Redressing the Body: A Panel Discussion and Fashion Showcase
Burial rituals vary significantly from culture to culture around the world, but most involve dressing or covering the body with cloth or adorning it with jewels and paint. In this panel, fashion designers and academics will discuss personal or cultural rituals of dressing the body to memorialize the deceased and allow a respectful passage from life.
Join us for a captivating conversation with fashion designers and academics hosted by MFA Fashion Design Program. The conversation will highlight how their work weaves together personal stories, memory, and loss. In addition, students from the MFA Fashion Design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology will showcase original designs commissioned specifically for this event, which draw from their own cultural background. Together we will unpack the role of dress in rituals of death and memory. Big questions of gender, race, and class, and how all of these play into (end-of-) life experiences will be woven into the discussion. After the event, guests are invited to a presentation of specially-commissioned fashion showcase by the graduate students from the MFA Fashion Design program.
PARTICIPANTS:
Host: Professor Jonathan KYLE Farmer ma(rca) - Chair, MFA Fashion Design, School of Graduate Studies, “Shrinking Fashion” mental health, death, and fashion
Keynote Speaker: Mark Mitchell, an Arizona-based artist whose handmade burial ensembles were shown in 2013 at the Frye Art Museum. Mark continues to create custom-made shrouds and textile sculptures that explore themes of death, burial, and mass incarceration.
Anastasia Edwards - MFA Fashion Design candidate, School of Graduate Studies, FIT, Graduate Thesis “Living with Loss”
Patrick Boylan - Adjunct Professor, FIT Fashion Design/ Grace Liturgical Vestments Owner and Designer
Moderator: Keren Ben-Horin - fashion curator, historian, and author, Adjunct Professor, Department of Textile Development and Marketing and MA program Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Studies
