Diana: A Princess Remembered (Kensington Palace 2007), French Connections: Memories of The Queen in Paris (Kensington Palace 2006) and The Queen’s Working Wardrobe (Kensington Palace 2005). She has co-curated online exhibitions at The Gallery of Costume in Manchester (2004) and has produced and directed several short films about historic clothing. Deirdre has published several articles about Victorian dress, including a forthcoming piece in Costume about men’s court uniform and an article in the V&A online journal about fashion designers’ use of historic dress for inspiration.
Alla Myzelev is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Guelph where she is teaching courses on twentieth century art, architecture and visual and material culture. She is currently working on Creating Modern Living in Toronto: From Vernacular to Deco, From Rustic to Polished which will appear with McGill-Queens University Press. She is one of the contributors to the Nelson’s Modules project on Canadian History where she wrote on Canadian Paintings of the Group of Seven. Myzelev is a co-editor (with Dr. John Potvin) of Material Cultures, 1740–1920 The Meanings and Pleasures of Collecting (Ashgate, 2009) and Furniture, Interior Design, and Contours of Modern Identity (Ashgate, 2010). Among the numerous publications that she contributed are journals Craft Research, Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, Journal of Modern Craft, and Craft Journal. She had published articles and essays on Russian and Ukrainian Avant-garde, British and Canadian design and architecture, knitting revival and other and historical and traditional craft practices. Myzelev is a recipient of several prestigious grants among them SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship (2007) and Paul Mellon Research Fellowship (2008).
Susan Neill is an independent costume and textiles scholar based in Chicago, Illinois. During her recent twelve-year tenure at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia, her initial role as Curator of Textiles and Social History expanded to Vice President of Collections and Exhibitions. Previously, she was the Hope B. McCormick Costume Fellow at the Chicago History Museum. Neill has curated a range of exhibitions, including Gone With the Girdle: Freedom, Restraint, & Power in Women’s Dress; Designs of the Times: Twentieth-Century Georgia Quilts; Through the Lens of MundoHispánico: Georgia’s Hispanic Community; twentieth-century costume shows; and installations drawn from ethnographic collections. Neill co-authored Women in Atlanta (2005) and has also published several articles: “White Legacy: The Survival of a Dress, a Family, and Their Cherokee Heritage” (2009, with Sarah H. Hill); “Emblems of Ethnicity: Ribbonwork Garments from the Great Lakes Region” (2000); and “A State of Flux: Selves and Others in Bhutan” (1997). Neill earned a B.A. in Anthropology and Psychology (Luther College, 1988) and an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996). She currently serves on the board of directors of the Costume Society of America and is researching Mary Crovatt Hambidge and her north Georgia workshop, the Weavers of Rabun.
Charlotte Nicklas is a lecturer in the History of Art and Design, School of Humanities, Faculty of the Arts, University of Brighton, where she has taught since 2006. Her main research interest is the history of dress and textiles. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Brighton in 2010. Her thesis, titled ‘Splendid Hues: Colour, Dyes, Everyday Science, and Women’s Fashion, 1840-1875’, examined the cultural contexts of the transition from natural to artificial textile dyes in the mid-nineteenth century. While studying for her MA at the Bard Graduate Center, Charlotte worked in the Exhibitions Department at that institution, helping to organize exhibitions on a wide variety of design history topics, including Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashion, Architecture (2003-2004) and Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor (2006). She interned in the Costume Institute and the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and worked in the Department of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Charlotte has presented numerous papers at conferences and contributed exhibition reviews to Fashion Theory and Textile History. Her chapter titled ‘Light, colour and language in mid-nineteenth century women’s fashion’ will appear in the forthcoming publication Surface Tensions (edited by Glenn Adamson and Victoria Kelley, Manchester University Press, 2012).
Charlotte Ossicini is Theatrical and Cinema Studies PhD. Beginning from the academic year 2005-2006, develops didactical and search activities at the Department of Music and Performing Arts (DMS)/University of Bologna, and in foundations (Foundation ATER Formazione, Opera Academy Verona). Her main field of interest focuses on the performing arts in relation to to the scenography and to the stage costume, and to the chor as postdramatic and performative tool. Principal publications: Dal predrammatico al prediscorsivo; Il coro e la “musica del senso”, in Piersandra Di Matteo, Lucia Amara (a cura di-e di), Teatri di Voce, “Culture Teatrali”, n. 20, giugno 2011, Edizioni I Quaderni del Battello Ebbro; Paola Bignami, Charlotte Ossicini, Il quadridimensionale instabile; Manuale per lo studio del costume teatrale, UTET, Novara 2010; Paola Bignami, Charlotte Ossicini (a cura di-e di), L’album di scenotecnica di Koki Fregni, Clueb, Bologna 2008; Charlotte Ossicini (a cura di-e di), Arnaldo Picchi, iconografia di un regista pedagogo, “Culture Teatrali”, n. 17, autunno 2007, Edizioni I Quaderni del Battello Ebbro; Paolo Bonora, Charlotte Ossicini e Giuseppe Raffa, From relational metadata standards to CRM ontology: A case study in performing arts documentation, CIDOC 2006 Gothenburg-Sweden.
