What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Fashion?

As a society, we talk about fashion – a lot! What we do to and put on our bodies, the social and economic value of those products and processes, and the identities into which we might step by participating in fashion/style/dress are constantly being reconstituted through the text and images published at a near constant rate into the contemporary media landscape. In this talk I will share what I have learned from more than a decade of studying fashion media through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis as theory and method. I’ll share how critical approaches to fashion media reveal the power and potential these discourses hold in constituting knowledge on issues as diverse as sustainability, GLP-1 use, and fashion journalism as practice and profession. I’ll also share the ways in which I have translated lessons learned from academic scholarship into pedagogy and recommendations for the fashion/lifestyle journalism field.  

Katie Baker Jones, PhD is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator in Fashion, Design, & Merchandising at West Virginia University.  

Zoom link

Passcode: 111058

The Nixon Seminar Series in the Department of Human Centered Design was established through a generous gift by John W. and Lea P. Nixon, Class of 1953. Designed to provide students with exposure to leading scholars and industry professionals, the Seminar Series is an expansion of the Nixon Distinguished Speaker Series and builds upon Mr. and Mrs. Nixon’s shared vision of creating a more engaged community on campus and providing a bridge to professional knowledge and opportunities.