Workshop: Modernity On the Catwalk: Industries, Identities, and Fashion Cultures from the Postwar Period to the 21st Cen

The laboratory aims to explore the evolution of contemporary fashion from the post-war period to the early decades of the twenty-first century, with a focus on the relationships between fashion, cultural industries, entertainment, and global visual cultures. Particular attention will be paid to the connections between fashion, cinema, music, and pop media, as well as to the construction of social and gender identities. The aim is to stimulate a critical understanding of fashion as a dynamic and performative language, capable of representing and (pre)determining cultural transformations and the tensions of global society. The integrated analysis of visual, textual, musical, and performative sources will enable students to read fashion as a privileged interpretative key to contemporary society.

At the end of the laboratory, students will be able to: identify the main historical turning points of contemporary fashion system (1945-today); critically analyse the relationships between fashion, industrial and cultural production, consumer society and identity construction; interpret contemporary visual and material sources in a historical perspective; use an appropriate and specific disciplinary lexicon in both oral and written communication.