2025 Grainger Symposium: Music and Fashion
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Music and fashion have always moved in rhythm with each other.
Intersections between the worlds of music and fashion can be found across practically every genre and era – from costume design for film, ballet and opera, to collaborations spanning Bollywood to the Ballets Russes. Partnerships between musicians and fashion houses have long shaped cultural identity, from Maria Callas’s couture by Yves Saint Laurent and Dior, to the Sex Pistols’ punk aesthetic with Vivienne Westwood, and Kanye West’s Yeezys. Some musicians even design and make their own clothing, such as Percy Grainger with his “towel outfits,” the “King of K-pop” G-Dragon, or former Spice Girl turned designer Victoria Beckham. Others build their brand around not only their musical works but also distinctive visual choices – from the Beatles’ iconic bowl cuts to Yuja Wang’s signature Louboutins.
The Grainger Museum is pleased to host this symposium on Music and Fashion, which will explore how style has amplified sound – fashion and music working together across time. Founder of the Museum, Australian composer and pianist Percy Grainger, was deeply interested in fashion, as can be seen though the Museum’s extensive holdings of men’s and women’s clothing, shoes, accessories, and designs. Building on Percy Grainger’s fascination, this symposium celebrates the enduring dialogue between what we hear and what we wear.
The symposium will run over two days on 10 and 11 December 2025, with sessions held at both the University of Melbourne and online.
PROGRAM (updated 3 December)
Download the Program with Abstracts and Presenter Biographies HERE
WEDNESDAY 10 December 2025
Session 1 ONLINE (and streamed live at the Grainger Museum) | |
9:30am | Cerys Swain (University of Liverpool) – Moptops and Matching Suits: Analysing the Significance of The Beatles’ Fashion and Appearance in the Beatles Monthly Magazine (1963-1969) |
10:00am | Karen Nicholson (Royal Holloway, University of London) – Influencers 1.0: Early music stylists and fashionable acquaintances,1960s to 1990s. |
10:30am | Steph Stone (Boston University) – So Androgynous: Gender Expression Through Fashion in Minneapolis Punk 1978-1983 |
BREAK 11:00am – 11:30am | |
Session 2: IN PERSON | |
11:30am | Emmanuela Wroth (University of Cambridge) – From Vittoria Tesi to Joséphine Baker: Performing Race, Gender, and Sexuality across the Centuries |
12:00pm | Rachana Vajjhala (University of California, Davis) – Looking Like Liberace |
12:30pm | Elizabeth Kertesz and Michael Christoforidis (University of Melbourne) – The Spanish Turn in Jazz-Age Fashion |
1:00pm | Sarah Kirby (University of Melbourne) – The ‘Golden Human Chrysanthemum’: Music, Celebrity, and the Press Reception of Percy Grainger’s Hair |
BREAK 1:30pm – 2:30pm | |
Session 3: IN PERSON | |
2:30pm | Anna Marinela Lopez (University of Texas of Austin) – ‘We Never Go Out of Style’: Fandom, Fashion, and Fantasy in Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour |
3:00pm | Kate McQuiston (University of Hawai'i at Manoa) – Magical thinking in the style of Thundercat |
3:30pm | Ruth Opara (Columbia University) – Come and See My Mother: Fashioning Power and Femininity in Afropop Aesthetics |
BREAK 4:00PM – 5:00PM | |
Session 4: ONLINE (and streamed live at the Grainger Museum) | |
5:00pm | Belen Vargas (University of Granada) – Music iconography and fashion in Spanish women’s magazines (1833-68) |
5:30pm | Caroline Gleason-Mericer (University of Turin) – Recalling the Ancien Régime: The Politics of Costuming in Julie Candeille’s Catherine, ou La belle fermière (1792) |
6:00pm | Ellan Lincoln-Hyde (King’s College London; SOAS University of London) – ‘Crazy hats do something for my morale’: Dress, Identity, and the Performance of Stardom in Marjorie Lawrence’s Public Image |
THURSDAY 11 December 2025
Session 5: ONLINE (and streamed live at the Grainger Museum) | |
9:30am | Emese Lengyel (Széchenyi István University, Hungary) and Márton Szives (University of Pécs) – EXXISTERE – a case study on the connection of painting, music and fashion |
10:00am | Kendall Winter (University of Kentucky) – Fashioning Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century American Sheet Music Iconography |
| 10:30am | Marie Comuzzo (Brandeis University) – The Pure Musical Vessel and the Aesthetic Regime of Classical Music: Fatphobia, Hierarchy, and Embodied Discipline |
END PAPER SESSIONS 11:00am | |
KEYNOTE LECTURE: Sophie Knezic (2025 Grainger Museum Creative Research Resident) - ‘Peacock Aesthetics’: Grainger’s Towel Clothes, Gender Fluid Fashion & Performative Flair Thursday 11 December 6:00pm – 7:30pm |