The theme of the 2025 ICOM Costume Committee Annual Conference is “Coloniality and Decolonization: Displacements, Migrations and Acculturations in Clothing, Textiles, and Modes of Appearance, especially in Latin America.”

The process of colonization of European countries towards the rest of the continents produced profound changes, alterations, erasures, displacements and migrations in all colonized territories and in all aspects of social, cultural, political and economic life. The universe of the uses of clothing and the modes of appearance, as well as the creation of clothing and textiles, were not exempt from this influence, producing new objects with a strong Eurocentric imprint, which is still recognized today in Latin American clothing and its productive and commercial formats, as well as in the teaching of textile and fashion design.

In some cases, European clothing hierarchies erased local attire, in others the traditions of the native peoples merged with the styles of the colonizers, giving birth to numerous mixed, hybrid and/or appropriate forms in different latitudes of the planet, generating new and distinctive local identities.

The purpose of this meeting is to highlight these phenomena of cultural interaction in order to better understand the historical process of evolution of local fashions and how the clothing and textile identities of colonized peoples have been constituted, and how colonized countries produce new fashions that distance themselves from and become independent of European aesthetics.

The proposed presentation topics may focus on any of the following:

• Precolonial local fashions and customs.
• Migrations of textile motifs and fabrics. Their forms and appropriations.
• The journeys of raw materials and their encounter with those of colonized countries.
• Local, mixed, and hybrid materials, processes, and techniques.
• Hybrid clothing typologies between Europe and the colonies.
• Fashion and social representations in the colonies.
• Development of local fashions during and after the colonial period.
• Local and European references in contemporary fashion.
• Textiles and fashion as carriers of ideological, religious, and political content.
• Colonized bodies.
• Processes and theory of decolonization in fashion.
• Notes on the construction of fashion history in Latin America.

Presentations should be around 15 minutes in length and preferably delivered in English or Spanish (but the other official language of ICOM, French, is accepted). As there will be no translation, please make sure that your presentation will be easy to follow for an international audience.

Abstracts of approximately 300 words should be submitted by July 11^th, 2025, to chair.costume@icom.museum and should contain the following information:

• Name
• Affiliation or not (with ICOM membership number for ICOM members)
• Email address
• Title and body of abstract
• Any special technological requirements (for example a Mac or PC for accompanying images, video)

Both the abstracts and the presentations will be in English, Spanish or the other official language of ICOM, French.

 

Schedule

Save the date from June 15^th, 2025.

Applications open From June 23^rd to September 30^{th  ,}2025.

Call for papers From June 23^rd  to July 25^th, 2025.

Acceptance of papers will be notified by August 11^th , 2025.

Abstracts, bios and presentations for the conference booklet must be sent by September 30^th, 2025

 

Program

Monday 20	Tuesday 21	Wednesday 22	Thursday 23	Friday 24
	9 to 12.30 Paper Sessions	9 to 12.30 Paper Sessions	9 to 12.30 Paper Sessions	9-10 Bus 10 to 13 Museo Udaondo, Luján
	12.30 to 13.30 Lunch	12.30 to 13.30 Lunch	12.30 to 13.30 Lunch	Lunch 13 to 14.30 at Museo Udaondo
	13.30 to 15 Paper Sessions	13.30 to 15 Paper Sessions	13.30 to 15 Paper Sessions	15.30 SA de Areco workshop
Casa Fernández Blanco Museum 17.30 Board meeting. 18 hs Welcome cocktail	15.30 to 18.30 Museum Visits	15.30 to 18.30 Museum Visits	15.30 to 18.30 Museum Visits 20.30 Farewell Dinner (to be confirmed)	20 Return to BA

 

More information and registration form available soon.

Image “Peinetón en la calle” from Trages y Costumbres de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Cuaderno Nro. 5. Litografia de Bacle y Ca. Talleres litograficos del Estado. Buenos Aires, 1833. Gentileza Museo Histórico Nacional.