Unveiling New Perspectives Through Press Archives, News Photography, and a Decolonial Lens: Disrupting Parisian Fashion

Unveiling New Perspectives Through Press Archives, News Photography, and a Decolonial Lens: Disrupting Parisian Fashion

 Lecture introduced by Dr. Don Duncan of the Discipline of Journalism & Communication, School of English, Media & Creative Arts

Pierre-Antoine Vettorello’s research sits at the intersection of fashion design, history, museology, and decolonial studies. In his lecture, he will discuss how journalistic articles from French newspaper archives and colonial-era press photography inform his present research into the construction of the colonial ‘other’ through fashion in pre-WWII Paris.

Using newspaper articles, press analysis, and family photos as research material, Vettorello creates detailed replicas of period Senegalese women’s indigenous garments, using indigo dye. By doing so, he examines, interrogates and decentres fashion and decoloniality in the historical context of Senegalese woman wearing their indigenous clothing in Paris in the late 1930s… And how that was framed and represented in the mainstream French press of the day.

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Pierre-Antoine Vettorello is a fashion designer & practice-based researcher at the University of Antwerp and Sint Lucas school of arts, Antwerp. He teaches at Istituto Marangoni, Paris & at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Brussels.