Alexandra Palmer is the Nora E. Vaughan Senior Curator, Textiles & Costume at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Dr. Palmer is also Associate Faculty at the University of Toronto, Department of Fine Art and Adjunct Faculty, Graduate Studies Programme at Ryerson University. She received her BA in Art History from the University of Toronto (1979); her MA in Costume and Textiles from New York University, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1981); and her PhD in Design History from the University of Brighton (1994). Alexandra Palmer has contributed to international museum catalogues, including The Golden Age: Haute Couture 1947 – 1957, Victoria & Albert Museum (2007); RRRIPP!! Paper Fashion, Benaki Museum (2007); Christian Dior et le Monde, Musée Dior à Granville (2006); and Un Secolo di Moda, Villa Medici (2003). She has edited and authored chapters in Old Clothes, New Looks: Second Hand Fashion (2005), and Fashion: A Canadian Perspective (2004. Her book Couture & Commerce: The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s (2001) won a Clio Award for Ontario history. Her most recent book, Dior: A New Look, A New Enterprise 1947 – 57, V&A Publications (2009) was awarded the 2010 Millia Davenport Publication Award, sponsored by the Costume Society of America. Her current research project, Recuperation Fashion 1700- 2000, investigates the extended wear of clothing.
Dale Peers has been teaching History of Fashion in the School of Fashion at Seneca College since 1989 the same year that the Seneca Fashion Resource Centre was established by Dale and her colleagues. The mandate of the centre has been to collect and preserve what Canadians have worn in an effort to further the understanding the part fashion plays in our lives. The centre provides a unique opportunity for students to learn about fashion. Her efforts over the past 22 years have been to encourage her students to have the same passion for fashion that she has. This has involved using the collection in her teaching as well as taking the collection into the community. She has curated a number of different exhibits including Oh Canada!: Excellence in Canadian Fashion Design. The show included the work of Canadian Designers as well as their comments on what inspired them, what past designer they would most like to meet and what advice they would give to new fashion design graduates. In addition to her work at the college Dale is involved in a number of professional associations including the Costume Society of Ontario, Fashion Group International, The Canadian Apparel Federation, and the Ontario Museum Association.
Sara Piccolo Paci, Scholar of Costume, Fashion and Tailoring techniques, Art History and Cultural Anthropology, has for many years has carried out teaching activities in these areas in institutions such as the Polimoda and the University of Florence, the Milan Polytechnic, the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, among others. Her research focus mainly around the interaction between body and society through the centuries, as a cultural and material expression. As an expert in philological reconstruction of ancient clothes she followed and supervised the production of costumes for exhibitions and museums, while since 2006 she has been Consultant for the Costume Commission of the Palio di Legnano. Since 1992 she collaborated, organized and realized numerous exhibitions and catalogues on costumes, art and history of the territory and participated as a speaker in numerous national and international conferences in the sector. In addition to working regularly with historical and artistic journals (such as ” Medioevo”, “Art & Dossier”, “Kermes”, “Casantica”) she is an author of essays and monographs, among which we remember Parliamo di Moda – manuale di storia del costume e della moda (Let’s talk about Fashion – Costume history and fashion textbook) (Cappelli 2004), Storia delle Vesti Liturgiche – forma, immagine e funzione (History of Liturgical Clothing – shape, image and function) (Ancora 2008), S. Maria a Fagna, Storia di una Pieve e di una Comunità (S. Maria Fagna, History of a Parish and a Community (Pagnini 2011).
Sarah Pointon has been at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney for ten years and gained extensive knowledge and experience in museum collection management and documentation while in the position of Assistant Registrar for the past six years. Her role involves the storage, care and documentation of the permanent Museum collection, along with participating in exhibitions and their development, varying from regional to international shows, as they relate to both collection and loan objects. Sarah has been working on the Australian Dress Register project for the past three years, as well as an ongoing re-housing project in the Museum’s costume and textile store. She is currently a council member for the Australasian Registrars Committee, a position she has held for the past three years. Sarah presented a paper on the Australian Dress Register at the Australasian Registrars Committee conference in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2010.
