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

This is a recording of a live session hosted by The Feminist Lecture Program in May 2024. The reading list for the class can be found alongside this rental.

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FLP x