The Feminist Lecture Program is excited to announce a brand new collaboration with the Vagina Museum! The same amazing online weekly feminist content you expect from us, now hosted by the worlds only bricks and mortar Vagina Museum!
CLASS DESCRIPTION
Far more than the sum of its parts (thread, fabric, notions), fashion
reflects our tastes and values, materialises those of the societies in which
we live, and renders unruly, fleshy, pre-cultural bodies suitable for
navigating public life. For women in the West, the slender beauty ideal has
since the early twentieth century played an outsize role in the design and
marketing of fashionable apparel, as well as the ways that women shop and
style themselves. Unspoken rules about selecting flattering silhouettes or
how to camouflage problem areas (from jiggly upper arms to puckered thighs)
are likely familiar to many women; however, it has been those whose bodies
reside on the larger end of the size spectrum who have been subject to the
most conservative, limiting, and moralising conventions of dress.
In this class, we will explore the place that the fat, female body occupies in the fashion system alongside the fascinating history of plus-size fashion. From its origins in the burgeoning early-twentieth century American garment trade to the present day, Dr. Lauren Downing Peters will reveal how plus-size fashion not only reflects beauty norms and ideals, but also how it has historically been designed so as to solve the problem of fat. By further exploring plus-size fashion at the intersections of mass manufacturing, health discourse, standardised sizing, consumer culture, and psychology, we will come to understand the wider complex of values and ideals that inform industry practice, as well as the aesthetic limitations of the slender ideal.
Based on Dr. Lauren Downing Peters recently-published monograph, Fashion Before Plus-Size: Bodies, Bias, and the Birth of an Industry (Bloomsbury, 2023), this class will reveal the flimsy foundations upon which the contemporary plus-size fashion industry has been built, and will invite discussion and reflection about what a more equitable, inclusive, and inspiring industry might look like.
All are welcome to participate in this class, and no prior knowledge of
fashion history or theory are required. Participants will leave this class
with a deepened appreciation (and perhaps suspicion) of fashion as image,
object, idea, and embodied practice, as well as a new familiarity with key
theories and texts from the field of Fashion Studies.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Lauren Downing Peters, Ph.D is Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies and
Director of the Fashion Study Collection at Columbia College Chicago. She
earned her doctorate from the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm
University, her MA in fashion studies from Parsons School of Design, and her
BA in art history from Washington University in St. Louis. Her
interdisciplinary research focuses on plus-size fashion, histories of
American fashion, the relationship between dress and the body, and
transformed and inclusive fashion pedagogies.
Her work has been published in the peer-reviewed journals Fashion Theory, Design Issues, Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty, International Journal of Fashion Studies, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies, among others. She is the author of Fashion Before Plus-Size: Bodies, Bias, and the Birth of an Industry (Bloomsbury, 2023), co-editor with Hazel Clark of Fashion in American Life (Bloomsbury, 2024), and co-author with Emma McClendon of (Re-)Dressing the American Body (Yale University Press, 2025).
Instagram: @fatfashionhistory
Website: www.laurendowningpeters.com
UPCOMING SESSIONS WITH THE FEMINIST LECTURE PROGRAM
Monday 4th March
Kamin Mohammadi
Irans Ancient Feminist History
Monday 11th March
Ruth Charnock and Karen Schaller
Witching the Institution: Academia and Feminist Witchcraft
Monday 18th March
Lucy Cade
Female Creatives and Spirit Photography in the 19th Century
Monday 25th March
Dr. Sheree Mack
The Women of the Black British Art Movement
Monday 1st April
Nina-Sophia Miralles
Vogue Magazine: Invention, Erasure, Perversity & Power
Monday 8th April
Camilla Baier, Lauren Clarke and Rachel Pronger
The Animation of Mary Blair: A Feminists Guide to Disney
Monday 15th April
Lauren Peters
Fashion Before Plus-Size: Bodies, Bias, and the Birth of an Industry
Monday 22nd April
Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone
Intimate Ecologies: a Black feminist erotics for interspecies un/worlding
Monday 29th April
Joanna Ebenstein
The Anatomical Venus
Monday 6th May
Amina Nugumanova and Elmira Ismukhamedova
Women in Central Asian art: Preservation of Collective Heritage and Decolonisation
Stay tuned in to be the first to hear about our Summer term!
RECORDING
A recording of the lecture will be sent out by The Feminist Lecture Program after the event finishes, within 2 hours of the end of the class. This email will also contain any resources/reading list the lecturer shares.
Please add [email protected] to your email contacts to ensure you receive the recording as expected.
Please note that the recording will expire 7 days after sending.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class. We suggest a donation of 20, however, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we can continue to offer our sessions on a donation basis.
MORE FLP
Cant get enough? The Feminist Lecture Program has our very own digital archive, where you can find some of the best past lectures from our back catalogue to rent and watch ON DEMAND. Check out our ever growing collection here: https://thefeministlectureprogram.vhx.tv/
Follow us on Instagram @thefeministlectureprogram
And check out our sustainable merch from FLP Studio at https://feministlectureprogram.com/shop
& @flp__studio
And that's it!
We're really looking forward to you joining us.
