Date: Mar 29, 2007

Hofstra Cultural Center Presents Defining Culture Through Dress: Individual and Collective Identities

April 19-21, 2007 - Featuring Fashion Shows and Some of the Country’s Leading Fashion Experts, Analysts and Trendsetters, Incl. David Wolfe, Harold Koda, Marlaine Glicksman, Summer Rayne Oakes, Steve Davies, Lexy Funk and James Aguiar

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY … An editor of Vogue, the Curator-in-Charge of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; one of the nation’s leading bridal retailers and a host of television’s Full Frontal Fashion are among the participants in the Hofstra University conference Defining Culture Through Dress: Individual and Collective Identities.

Fashion’s impact on culture and society will be the focus of this April 19, 20 and 21 interdisciplinary event. There will be in-depth discussion of fashion in literature, religion, the mass media, ethnic identity and how fashion influences self-image. Participating experts and scholars hail from the fields of sociology, psychology, art, history, anthropology, communication, journalism and business, as well as fashion experts.

Highlights include:

Thursday, April 19:
Opening keynote address by Harold Koda, Curator-in-Charge, Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Performance of an original show Fashion Statements!, conceived of and directed by Bob Spiotto, Hofstra’s artistic director of community arts programs.

Panels on “Men and Women of the Cloth”; “Middle Eastern and African Identities”; “Communicating Fashion”; “Fashion and a Sustainable Environment” with eco-fashion model and activist Summer Rayne Oakes and Steve Davies of Natureworks (manufacturers of Ingeo™  fiber, the first manmade fiber created from 100% annually renewable resources, not oil); “Latin American Identities”; “Fashion Dynamics and Brazilian Identity”; “Fashion and Image” with David Wolfe, a creative director with Doneger Creative Services (Doneger is the leading source of global market trends and merchandising strategies to the retail and fashion industry); and “The Arts and Literature.”

Friday, April 20:
Panel on “The Influence of Movies on Fashion” featuring Marlaine Glicksman of Vogue magazine and Deborah Landis of the Costume Designers Guild; Panel on HipHop fashion and a fashion show presented by Rocawear.Cocktail party at the Hofstra University Museum to celebrate the opening of the exhibition What We Wear. Banquet featuring address by James Aguiar, co-host of Full Frontal Fashion.

Other panels include “Fashion Uniforms and Uniformity”; “European Women: Twentieth Century Fashion Statements”; “Asian Identities”; and “The Gender? of Fashion.”

Saturday, April 21:
A fashion show of Ladies’ Church Hats, modeled by The Women’s Ministry of Union Baptist Church in Hempstead, NY
Bridal fashion show, sponsored by David’s Bridal

Panels include “The Rich and Famous: Upperclass European Women’s Fashions” with Isabella Campagnol Fabretti, curator of the Rubelli Textile Collection in Venice, Italy; “Dress as Spatial Entities”; and “Fashion Identities: American Experiences.”

Registration for the conference is $100 for the three days or $40 per day. Senior citizen and student discounts are available. Other events such as the performance of Fashion Statements! , the conference banquet and the bridal fashion show and luncheon are priced separately. Members of the Hofstra community may attend all conference, with the exception of meals, for free upon presentation of a current HofstraCard. For a complete conference itinerary and for other information visit www.hofstra.edu/Culture or call the Hofstra Cultural Center at (516) 463-5669.