[Commlist] CFP “Italian Film, Costume Design and Fashion from the Silent Era to the Present” JICMS

*Call for papers for a Special Issue of the Journal of Italian Cinema 
and Media Studies, on “Italian Film, Costume Design and Fashion from the 
Silent Era to the Present” to be edited by Eugenia Paulicelli and 
Giuliana Muscio.*

**


*Italian Film/Costume Design/Fashion from the Silent Era to the Present. *

**

Fashion and film share a highly interactive quality. As two of the most 
popular and widespread commercial industries to grow out of modernity, 
cinema and fashion have always had a synergetic relationship, both using 
the technology of the camera and that of the body and performance. 
Costume is integral both to the actor’s performance and to the cinematic 
rendition of visual narratives and experience. Since the birth of cinema 
in the late nineteenth century, the film scene has constituted a virtual 
shopping window for clothes, exhibiting and making desirable the newest 
fashions and goods available at the department stores. Film costume has 
not only borrowed from fashion and haute couture; it has also inspired 
the production of the newest fashions. Costumes in cinema have also been 
used as narrative tools for telling stories on screen that emphasize 
character identity and development while also attracting a larger 
audience. More recently, the digital genre of “fashion film” has become 
a widespread advertising and storytelling tool for fashion luxury brands 
as Ferragamo, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Dior amongst the others.

             Although fashion and film costume have always been vital 
to the totality of the cinema industry, they did not attract academic 
attention until the 1990s. That is not to say that the topic was 
completely neglected, however, as one of the first books on the 
relationship between fashion and cinema, /La moda e il costume nel 
film/, was published in 1950 in Italy, edited by the university 
professor and critic Mario Verdone, father of actor Carlo Verdone. The 
book contains a homage to the costume designer Gino Carlo Sensani, who 
was praised by Antonioni. Costume design only began to be recognized as 
a profession in the world of Italian cinema in the 1930s, but 
costume/cinema and fashion were soon to establish a close link with the 
global launch of Italian fashion in the post-war years.

             In the United States, film scholars Jane Gaines and 
Charlotte Herzog edited their landmark collection /Fabrications/in 1990, 
and in 1996 and 1997, UK-based film scholars Pam Cook and Stella Bruzzi 
published monographs on fashion in British cinema (Cook: 1996) and on 
film, gender, and identity (Bruzzi: 1997). These seminal books offered a 
reflection on methodology and histories (of gender and nation), and 
paved the way for new interpretations of film, body and performance, 
masculinities, fashion, popular culture, and stardom and, at the same 
time, challenged age-old hierarchies in the humanities.

             The intersection between fashion and film and the growing 
scholarship dedicated to it are now becoming a very fertile terrain. 
More attention is now being dedicated to the role of costume and costume 
design in cinema and its interrelation with fashion, Italian style and 
the made in Italy. Nevertheless, the combined study of fashion and film 
and the particular focus on Italy is still at an early stage of 
development within film studies and especially Italian cinema and media 
studies.

We invite scholars, costume and fashion designers, archivists, museum 
scholars and experts to participate in a special issue of the journal 
focusing on film/fashion/costume design with the aim of mapping the 
intermedial and transnational history of Italian film/costume 
design/fashion and screen media from the silent era until the present. 
All film genres are of interest.

Topics to be considered include but are not limited to are:

Silent cinema and costume

Italy and Hollywood

Hollywood in Italy

Italian actors in Hollywood

Transnational impact of cinema-mediated fashion

Italian costume designers in Hollywood and elsewhere

Fashion Houses, sartorie and archives in Italy

Film and photographic archives in Italy and elsewhere

Cities of film and cities of fashion

Branding and film/fashion/costume

Fashion film in historical perspectives

International stars in Italy

Well known and less known costume designers

The role of craftsmanship in costume and fashion

Costume drama

Women directors and the work of women whose work has been neglected

Film/Costume/Fashion and pedagogy, interdisciplinary courses; designing 
curriculum

Each abstract should include the following information:

a) a clear title

b) a 500-word description outlining:

-  the topic

-  the critical approach of the proposed article—whether theoretical or 
historical

-  a cohesive description of the proposed article’s argument and objective

-  relevant bibliography and filmography

In addition to a 500-word abstract, authors should send to the guest 
editors a 150-word biographical note, followed by a detailed list of 
their academic publications, and commitment that, if the proposal is 
accepted, the article will be submitted within 8 weeks from the official 
invitation to submit the article.

Please send your proposal with a Bio by *February 28, 2019*to the editors:

Prof. Eugenia Paulicelli, Queens College and The Graduate Center, The 
City University of New York, email address: 
(Eugenia.paulicelli /at/ qc.cuny.edu); and Prof. Giuliana Muscio, University of 
Padua, Emerita, email address: (giulianamuscio /at/ gmail.com)

*The accepted proposals will be notified by March 15^th 2019; completed 
essays should be sent by May 30^th , 2019 for peer review; authors will 
be notified of the results of the peer-review by June 30^th 2019.*


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