Special Issue of Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion ‘Menswear and Performance’, 2024
Guest editor: Will Visconti, University of Technology, Sydney
Abstracts due: 31 August 2023
Authors notified of decisions: 30 September 2023
Completed articles due: 30 November 2023
In the wake of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis and ongoing press attention surrounding the sartorial choices of performers like Harry Styles, Lil Nas X and Billy Porter, new questions are being asked about menswear and performance: precisely who is wearing what, how, and why. So too might one ask questions about what constitutes performance in an age of celebrity culture and ubiquitous social media, beyond what is explicitly demarcated as performance onstage, onscreen, or online.
Contemporary celebrity culture has long been closely interconnected with discussions of fashion, either in menswear or increasingly the decisions of brands and celebrities to blur previously-held distinctions between genders through their fashion and styling choices. In mainstream media, we are frequently met with images of famous faces in advertisements for clothes and accessories, or with the styling of celebrities within films, music videos, or promotional events.
This special issue of Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion seeks to interrogate constructions of menswear within the context of performance, be it historical or contemporary.
Articles examining diverse periods and cultural contexts are particularly encouraged to submit abstracts. Contributions are welcome from any discipline, including anthropology, consumer studies, gender and cultural studies, ethnic studies, fashion studies, humanities, marketing, material culture, psychology, sociology, and textiles. Diverse methods including critical perspectives, qualitative, narrative, sociological, ethnographic, arts methodology and alternative forms of knowledge construction are encouraged.
Though by no means an exhaustive list, some potential topics could include:
- Menswear onstage
- Androgyny in menswear (as worn by musicians or celebrities)
- Drag, menswear, and performance
- Historical performance
- Costuming onstage and in film
- Menswear in film
- Exhibiting menswear used for performance
- Brands and performance
- Period films and recreating historical dress
- Dancewear
- Music videos, singers, or concerts
- Creation of the fashion show-as-performance
- Dress and undress in performance
Submission guidelines:
Please e-mail an abstract of 150–200 words to the convenor, Will Visconti (Will.Visconti@uts.edu.au), by 31 August 2023. All abstracts should include a title, keywords, your full name, affiliation, contact details and a short biography of 3–5 sentences. The submission should be a Word or PDF attachment.
The deadline for full manuscripts is 30 November 2023 with an anticipated publication date of April 2024. All submissions must follow Intellect’s house style: https://www.intellectbooks.com/media/Intellect_Style_Guide_2019.pdf . Manuscripts should be a maximum of 7,000 words. It is the author’s responsibility to clear the usage rights for all images to be published in the manuscript.
All manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review process. Articles will be selected on the basis of their content and scholarship. The content must be in line with the journal’s vision of advancing scholarship on men and appearance.