35. Documenting Fashion Otherwise: Archives, Absence, and the Politics of Evidence
What counts as evidence in fashion history? This session aims to interrogate authoritative sources, including patents, contracts, photographs, and press materials. Drawing on Ernst van Alphen’s question, “What history, whose history, history to what purpose?”, we recognise that sources are often biased and shaped by systems that reinforce certain narratives while obscuring others. Scholars such as Estrella de Diego, who have championed the significance of “what was there and we did not see”, inspire us to explore the potential for fashion historians to work critically with the official record while attending to what it leaves out, suppresses, or renders difficult to see.
Acknowledging the biases produced and encountered in the archive, this panel proposes to explore both the contributions and the challenges of defying official evidence. In some cases, primary sources have been available yet overlooked, thereby preventing the unsettling of established narratives favouring the individual male genius. The authorship of the Delphos gown, traditionally attributed to Mariano Fortuny despite archival evidence of Henriette Negrin’s role as inventor and co-creator, offers one such example. In other cases, particularly those involving sexuality and queer relationships, they often lack conventional documentation, limiting the scope of historical inquiry, as seen in the historiography surrounding Cristóbal Balenciaga.
We encourage papers that approach fashion history through archival theory, visual and material culture, queer studies, gender studies, museum studies, legal history, oral history or affect studies. Possible topics include disputed authorship, invisible collaborators, patents, cataloguing practices, gossip, archival silence, attribution and the politics of naming.
Themes: Fashion history, politics of evidence, archive
Additional format comment: Session of four 20-minute research papers, each followed by 5 minutes for questions.
Lead Convenor: Alba Sanz Álvarez. The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Co-convenors: Danny Cruz Pérez, Universidad de Murcia, Spain
To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.