Advisory Committee

Advisory Committee

The Advisory Committe members for Costume Colloquium V are:

  • Gillion Carrara, Director, Fashion Resource Center, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, United States
  • Carlotta Del Bianco, Vice-President, Fondazione Romualdo Del Bianco – Life Beyond Tourism, Florence, Italy
  • Jonathan Faiers, Reader in Fashion Theory, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
  • Joanna Marschner, Costume Historian and Curator, Historic Royal Palaces, Kensington Palace, London, United Kingdom
  • Roberta Orsi Landini, Costume & Textile Historian, Florence, Italy
  • Alexandra Palmer, Nora E.Vaughan Senior Curator of Textiles & Costume, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
  • Teresa Pasqui, Professor in Culture and Fashion Design at the University of Florence, Italy
  • Rosalia Varoli-Piazza, Special Advisor to the Director General of ICCROM and Art Historian, Rome, Italy
  • Mary Westerman Bulgarella, Costume & Textile Conservator, Researcher and Consultant, Florence, Italy

Brief biographies of Advisory Committee members:

Gillion Carrara is director of the Fashion Resource Center of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and, as adjunct professor, she teaches the Shape of Contemporary Dress. She has published book reviews in Dress, the journal of the Costume Society of America and spoken on topics of contemporary and avant-garde dress at regional and national CSA symposiums. Her exhibition critiques of ‘Dior: The New Look’ (Chicago History Museum, 2006-7) and ‘4 Lines:a Fashion Exhibition and Installation‘ (SAIC Fashion Resource Center, 2007) were published in Fashion Theory: the Journal of Dress, Body and Culture (Berg Publisher, Oxford, England, vol. 13, nos.1&3). She is a frequent speaker at the Alliance Francasie, the Arts Club of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago. Gillion presented ‘Scattered Remnants in the Present’ at the first Costume Colloquium: a Tribute to Janet Arnold in 2008 and ‘Soundsuits – Nick Cave in Dance’ at Costume Colloquium II: Dress for Dance.

Carlotta Del Bianco is Founder Fellow and Vice President of the Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation® in Florence. Her interests in costume stem from her university research on theatrical costume of Edward Gordon Craig, 19th-20th century British set and costume designer. Prior to receiving her University degree she collaborated with the Stibbert Museum reordering the costume collection and after she worked on the cataloging of the photographic archive of the Medici Burial Clothes. Carlotta’s particular career path has taken her into promoting occasions for the international and inter-cultural exchange among specialists and students in artistic and cultural fields. Since 2006 she has had an active role in defining the orientation of Life Beyond Tourism® which is promoted the Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation®. She ia an Associate Member of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee for Theory and Philosophy of Conservation and Restoration (TheoPhilos).

Jonathan Faiers is Reader in Fashion Theory at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. He received his BA in Fashion and Textile Design (St Martins 1980), a Post-Graduate Diploma in Theatre Design (Slade School 1982), an MA in Critical Theory (Goldsmiths 1994) and his PhD on the Representation of the Museum Space in Mainstream Cinema in 2001 (University of London). His work explores the interface between popular culture, textiles and dress and he teaches and acts as external examiner for a variety of UK institutions including Central St Martins, Chelsea School of Art, Kingston University and the Royal College of Art. His interdisciplinary study Tartan was published by Berg in 2008, and his next book Dressing Dangerously: Dysfunctional Clothing in Film will be published by Yale University Press in 2013. He has written articles, presented papers and organised colloquia on subjects including: knitting and formlessness, Balenciaga and ecclesiastical dress, Classicism, fashion and science fiction (the subject of his paper presented at CC III), tweed and gender subversion, criminality and tailoring and textiles and the production of space. As a visual artist his installations have addressed subjects such as the Kashmir shawl and Huguenot silk weaving. Luxury: History, Culture and Consumption, a new peer-reviewed, critical journal edited by Jonathan will be launched by Bloomsbury in 2013. He acts as a member of the Publications Advisory Board at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Joanna Marschner is senior curator Historic Royal Palaces in the UK and has special responsibility for the collections of royal and ceremonial dress at Kensington Place.  Joanna studied history and history of art as an undergraduate, and museology at postgraduate level. Her PhD thesis was on the subject of royal collecting and connoisseurship in early 18th century Britain. She is author of several publications including ‘Splendour at Court: Dressing for Royal Occasions since 1700’, ‘The Royal Wedding Dresses’ and ‘Diana, princess of Wales. Fashion and Style”, and has written articles on subjects ranging from fashion history and social history, to interior design and museology.  She has been chair of the Dress and Textiles Network for museum curators in the UK and chair of the Costume Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) 2001-2007.  She is now working on a major project to transform the visitor experience of Kensington Palace and its collections.

Roberta Orsi Landini, textile and costume scholar, has worked for over 20 years on the textile and costume collections at the Pitti Palace in Florence.  She is author of numerous articles, essays and books and has collaborated with an array of public institutions and museums in Italy and abroad.  From the onset of the Galleria del Costume in 1983 she has collaborated on several projects, exhibitions and publications, among which ‘Moda alla corte dei Medici’, on the conserved Medici burial clothes and ‘I principi bambini’, on court infant clothing. For the Stibbert Museum she conceived and curated the exhibition and catalog entitled ‘L’abito per il corpo. Il corpo per l’abito‘, which confronted western and Islamic dress. Roberta instigated and oversaw for many years the didactic activities of the Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio and the Roberto Capucci Foundation in Florence. Her most recent book publication, Moda a Firenze 1540-1580: lo stile di Eleonora di Toledo e la sua influenza, is a culmination of her meticulous and accurate detailed dress research on archival documents and coeval imagery. Forthcoming is her next book, Moda a Firenze 1540-1580 Lo stile di Cosimo I de’ Medici.

