Research

Research Interests

• Fashion's role in social narratives
• Global histories of human dress & appearance
• De-centring 'western' fashion methodologies & narratives

A cultural historian, my work is underpinned by a belief that history is a dynamic agent within people’s lives, informing their values and behaviours. I seek to understand how people’s engagement with the past shapes the stories they tell about themselves, their communities and cultures, and the form these narratives take when expressed through material culture, particularly dress. Much of my recent research focuses on the themes of human self- and social identity and marginality.

It is especially apparent in our use of material culture to express fundamental human experiences. Objects, which store and stimulate our senses, become conduits of memory, connecting people across disparate chronologies, cultures and geographies. This is especially the case with clothing and dress because they have formed part of people’s self and social identities since the Palaeolithic and are performed, however reluctantly or unknowingly, by everyone. The memories stirred by the dress people wore are at once comforting and concerning, especially when they relate to fashion, which is imbricated with the communication of ‘western’-centred narratives that assert how humans should and should not be, sustaining interpersonal inequalities and injustice.

I explore these ideas further in my current book project, Hang-Ups: Reflections on the Causes and Consequences of Fashion's 'Western'-centrism (Bloomsbury 2024), which argues that purposeful and permanent change within the fashion industry and fashion education is more likely if it is understood how the contemporary industry became ‘western’-centric. To institute effective change, it is necessary to revert to first principles and understand how the fashion industry developed into what it is today. During a period when the concepts of fashion, history and culture are being questioned, and with suggestions they are reaching their nadir, the imperative to understand the extent to which they relate, and facilitate the presentation of people’s fashionable bodies, seems pressing, even urgent. Hang ups explores the origins and consequences of the fashion industry’s ‘western’-centrism by focusing on nine binaries, defined in the crucible of empire, that continue to be sites of negotiation as the ‘west’s’ traditions and ideals are contested by different cultural perspectives and changing global realities.  

In a related project, I am writing Appropriation for Bloomsbury's new 'Fashion in Action' series. The book offers an introductory guide to the topic of cultural (mis)appropriation in fashionable dress and appearance.

The relevance of my research focuses encourages me to share my work with broad audiences. For example, in May 2019, marginality was the subject of my TED talk.

Conference organisation

New Research in Dress History (in conjunction with the Association of Dress Historians) , 21 April 2023. Further information here.

Face Off: The Provocation and Possibilities of Masks and Head Coverings, 13-14 January 2021. Further information here.