Susie Ralph: Susie Ralph is a practitioner with many years of experience in fashion design, pattern cutting and draping. Since completing her MA on the course Investigating Fashion Design at Bath Spa University, she has lectured in Fashion and Textile history and theory at Chelsea College of Art and Design and is currently lecturing at Bath Spa University.
She is curating an exhibition “Margaine-Lacroix: the dresses that shocked Paris” to be held at Westminster Reference Library, London: November 19 – 30, 2012, and is researching a book on this forgotten couturière.
Conference papers:
La Biaiseuse: exploring the association of the seamstress with prostitution, via the medium of a French popular song of 1912.
2nd Global Conference. Fashion: Exploring critical issues. Oxford, September 2010.
Colour, Culture and Clothing: The Cape Town Fashion Industry in the 1980s
Trans/National Clothing Conference. Bath, September 2011.
Brenda Rosseau currently manages Colonial Williamsburg’s Costume Design Center and is responsible for the dress and appearance of their 800+ costumed interpreters representing life in the Chesapeake for all strata of society from noble to enslaved for a two hundred and fifty year period, 1607 to 1865. A Virginia native with theatrical training, she has worked as a historical costumier for museums for twenty five years. Recent accomplishments include the design and redress of Colonial Williamsburg’s juvenile Fife and Drum Corps and military programs incorporating recent military dress history scholarship and the design and dress of Native American programs – “So Far from Scioto” for “Revolutionary City” programming. In 2008, she spoke at the first Costume Colloquium honoring Janet Arnold on the use of historic dress at Colonial Williamsburg for the last seventy five years. In the March of 2011 she chaired a symposium in Williamsburg on the use of recreated historic dress at historic sites “A Reconstructed Visitable Past” which hosted an international slate of speakers and audience. She is currently researching ready-to-wear importation, industry and fashion trades in southern colonial port cities during the third quarter of the eighteenth century.
Bina Sengar is Assistant Professor, History, Department of History and Ancient Indian Culture, School of Social Sciences, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Auranagbad, Maharashtra, India. She is also Trustee of Sudarshan Foundation Trust a non-profit organization engaged in the social welfare and applied research. Under Sudarshan Foundation Trust she has started ‘Sudarshan Traditions’ project, http://sudarshantraditions.blogspot.com/, where the handicrafts and artistic representations since the historical times are being documented. The region chosen for the documentation of these art history tools is Deccan in South Asia. She is also assiduously working on the culture, folklores, arts and handicrafts of Indigenous communities in South Asia, especially those residing in the Gujarat and Deccan region of South Asia. Her few of publications are as follows: ‘Gandhian Approach to Tribals’ published in the Proceedings of Indian History Congress, 62nd Session, Kolkata, 2001, pp. 327-336. ‘Social Reform through Contructivism-Sarvodaya and Non-Violence By The Gandhians In The Dangs’, in Souvenir of International Seminar On Peace & Non-Violence, September, 11th 2008: Jaidev Bhavan, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India. ‘Lovers admist Caves and Frescoes of Ajanta’, in quarterly journal of Cara Giulietta Il Giornale Di Giulietta, No. 57, October-December 2011, pp. 26-29.
Thessy Schoenholzer Nichols: After her studies in Switzerland, she moves to NYC, where she works as a conservator in various prestigious museums. In 1985 she moves to Florence where she collaborates as a conservator at the Galleria del Costume. In the following years she starts studying and collaborating in various museums in Italy. After having participated at the restoration of the funeral robe of Eleonora of Toledo at palazzo Pitti, also under the teaching of Janet Arnold, her interest shifts ever more toward the construction of antique costumes. During her career she was able to study and analyze garments from the 16th century to the 19th century. Thus she was able to reconstruct virtually or for real for example costumes from the fragments of the family della Rovere and Malatesta, to modified dresses of Paolina Bonaparte and the duchess of Parma. She has taught costume cataloguing for historians; using a database Veac (to which she contributed as an author) for the Ministry of Culture and Artistic goods. She has published on the subject of costume analysis and lace. Since 1989 she teaches design and philological reconstruction of costumes at Polimoda and universities in Florence and Trieste. Currently she studies the dress of mummies from the 17th and 18th century from Monsampolo del Tronto, in the Marche.
Teresa Cristina Toledo De Paula: Teresa Cristina Toledo de Paula joined Museu Paulista/University of São Paulo, Brazil, in 1989 and has been working as Textiles Conservator since 1993 after an internship at The Textile Conservation Centre/Hampton Court Palace sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. She has a three year post-graduation course on Museum Studies. The subjects of both – MA and PHD- researches were Textiles and Textiles Conservation in Brazil. She is author of articles, essays and has collaborated with many public and private institutions and museums all over Brazil, training staff and students on textiles conservation and research. In 2006 she organized the first international conference on textile conservation in Brazil entitled “Tecidos e sua conservação no Brasil: museus e coleções, being the editor of the conference preprints. In 2009-2010 she coordinated Projeto Replicar which achievements will be seen at Costume Colloquim III.
Co-presenter:
- Rita Morais De Andrade Full-time teacher-researcher at Visual Artes Faculty/Universidade Federal de Goiás teaching and supervising BA and MA research in Fashion Design and Visual Culture (from 2006). Head of department of BA Fashion Design: UFG(2008-2009) and UniversidadeAnhembi-Morumbi (2002-2004). Main interests of research are dress history research and practices in museum collections and contemporary exhibitions.
Licia Triolo, in 2004 received a degree from the Faculty of Preservation of Cultural Heritage of Pisa with a thesis on Gaetano Zumbo Gliulio, Sicilian wax modeller of the seventeenth century active at the Medici court. In 2005 she attended at the Università di Pisa, with a scholarship, the Master course in “Materials and diagnostic techniques in the field of cultural heritage”. In 2009 she graduated from the School of Higher Education Opificio delle Pietre Dure with a thesis entitled “The textiles of the Samurai and the collections of nineteenth-century: a manchira from the Stibbert museum of Florence. Study, conservation work and exhibition plan of a multi media work.” She currently works as an outside firm, with the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the Textile Museum of Prato and the CPCR in Palermo.
Co-presenters:
- Susanna Conti has dealt with Textile Restoration for over 30 years. She founded in 1981 as the first restorer conservator, the area for the Textile restoration at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure e Laboratori di Restauro in Florence, after receiving the degree in Conservation and Restoration at the Opificio and after winning the National State Award for Textile Restorers. Today she directs the sector as Chief Conservator. Since 1980 she has taught at SAF (School for Higher Education) at Opificio and soon she will coordinate a new 5 year course on Restoration of Textile Craft. She has worked on many artistic typologies and one of the objectives of her teaching and research is the development of methods for the minimum intervention and the non-invasive investigations, together with experiments on the consolidation of the material. Currently her attention is devoted to the research on the consolidation of archaeological silk with the use of nanotechnologies, in collaboration with other institutions and universities such as SSS (Silk Experimental Station) in Milan and the CNR-IFAC (National Research Center , Institute of Applied Physics “Nello Carrara”) in Florence. She also has numerous publications and collaborations with national and international bodies. She is member of CIETA and of ICOM-CC.
- Naomi Katō is an Italian expert of history of Japanese costume. In 2004 her studies about the text by Cesare Vecellio “Habiti Antichi et Moderni…”(Venezia, 1590) allowed the publication of this work in Japanese. She presented and organized various conferences in Japanese Universities. Currently Naomi is working on the path traced by the kimono left in Italy by the first Japanese ambassador’s.
Dinie Van den Heuvel started out obtaining a Master in contemporary art and cultural philosophy at the University of Antwerp. Simultaniously she was studying the art of pattern making; a practical pursuit where ideas are processed into do-able, physical pieces of paper. She became the assistant of Hieron Pessers, and later that of Jurgi Persons, while maintaining a busy schedule of guiding both fashion students and the visitors of the Fashion Museum MoMu in Antwerp. Her new knowledge she further put in to practice by establishing the pattern making company d’andt (meaning ‘made by hand’ in old Dutch) in 2005. Serving as the CEO, Dinie has seen the growth in both the number of clients and the variety of tasks across the years, including the launching of the historical clothing research project ‘Hidden Treasures’. Today, Dinie does extensive work as an educator. She teaches concept development for fashion students both at the FHNW in Basel and at La Cambre in Brussels. She also travels extensively to give master classes in pattern making techniques and lectures on everything from personal branding to the history of fashion garments.
