1-2:15 p.m.
Making Play Lovelier: Fitness, Fashion, and the Sports Illustrated Awards
Annette Becker, Texas Fashion Collection, University of North Texas
In 1954, Henry Luce and his media empire embarked on a new venture: making sporting part of American media culture. Joining Time, Fortune, and Life, Sports Illustrated repositioned spectator sports and active leisure as an integral part of American life. The weekly magazine promoted a nationalistic agenda, one influenced by Cold War politics and the related fitness agendas set forth by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. As a for-profit magazine dependent on advertising revenue, it advanced those agendas through consumerism, promoting products and elite lifestyles as a path to stronger citizenship. Through the fashion-focused “Sporting Look” column and two fashion awards – Sporting Look and Designer of the Year – the magazine leveraged the cultural capital and financial power of fashion to shape how women understood their roles as Americans.
Part of a larger dissertation project examining the business, consumer, and cultural histories of the American fashion industry, this paper explores the impact of the Sports Illustrated Awards through their shaping of fashion design, retail culture, and fitness culture for women. The Awards, given annually from 1956-1963, recognized womenswear designers creating what the magazine deemed a distinctly American form of dress: sportswear. Fashion historians have celebrated this form of clothing, mass produced and designed for active leisure, as physically and metaphorically freeing American women. However, this case study examines the limitations of that reading. Sports Illustrated exclusively promoted sportswear to make “play lovelier” for young, white, able-bodied, elite women. Through that focus, the Awards created an enduring sporting archetype for women that discouraged physical engagement at a time when fitness was linked to national strength and democratic participation, hindering women’s ability to fully engage in those ideological pursuits.
Women Fashioning Women: Out of the Margin
Michael Mamp, Louisiana State University
Women Fashioning Women (WFW), an exhibition from October 1, 2023, to March 28, 2024, included sixty artifacts from the LSU Textile & Costume Museum collection designed by forty different women designers, the oldest from 1905 and the most recent from 2022. Ironically, in an industry often supported by women, the accomplishments of many women fashion designers remain lesser known. WFW responded to the assessment of feminist and theorist bell hooks, who said, “To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body.” The exhibition included the work of a wide array of designers, including Augusta Bernard, Ceil Chapman, Anne Fogarty, Miriam Haskell, Vera Maxwell, Mary McFadden, Jeanne Paquin, Pauline Trigère, and a unique 1958 Mardi Gras gown made by modiste Marceline Taylor for the Queen of the Original Illinois Club, a Black Krewe founded in New Orleans in 1895.
WFW posited that women design clothes with themselves in mind. Style, ease of movement, and practicality are considered in terms of how they relate to a woman’s body for a fashionable, modern lifestyle. While the male gaze looms and certainly influences fashion, women are less presented as objects to be admired. Instead, they are strong, independent, active, and understood by the women designing their clothes. This presentation traces the curatorial process associated with this exhibition, starting from acquiring a new collection, organization, and selection of artifacts, exhibit and label design, conservation measures, thematic summaries of the accomplishments and aesthetics of women designers presented using feminist theory for contextualization and provides a roadmap for student engagement in the staging of fashion exhibitions in a university setting.
The Halston Archive: Fostering Creativity and Cultural Dialogue in Higher Education
Charlotte Poling, Lipscomb University
The Halston Archive serves as a compelling case study for ways in which institutions of higher education can leverage archival fashion collections to bridge the past and future of design, to foster an appreciation for cultural legacy and to inspire modern creativity. By curating The Halston Narrative: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow , the Lipscomb University Fashion & Design faculty and students demonstrated how archives transcend historical preservation to become dynamic and educational tools. Through hands-on research, curation, and execution, students engaged deeply with Halston’s design philosophy and the socio-cultural context of his work, gaining critical insight into the designer’s creative process and its broader cultural impact. This presentation argues that archival collections are not static but active participants in shaping cultural memory. Students working with the Halston archives embody this dynamism, interpreting historical artifacts through their own contemporary lens to uncover connections between past innovation and present challenges. By weaving past and present, the exhibition highlighted the transformative and emancipatory power of fashion archives in higher education—not only as repositories of history but as catalysts for creativity and cultural dialogue. Ultimately, Halston’s legacy serves as both a reflection of its era and a driver for future exploration, bridging generational divides and inspiring the next wave of designers to approach their work with a deeper understanding of fashion’s role in shaping society.
The Bag That Broke the Rules: Telfar and Radical Luxury
Whitney Jordan, Liverpool John Moores University
In August 2020, Telfar Clemens, founder of the unisex clothing line Telfar, launched the Bag Security Program. This innovative pre-order initiative challenged the belief that luxury fashion is inherently tied to exclusivity. Clemens created it to combat resellers and bots disrupting access to Telfar’s coveted Shopping Bag—known as the “Bushwick Birkin”—and reinforced the brand’s commitment to inclusivity and community. This paper examines the Bag Security Program as a case study in building cultural capital through community-driven and digital-led strategies.
By allowing customers to pre-order bags in their preferred size and color, Telfar reimagined luxury as equitable and community-centric, rejecting scarcity as a measure of prestige. Instead of traditional media outlets, Telfar relied on social media like Instagram to build authenticity and loyalty among its audience. Organic celebrity endorsements from Beyoncé, Cardi B, and Hailey Bieber cemented the Bag Security Program as a cultural moment. This paper places the program with conversations on media, inclusivity, and resistance to fashion’s power dynamics.
This study uses qualitative research of the Bag Security Program’s media coverage, user-generated content, celebrity endorsements, and digital campaigns to explore how the Bag Security Program uses digital media as a tool for radical luxury. It argues that Telfar’s approach is a contemporary roadmap for accessibility and equity in luxury fashion.