Fashion's Missing Masses: The representation of marginalized populations in collections and exhibitions of dress (Curating and Interpreting Culture) - Softcover

Beltran-Rubio, Laura; McVicker, Michelle; García-Rada, Sandra Mathey; Omoyele, Tolulope; Malleo, Echo; Stewart, Milana; Crenshaw, Angela Hermano; Ghnaim, Wafa; Surette, Flannery; Strickfaden, Megan; McClendon, Emma; Scrayen, Wonne; Foster, Shirley P.; Koontz, Marcy L.; Helgeson, Rebecca; Breeze, Camille Myers; Libes, Kenna; Peters, Lauren Downing

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798881904531

Publisher: Vernon Press, 2026

Synopsis

'Fashion's Missing Masses' fills a gap in literature on museums and fashion collections and focuses on the display of clothing and fashion that has historically been left out of the canon. The fifteen essays in this volume span topics on Indigenous and traditional dress; disabled and fat bodies; and queer and ethnic identities. Their authors study the ways that dress and textiles have been collected, displayed, and often ignored across a century and a half of museum exhibitions.

Representation and inclusion in fashion museums is a new and rapidly evolving area of research in the reexamination of dress history. These chapters provide unique information and perspectives on curation, collections management, conservation, and research, which will be valuable to a wide group of audiences working, teaching, and learning in and about museums.

This volume touches on practical concerns of exhibition, including mannequin availability and difficulties of mounting dress, as well as broader questions of scholarship and activism that will be key for educators and researchers who wish to stay abreast of developments in this field. Diversity in fashion is a hot topic, and understanding the line between tokenization and representation in spaces of institutional authority is crucial to learning how we can better serve our diverse populations in the teaching of history.

About this title

About the Author

Kenna Libes is a PhD candidate in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center in New York City. She has worked in museums and nonprofits in collections management, textile conservation, and curation, and has Master's degrees in fashion history and museum studies from Brown University and the SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology. Her current areas of research include the dress cultures of marginalized populations in the fashion history canon with a focus on the historical intersections of body size and dress. She also studies historiography and the composition of collections and exhibitions to understand the production of the past and its influence on the present. She has published in the journals 'Dress and Fashion' and 'Style & Popular Culture' and contributed to exhibitions internationally.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vernon Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798881904531
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 472
• Editor: Libes Kenna