Janet Wood (Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts) : My first career, following a Fashion and Textiles degree from the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, was as personal assistant to the London designer, Thea Porter. I then joined the fashion company Monsoon, employed as their first trained designer to work with factories in India, Afghanistan and Romania producing seasonal ranges of women’s clothing for the UK market. Following this I produced my own cocktail and eveningwear range made both in India and the UK. In 1994 I re-trained as a textile conservator with Historic Royal Palaces and have spent the last 18 years working as part of the Conservation and Collection Care team and as a freelance consultant. My specialist field and passion is the conservation and display of costume.
Hannah Wroe: Working as a researcher, lecturer, pattern cutter and dress historian Hannah Wroe specialises in womenswear within the period 1935-1960. Her research interests are around looking at the craft and skilled construction and cut seen within both couture and home dress made garments during this period and looking at the context and narrative that each dress holds. Originally trained in made to measure womenswear she set up her business ‘Hannah and Bella’ in 2008 and has gone on to successfully complete her Postgraduate Certificate in Creative Cutting (2010) and MA in Fashion and Textiles(2011) at Nottingham Trent University in the UK. Her work continues to be both practice based with theoretical and historically analysis. Hannah presented a research paper at The Costume Society Symposium in July 2011 titled ‘The Significance of the Summer Dress in the Making of a Holiday Wardrobe 1935-1955: Inspiration, Design and the Making Techniques of the Home Dressmaker’. Currently working as a volunteer at Leicestershire Museums Costume Collection alongside lecturing in Fashion at both South Nottingham College and Nottingham Trent University Hannah is currently looking for PhD opportunities to continue her research.
Alazne Porcel Ziarsolo received her BA in Fine Arts (University of the Basque Country, 2006) specialized in the field of conservation and restoration of art; she obtained the Certificate in Advanced Study in Research and Creation in Art (Cultural Heritage: Conservation and Management; University of the Basque Country, 2008) and obtained a PhD Research Fellowship for the project named: “Evaluation of Conservation and Restoration treatments applied to the Cristobal Balenciaga collection accessories” in collaboration with the Cristobal Balenciaga Museum Foundation, (Gipuzcoa); (University of the Basque Country 2007-2011). She has participated in diverse specializing courses, seminars and congresses related to costume conservation and restoration and has imparted different courses at the Fine Arts Faculty, in the University of the Basque Country. Currently she is in her third year of Art History Degree and intends to get her PhD. in December of the year 2011. Besides the main author the other three authors of the paper are working together in a research project financed by the University o the Basque Country since 2010 until 2012. The research project´s title is: Study of the Cristobal Balenciaga collection: Identification of materials, conservation and restoration, and researches the presence of the different materials (from textiles to plastics) that can show up in a 20th century costume collection.
Co-presenters:
- Enara Artetxe Sanchez, PhD. in Fine Arts (University of the Basque Country, 2009). She is currently teaching at the Fine Art Faculty, in the Conservation and Restoration Department. At the moment, she is the main research member of the project: Study of the Cristobal Balenciaga collection: Identification of materials, conservation and restoration.
- Beatriz San Salvador Ageo, PhD. in Fine Arts (University of the Basque Country, 1994). She is nominal teaching staff in the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of the Basque Country. She has participated in several research projects related to the conservation and restoration of art and cultural heritage.
- Carlos Venegas Garcí, PhD. in Fine Arts (University of the Basque Country). He is a nominal teaching staff at the Fine Art Faculty, at the Restoration department and also, teaches at the Art History Faculty in Vitoria-Gasteiz. He has participated in several research projects related to the conservation and restoration of art and cultural heritage.
Agata Zborowska graduated from the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw (2010). Her MA thesis examined cultural meanings of fashion after 1990 in relation to four categories: technology, deconstruction, ecology and art. She is presently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Warsaw investigating new phenomena in fashion in the context of deconstruction theory and wearable technologies development. Trying to combine theory and practice she is also studying Fashion and Textile Design at Strzeminski Academy of Fine Art in Lodz (from 2009). One of her fashion projects, based on Pruitt-Igoe destruction, has been exhibited in the Czuly Barbarzynca gallery in Warsaw in 2010. She participated two times in international workshop on Fashion Writing and Fashion Design organized by Stary Browar – Art and Business Center in Poznan, Poland. She has presented her work at a number of academic conferences. She is regularly collaborating with 2+3D quarterly, a leading polish design magazine, and with Moda Forum, a professional magazine of polish fashion and textile industry. She collaborated with MIMID – International Institute of Fashion and Design as a frequent speaker at the Fashion Project Workshops.
