Fashion and Masquerade

This Special Issue of Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty seeks to explore the multifaceted relationship between Masquerade, Fashion and Beauty. An interrogation of issues such as gender, class, and race via a playful and deconstructive engagement with the stratagems of Masquerade can be seen in fashion and beauty systems in many instances which displace, among other things, modes of authority and identity. One early example can be cited in Joan Riviere's 1929 essay 'Womanliness as a Masquerade', revealing subjects who wore particularly feminine attire to avert any threat to patriarchal sites of power. Yet another example exists in Roland Barthes Mythologies, his analysis of Greta Garbo's transformative mask of makeup implying the archetypal human face. In more recent years, scholarly interest has seen the dialectics of Masquerade expand significantly to include tropes such as disguise, passing, and mimesis. Therefore, with a focus on critical examination of fashion and/or beauty systems as symbolic space, or involving the representation or use of cloth, clothing or appearance, we invite interdisciplinary proposals that investigate the question: What new approaches to Masquerade are scholars taking to contribute to contemporary discourse about fashion and beauty today?

Possible areas of inquiry may be, but are not restricted to, the following:

● The (im)possibility of transcending the gender, class, culture, or identity by using devices such as masks, costumes, disguise, make-up.
● Reinforcement and/or subversion of established orders
● Critical examination of historical motifs of masquerade in fashion and beauty trends (e.g. harlequins, pierrots, ballerinas etc.)
● Masquerade and performativity
● Masquerade as a means of (dis)empowerment
● An emphasis on fashion and beauty in contemporary celebrations, pageants, and rituals that employ traditional techniques of masquerade (e.g. Mardi Gras, Pride Parades etc.).

The argument/s being proposed in your paper should be made clear in your abstract. Abstracts of no more than 250 words are to be submitted to:

Dr Laini Burton
Griffith University
l.burton@griffith.edu.au

The deadline for submissions is: 15 April 2011