Van Dyke Lewis
Prof Asst
2007
FSAD

Web Bio Page

Current Activities

Current Professional Activities

 



Current Research Activities

New Masculinities: The challenge is understand the extent to which the menswear industry may need to become more strategic and flexible in order to adapt to a changing market. The project explores masculinities in America, with focus on young men's fashion exploration of visual dialogues in advertising and other such outcroppings are compared to real life fashion configurations. Investigations are made through the establishment of types and examination of their variance from industry promoted holdings instillations.

Fashion Undergrounds: This project considers fashion utopias, deviancy and protest as the basis for a unraveling the fashion under the radar with in the space of the big city. The contrast with the earlier Ithaca Fashion Project is cause for comparison, as is the conscious marginality of the temporary encampment of the festival as transcendence toward normalizing resistance and deviancy. Despite attempts of escape, disorder and deregulation through individual and group fashion expressions the fashion underground is discussed in Baurdrillardian terms as hyper conforming.

The Self and Fashion: Interwoven throughout all fashion output is the individual. The Self versus the Fashion industry is a situational construct of imbalance and appropriation. This study considers the relevancy of the Fashion industry in regard to emerging global issues that will impact the design, production and presentation of Fashion.
Further the study explores alternative constructs such as the Self in regard to the Fashion industry and questions the future of practice, trend origination and transfer, and empowerment. The thought that design should be led by issues and not aesthetic concepts provokes new focus to the oppositions and benefits of this relationship and develops a new cartography of Fashion practice at a time when society’s systems and structures are in upheaval.




Current Extension Activities

Supervision of an undergraduate student honors research project. Subjects were from the Urban 4H in Ithaca, aged 7 to 14. Subjects were taught to design, cut, and make clothes that have been presented for competition in the New York State Fair. The research uses the design and construction process to uncover identity and subject hood. Culmination of this project have been numerous and include a peer review paper, an educational program to by marketed with an industry partner, a film recording project outcomes has been made by Human Ecology as demonstration of practice in extension activities.

As a component of 346 Design Process, students worked with the fashion retailer to produce a collection of clothes that went some way to address the issue of "fast fashion". Designs were created to be manufactured with limited intensity whilst being attractive enough to be valued by the consumer as imperative objects. The designs sought emotion and personality, function and calculation. The collection will be launched in a five of Forever 21 stores.

 



Biography

Biographical Statement
Van Dyk Lewis has a first class honors degree from Middlesex University, a masters with distinction and doctorate from the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD). Before taking his current post at Cornell University Lewis was Head of Fashion Studies at the University of Salford. Lewis teaches a range of courses that include a graduate course in fashion theory, fashion graphics, fashion design creativity and process and portfolio presentation. He uses ethnography, social psychology and poststructural criticism to interrogate fashion. Current research includes studies of masculinities, sustainable fashion design practice and the fashion underground.




Administrative Responsibilities


 




 



Courses, Websites, Pubs

Courses Taught


Related Websites

 



Publications

Book Chapters (editor reviewed)

Lewis, V.D. (2008). Developing strategies for a typology of sustainable fashion. In Ulasewicz, C., & Hethorn, J. (Eds.), Sustainability fashion, why now? New York: Fairchild. (Accepted for Publication).

Lewis, V.D. (2008). Is black culture ready for fashion photography: The cultural praxis of the black fashion photograph? In Ogbomo, O.W., & Falola, T. (Eds.),
Photography, History and Culture of African Peoples. (Accepted for Publication).

Lewis, V.D. (2007). Sizing and clothing aesthetics. In Ashdown, S. (Ed.) Sizing in clothing. (pp. 309-327). Cambridge: Woodhead.