Podcast: MA Fashion Curation and Cultural Programming

February 2025

MA Fashion Curation and Cultural Programming: Navigating Research

Discussion with 2025 graduates Lucy Jenner-Brown, Zoé Zacharatou, Pauline Smith

MA Fashion Curation and Cultural Programming: Exploring Exhibition Dialogue as a Catalyst for Change

Discussion with 2025 graduates Emma Wichert and Madi Hough

MA Fashion Curation and Cultural Programming: Exhibiting Fashion - The Physical and Digital

Discussion with 2025 graduates Divya Nayak and Georgie Hitchins

Article - The Posthuman and Thierry Mugler’s Cyborg Femininity (Cyana Madsen, 2024)

Bloomsbury Fashion Central

Abstract:

Over the course of his career, designer Thierry Mugler envisioned the evolution of the feminine form through a fusion of material garments and immaterial gestures, and organic and inorganic beings. Through a discussion of a selection of his runway shows, notably Spring/Summer 1989, Autumn/Winter 1989, Spring/Summer 1992 and Autumn/Winter 1995, this article considers how Mugler fashioned posthuman dressed femininity, distorting contemporary codes of Western womenswear. Discussion of Mugler’s incorporation of animal traits and machine technologies into fashion design is framed by the contemporaneous cyborg theory of Donna Haraway. This article argues that Mugler cohered a futuristic vision of femininity through holistic application of choreography and innovative design.

PhD Thesis - Curatorial Interruption: Critical analysis of sources of decision-making bias in dress/fashion curators and examination of the impact of curatorial bias on wearer/object biography in worn clothing acquired by institutional collections in the United Kingdom (Cyana Madsen, 2023)

Abstract - The research in this thesis identifies an under-explored area in dress and fashion curatorship: how curatorial bias impacts the interpretation of wearer and object biography. This thesis responds to the growing focus on object biography and underrepresented histories in the discipline through examination of the experts charged with analysing, interpreting, and documenting these biographies.

Theories are drawn from ethnography, neuroscience, phenomenology, new materialist studies, and material culture studies to construct an understanding of practitioner experience when analysing and interpreting worn clothing objects. The impact of curatorial bias on object biography during material culture analysis is identified using the original concept “curatorial interruption”.

A discipline-specific foundational survey establishes a data set detailing the demographics and working environments of practitioners engaging with garments held in UK public collections. This is supported by an in-depth study of curatorial practice establishing sources of individual subjectivity and discipline- wide factors informing decision-making during material culture analysis.

Drawing on methodologies from relevant fields including anthropology, textile conservation, cognitive and forensic science, this research aims to propose practical strategies specific to the analysis of worn garments which mitigate curatorial bias and improve the retention of object (and wearer) biography.

Chapter - A Pocket History: Interpreting Wearer Biography in the Francis Golding Collection (Cyana Madsen, 2023)

Everyday Fashion: Interpreting British Clothing Since 1600 (Bloomsbury)

Synopsis:

‘This chapter examines objects from the Golding collection, acquired in 2016 by the Museum of London and the London College of Fashion Archives, approximately three years after his tragic death in a bicycling accident. In the absence of Golding’s own testimony, analysis of his pocket contents seeks to understand how these retained mementos might have documented his public and private selves. To achieve this, a brief description of Golding’s biography is provided and his status as an avid life-long collector is established. Theories on authorship and the dressed self frame analysis of his and other comparative collections of pocket contents, demonstrating that the seemingly-everyday practice of retaining pocket contents acts as a tangible form of materialised biography.’ (Madsen, 2023)