[Commlist] CFP: New Reflections on Fashioning Identities: Lifestyle, Emotions and Celebrity Culture

*Call For Papers - Reminder*
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*NewNew Reflections on Fashioning Identities: Lifestyle, Emotions and 
Celebrity Culture*

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*14 June 2019*

*University of Roehampton*

*London, UK.*

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*A one-day symposium supported by the/Centre for Research in Film and 
Audio-Visual Cultures /(CRFAC),
in association with the**/Fashion, Costume and Visual Cultures (FCVC) 
Network/.*

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*Symposium convened by Dr Theodora Thomadaki, University of Roehampton*

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*Keynote Speakers*

*Dr Shaun Cole *Associate Professor of Fashion at Winchester School of 
Art, University of Southampton.

*Gok Wan *Multi-award-winning UK presenter, fashion expert and on-screen 
consultant.

Gok Wan’s award winning series /How To Look Good Naked (/Channel 4, 
2006-2010/)/ vividly revolutionised the popular terrains of the makeover 
genre. It pushed the cultural boundaries of the traditional makeover 
format by facilitating an emotionally rich transformational experience 
where female participants reflectively engaged with hidden and often 
unexplored aspects of their inner subjective experiences. For Gok Wan, 
the way in which ordinary women emotionally perceived their own body 
imperfections, as well as how they undervalued their self-worth, is what 
the programme considered important and in need of modifying. Thomadaki 
(2017) argues that the appearance of the specific format facilitated by 
Gok Wan in /How To Look Good Naked /signals an important shift in the 
makeover frame towards a discourse of the therapeutic, chiming with what 
has widely been hailed as a particularly ‘therapeutic’ moment in popular 
culture (Richards, 2004; Richards and Brown, 2011, 2002; Bainbridge and 
Yates, 2012, 2014; Yates, 2013). Gok Wan’s /How To Look Good Naked/’s 
use of fashion/stylistic skills and practices revealed the expert’s 
capacity to generate creative opportunities, where aspects of the self 
can emerge through the playful engagement with fashion and makeover 
objects related to the participant’s inner self-experience. The 
effectiveness of the /How To Look Good Naked /practice launched Gok Wan 
as a powerful celebrity and on-screen fashion consultant who has been 
recognised for his continued effort in raising emotional awareness for 
current feminine body related issues and concerns, as well as for 
introducing ‘feel good’ practices that offer opportunities for 
self-reflection and self-growth. His empathetic capacity to reflectively 
engage with his female subjects revealed an important evolution in the 
makeover frame, where the omnipotent figure of the expert as objective 
judge was culturally undone.

Ten years on, the Gok Wan phenomenon can be seen to have played a key 
role in shaping what we understand as ‘therapeutic’ in popular British 
lifestyle media and makeover culture. This symposium aims to bring 
together established, early career and emerging scholars and 
practitioners working in fashion, promotional culture, celebrity studies 
and lifestyle media to explore current debates on makeover, fashion and 
lifestyle practices that enable us to bridge the outer and inner word as 
means of (re)exploring, (re)discovering, and reflecting on the body, 
self, sexuality and identity.

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*Topics may include, but are not limited to:*

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<Makeover culture and self-improvement

<Reality TV and ordinary celebrities

<Celebrity, fashion and branding

<TV, transformation and lifestyle culture

<Fashion, sexuality and gender performativity

<Ordinary clothes and fashion objects

<Social media, editing and consumption practices

<Clothes, skin and emotional expression

<[Post]feminism, beauty and the body

<Psychoanalysis and popular culture


Presenters at the symposium will be encouraged to develop their papers 
for publication in a number of Intellect journals, including: /Film, 
Fashion and Consumption, Clothing Cultures, Critical Studies in Men’s 
Fashion, /and /Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture/. A full list 
of Intellect journals is available 
at:*https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/index/
*

*Abstracts of up to 300 words along with a short biography and contact 
details, should be submitted to Dr Theodora Thomadaki at 
**(theodora.thomadaki /at/ roehampton.ac.uk)**by February 15^th , 2019. 
**Notifications will be sent out in early March 2019.***




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