Alexandra Palmer is the Nora E. Vaughan Senior Curator of Textiles & Costume at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. She received her BA in Art History (University of Toronto 1979), her MA in Costume and Textiles (New York University, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1981), and her PhD in Design History (University of Brighton 1994). While studying in New York in the 1980s she designed fashions and hats for boutiques such as Patricia Field and Capezio.  She was Assistant Professor in Art History at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, where she taught craft and design history and theory (1995-6). In 1996, she joined the ROM where she has curated many exhibitions and she teaches at the University of Toronto where is a Department of Art Associate Professor. She has published in numerous academic and popular journals and contributed to international museum catalogues including The Golden Age: Haute Couture 1947-1957, V&A, London (2007); RRRIPP!! Paper Fashion, Benaki Museum, Athens (2007);  Un Secolo di Moda, Villa Medici, Rome (2003),  The Chanel Legend, (Draiflessen Collection 2013); Lesannées 50, (Musée Galliera, Paris Musée. 2014).  She has contributed to a wide range of scholarly books as editor and author including Fashion: A Canadian Perspective (2004) and Old Clothes, New Looks: Second Hand Fashion (2005), and is also Exhibition Editor for Fashion Theory: the Journal of Dress, Body and Culture.  Her book Couture & Commerce: The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s (2001) won a Clio Award for Ontario history, and Dior: A New Look, A New Enterprise 1947-57 (2009) won the 2010 Millia Davenport Publication Award. Her current project, Recuperating Fashion 1700-2000, is funded by the Social Science Humanities Research Council of Canada, and she researching and writing, Canadian Fashion Icons, in celebration of Canada*s 2017 Sesquicentennial.

Teresa Pasqui is an adjunct professor in Culture and Fashion Design at the University of Florence.  Previously, Teresa was an instructor of Textile Art, Fashion and Costume courses at the Istituto d’Arte (now the Liceo Artistico) of Florence.   She lectures on fashion and theatre, and as an expert in these fields, has advised and collaborated with various organizations in the Tuscan Region including: the Province and City of Florence, the Teatro Comunale in Florence, the Maggio Musicale Foundation, the Studio Theatre of Scandicci, the Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation, the Prato Trade Consortium, and the ateliers of Chiara Boni, Fratelli Allegri, Lietta Cavalli and Giulia Carla Cecchi.  She has organized exhibitions for students of Culture and Fashion Style at the Prato Expo Florentine Fair.  For over fifteen years, Teresa has been responsible for quality control and planning management for the Training Agency of the Istituto d’Arte of Florence.  And, since December of 2014, Teresa has been a member of the Executive Council of ESSIA (Associazione Nazionale Ex Studenti Scuole e Istituti d’Arte).

Rosalia Varoli-Piazza was educated in art history at the University of Rome and received an MA at the State University of New York at Binghamton.  For 26 years she was Director/Coordinator of art history, and responsible for the textile conservation section at the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome. She has pioneered interdisciplinary approaches to numerable art conservation projects, among which is the international     pilot    project   of  “The Minimal    Opening of   Emperor Federick II’s Sarcophagus in the Palermo Cathedral” of which she is editor of the published results. In 2002 she was promoted to ICCROM from the Istituto, in agreement with the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali (Italy). Here she has been a Senior Program Coordinator, overseeing the courses of ‘Sharing Conservation Decisions’ (2002, 2004 and 2006). She has also been a consultant for the French Ministry of Culture for the restoration of the Salon d’Apollon at the Louvre, and the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles and has published on a variety of subjects including the theory of conservation. She has had a long involvement with several international organizations for textiles and conservation including ICOM-CC (Member of the Directory Board, 1996-1999 and Coordinator of the Textiles Working Group, 1996-2002) IIC (Fellow), and CIETA. Currently Rosalia is Special Adviser to the Director-General of ICCROM.

Mary Westerman Bulgarella received her BFA in Art History (1973) and MFA in Art Conservation (1976) and subsequently trained and specialized in the conservation, display and research of textile and historic dress.  Her professional work focuses not only on interventions and their documentation but also on the problems pertaining to the research of material and methods storage and display and she has published many essays on a variety of related subjects. She helped set up the Textile and Costume Conservation Laboratory at the Pitti Palace where she was employed for over 20 years.  There from 1983 to 1993 she worked with a team of international experts on the conservation of the Medici burial clothes, on which she has written several articles and given numerous lectures.  Mary has studied, taught, lectured at as well as collaborated with an array of museums and institutions in Italy and abroad. Currently Mary serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Luxury: History, Culture, and Consumption, which is an interdisciplinary, academic journal devoted to luxury in its broad socio-cultural contexts, exploring and interrogating the terms historical and contemporary meanings. She is also presently a freelance conservation consultant and researcher as well as coordinator of the Costume Colloquium Advisory Committee Mary organizes conferences on significant textile, dress, fashion and costume themes.


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