Call for Papers: Fashion, Meaning & Language – by July 15
Institut Français de la Mode and the University of San Diego are pleased to announce an international symposium exploring the intersections of fashion, meaning, and language. This two-day event will bring together researchers from diverse disciplines to examine clothing and fashion as non-linguistic systems of communication.
Symposium Theme
Fashion constitutes a complex visual and material language that creates, conveys, and negotiates meaning across social contexts. Beyond mere utility or aesthetics, garments function as potent communicative devices—speaking without words, encoding cultural values, social positions, personal identities, and collective aspirations. This symposium aims to explore the communicative dimensions of fashion, interrogating how clothing operates as a non-verbal language or signaling system.
The theoretical landscape has changed drastically since The Fashion System (1967) by Roland Barthes, who applied tools of semiotics to understanding fashion. On the one hand, the study of material culture has given a more prominent place to the objects themselves, and on the other, contemporary linguistic models have long moved away from the Saussurean structuralist view that was typical of the French 1960’s.
The Fashion, Language and Meaning International Symposium welcomes papers focusing on the theoretical tools and frameworks that best model the production of clothing signals and their interpretation, studies of the meanings conveyed by a particular class of clothes, and other broad theoretical or historical enquiries that bear on these topics.
For example, we seek to investigate questions such as:
- How do garments and fashion systems create and transmit meaning in ways that parallel or diverge from verbal language?
- What semiotic, semantic or pragmatic frameworks best capture the particular communicative properties of clothing?
- How do clothing, accessories, and whole outfits acquire their meanings?
- How do clothing and fashion signals reflect specific cultural or group conventions?
- What role can fashion signaling play in activism and political messaging?
- What potential is there for reappropriating or changing the meaning
- How do material properties of fashion objects (texture, weight, structure, etc.) contribute to meaning-making?
- How do fashion's communicative functions vary across historical periods, cultural contexts, and social groups?
- What cognitive processes underlie our interpretation of fashion signals?
- How do fashion objects mediate between individual expression and collective understanding?
Disciplinary Perspectives
We welcome contributions from scholars across multiple disciplines, including but not limited to:
- Philosophy
- History
- Sociology
- Anthropology
- Cognitive Sciences
- Linguistics
- Design Studies
Submission Guidelines
- Abstract Length: 350-500 words
- Languages: English or French
- Deadline: July 15, 2025
- Notification of Acceptance: September 1, 2025
- Submission Format: PDF document including:
- Abstract (350-500 words)
- 5 keywords
- Brief author biography (150 words maximum)
- Institutional affiliation
- Contact information
Please submit abstracts via email to: meaningsymposium@gmail.com
Symposium Format
Selected participants will present approximately 30-minute papers followed by 10-minute discussion periods. Presentations will be made in English. The symposium will also feature keynote presentations and panel discussions. A selection of papers from the symposium will be considered for publication in a planned edited volume.
The conference will take place at Institut Français de la Mode in the heart of Paris, France. Funding support will be available. Those without funding alternatives will be prioritized.
Important Dates
- Abstract Submission Deadline: July 15, 2025
- Notification of Acceptance: September 1, 2025
- Full Paper Submission: October 15, 2025
- Symposium Dates: November 20-21, 2025
Organizing Committee
Sarah Banon (Institut Français de la Mode), Benjamin Simmenauer (Institut Français de la Mode), Marilynn Johnson (University of San Diego)
Contact
For inquiries and submission of your paper, please contact: meaningsymposium@gmail.com
