Seaside Style: Coastal Fashion, Textiles and Costume
Dress Devolution 2 Conference.
9-11 July 2024
Falmouth University
Conference theme: Seaside Style: Coastal Fashion, Textiles and Costume
Dress Devolution investigates styles, practices and representations around dress and textiles outside of metropolotan contexts. The beach as a liminal space has long been a site of leisured, risque, specialised and defiantly un-urban dress and textile parctices which this conference aims to explore.
Wardrobes that evolved for holidays, for recuperation, for retirement and for rest occupy a specific place in our sartorial lives. Textiles have long been influenced by the beach and the sea, whether for work or for leisure. On-screen representations of beach, leisure and holiday activity produce unique costuming opportunities and challenges.
For those who live in the beach’s proximity, visit briefly, or merely view from afar, textiles and clothing here bear their own particular significance. For this, our second Dress Devolution conference, we welcome papers that explore the beach and the sea in the context of dress, costume and textiles, past and present. From beach pyjamas to the fisherman’s Gansey; from sport to industry to art, we look forward to inspiring research around coastal spaces.
The conference is supported by the Fashion and Textiles Institute at Falmouth University and will take place at the University’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall, UK.
We ask for your proposals for 30 minute presentations on themes that might include but are not limited to:
- Beach fashion and seaside style
- Coastal industries and textiles
- The holiday wardrobe
- Poolside glamour
- Beauty pageants
- The riviera flaneur
- Small scale production and seaside inspirations
- Local supply chains
- Traditional textiles
- De-centring fashion language
- Redefinitions of what it is to be fashionable
- New fashion geographies
- Online creative communities
- Sub culture and communities
Please send a 300 word abstract and brief bio by Tuesday 29 April to the following email address: