Studying Fashion in Paris

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Paris is the ultimate playground for fashion. The city offers endless conventional and unconventional sources of inspiration, experience and knowledge. Here is a small selection of museums, galleries, libraries and archives, for more formal explorations.

Classes that use Paris as a resource

CM5017 Fashion Media Production

This course aims for a critical practice of fashion communication. It relies on the principle of “learning by doing”: learning how to communicate fashion through writing, photography, film, digital and new media, exhibition curation, styling and performances. Training multi-skilled, innovative and critical fashion communicators of the twenty-first century but also professionals interested in questions of global fashion communication is the objective in response to the heterogenous and transitory professional field of fashion. Together, we will investigate the new conventions and challenges, processes and practices of twenty-first century media through lectures and workshops, presentations and projects, and the direct involvement with AUP ASM. The class will experientially explore different ways of communication fashion through writing (journalistic, academic, commercial, advertorial, informational), visual (photography, drawing, film, video, and television), material (styling and curating fashion- performative: fashion performance, dance), digital (digital media such as blogs and Instagram accounts, video, virtual reality, online fashion resources, virtual and 3D fashion shows). At the end of the class, each student will have achieved a multimedia project on a specific topic of their choice made of a text, a film, a podcast, a photo... Each class will be part of the overall project.

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CM2002 Global Fashion: Histories And Methods

This course aims to explore the histories of non-western fashion, crafts, and industries of a variety of countries. The course gives students the opportunity to explore new fields of fashion history while at the same time providing them with research methods such as image, object and film analysis, and exhibition study.

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CM4021 Paris Fashion Histories & Geographies

The notion of Paris as “the global fashion capital “is so popular that it became a self-perpetuating myth alongside its mythical figure of La Parisienne. According to this idea, Paris is the birthplace and the capital of fashion and is still today the capital of haute couture, of elegance, of chic and of luxury. In part one of the course, through readings, case studies and visits of certain key sites in Paris (or online visits), students will understand how the fashion industry has shaped –and continues to shape –the city of Paris, from textile factories during the 17th century within Paris, to the emergence of luxury good shops (18th century), of department stores (19th century), of couture houses (19th-20th centuries), of ready-to-wear and fast fashion shops and of luxury flagships during the 21st century). While giving students tools to understand the development of Paris as a “fashion capital” this course also aims to unpack the discursive construction of Paris as the center of the fashion world. Going beyond this general idea of “Paris, capital of fashion”, this course will have a critical approach of the sociological and construction of Paris as the center of the fashion world and question how the story has been told, what was included and what left out. It will address the different levels of the industry, the high and low, the everyday and haute couture, the grand couturier and the migrant garment workers, the Chanel workshop on Avenue Montaigne and the fast fashion workshops in Aubervilliers, the luxury department stores and the flea markets. Discussions in class will thus question the hierarchy in the Paris fashion industry and show that behind the catchy idea of “Parisian fashion”, a more complex eco-system is at stake, involving discussions about class, race and gender in the fashion industry. In taking this class, students come to understand that Paris is not the place of a unique kind of fashion, namely the place of high fashion for wealthy clients, as it is widely advertised in the media and forged in the collective imaginary, but that Paris is constituted by different kind of fashion spaces which correspond to different kind of systems of clothes production and consumption: haute couture and ready-to-wear in the center of Paris, fast fashion, retail and wholesale in the suburbs of Paris. This heterogeneous geography corresponds further to different type of labor force, consumers, and representations, allowing to de-hierarchized, de-centralized the geographies of Parisian fashion.

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CM5029 Sustainability In Fashion

This course explores fashion not (only) as product but process. It explores this industry from field to fashion and investigates the complex global fashion system from cultures of extraction, design, manufacture, to cultures of representation, consumption, wearing and disposal/re-use. The fashion chain will be studied through a series of rich textual and visual sources, lectures, debates and visits.

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Summer Classes

CM2111 Fashion Systems & Sustainability

This course aims to challenge existing notions of fashion by looking into several fashion systems - past and present - and engage with their social,economic, cultural and environmental impact. Systems of textiles and fashion revolve around numerous processes and actors, which are involved in complex chains from design, production, and distribution to consumption and use. Ready to wear, haute couture, fast, bespoke, vintage, slow or circular fashion - are some of the models operating on a global and local scale, all of which produce and market fashionable goods and ideas. This course critically explores these different spaces and places of fashion. We will begin with historical examples, especially looking at the effects of the Industrial Revolution and imperialism on textile production in Europe and globally in the 19th century. We will also discuss the establishment of Paris as the "capital of Western fashion" to the present day. Paris has been instrumental in the development of a globalized fashion system with wide-ranging effects on the environment and the living conditions of workers in the Global South.Exploring the life cycle of a garment will allow us to reflect on manufacturing processes and engage with sustainable practices such as upcycling, mending, and reuse. This course will encourage the rethinking of fashion systems under a holistic approach, one that reduces the footprint on raw materials and communities and fosters environmental responsibility and equity. Grounded in theory and practice, this course encourages critical discussions on fashion through lectures, research projects, visits,and guest talks, making extensive use of visual media and textual sources.

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CM2111 Fashion Systems & Sustainability

This course aims to challenge existing notions of fashion by looking into several fashion systems - past and present - and engage with their social,economic, cultural and environmental impact. Systems of textiles and fashion revolve around numerous processes and actors, which are involved in complex chains from design, production, and distribution to consumption and use. Ready to wear, haute couture, fast, bespoke, vintage, slow or circular fashion - are some of the models operating on a global and local scale, all of which produce and market fashionable goods and ideas. This course critically explores these different spaces and places of fashion. We will begin with historical examples, especially looking at the effects of the Industrial Revolution and imperialism on textile production in Europe and globally in the 19th century. We will also discuss the establishment of Paris as the "capital of Western fashion" to the present day. Paris has been instrumental in the development of a globalized fashion system with wide-ranging effects on the environment and the living conditions of workers in the Global South.Exploring the life cycle of a garment will allow us to reflect on manufacturing processes and engage with sustainable practices such as upcycling, mending, and reuse. This course will encourage the rethinking of fashion systems under a holistic approach, one that reduces the footprint on raw materials and communities and fosters environmental responsibility and equity. Grounded in theory and practice, this course encourages critical discussions on fashion through lectures, research projects, visits,and guest talks, making extensive use of visual media and textual sources.

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Cultural Institutions

MUSEUMS
LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES