(Re)Dressing American Fashion: Wear as Witness

Join us as we celebrate _(Re)Dressing American Fashion: Wear as Witness,_ an ongoing, object-based research project that presents a new framework for understanding fashion in America. This evening of dynamic conversations will feature many of the contributors to this exciting multimedia project—which includes a new publication, an online platform, and student-produced digital media (all published by Bard Graduate Center). Co-organizers Emma McClendon and Lauren Downing Peters will share the scope and goals for their project, which seeks to expand the canon of American fashion by centering worn, imperfect, and ordinary clothes—garments that carry material traces of everyday wearers’ bodies, such as stains, rips, tears, mending, and signs of handcraftsmanship. _(Re)Dressing American Fashion: Wear as Witness_ thus models a new approach to fashion history focused on wear and the wearer in order to illuminate absences and omissions in the dominant narratives of American fashion. *Emma McClendon* is assistant professor of fashion studies at St. John’s University and PhD candidate at Bard Graduate Center. While associate curator at the Museum at FIT from 2011–20, she curated numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions including Yves Saint Laurent + Halston: Fashioning the 70s (2015), Denim: Fashion’s Frontier (2016), and The Body: Fashion and Physique (2019). Recent publications include Power Mode: The Force of Fashion (Skira, 2019), and (Re)Dressing American Fashion: Wear as Witness