Research Seminar: Fashion film

Today’s fashion film is often assumed to be an entirely new form that emerged in the digital age but it has a long history going back to the first film.

This research seminar draws on methods from ‘media archaeology’ to argue that fashion film is a multi-layered construction in which past and present connect in what Michel Foucault called ‘a history of the present’.

The talk uses some of the findings of the AHRC-funded project ‘Archaeology of Fashion Film’ that ran from 2017-2019 at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London) in collaboration with Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton).

Caroline Evans is Professor of Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Her research interests include: the idea of ‘fashion gesture’, editing techniques in 1920s fashion film, and the relations between technologies of the body and of pattern-cutting.