Dr. Alison Bancroft, a fashion and culture analyst, graced the first year Fashion Studies class as a guest speaker on October 1, 2018. Starting out in the music industry, Dr. Bancroft later decided to get her Ph.D. focusing on fashion and psychoanalysis. She chose the unique study with two thoughts in mind. First, acquiring your Ph.D. requires an original contribution to knowledge, something her choice did not lack. Second, was the influence of her grandmother who showed how she chose to self-present mattered; it was important to her. Dr. Bancroft found something fundamental in the relationship between women and clothing and her interest grew organically into her 2012 book, Fashion and Psychoanalysis.
To research her topic, Bancroft started reading psychoanalysis texts and articles by influential figures such as Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud. Going back and forth between the rigorous texts and fashion magazines, Bancroft started to see a sort of psychoanalytical connection that slowly sparked ideas of the internal processes of the fashion industry. Thinking and then writing down her thoughts with no particular aim helped form her study, which she intends to continue into her next book.
Dr. Bancroft focused on the Mirror Stage, a theory created by Jacques Lacan which is, in short, the formation of the identification of the self. Bancroft connects fashion to this stage with three key concepts. First, Lacan puts the visual at the heart of human subjectivity. Second, the tension felt between what we see (in the mirror, a whole person) and what we experience as a disjointed being (we cannot see ourselves without the assistance of a mirror or another person). Third, the use of the word Stade/stage, using the literal meaning as a performance stage and the psychological meaning as the developmental stage. Focusing on the relation to fashion photography, Dr. Bancroft said that “How we identify ‘with’ depends how we identify ‘as.’ Ourself is determined by what we see. We are seeing more and more and more. The self is multiple at the best of times, that’s not going to change anytime soon.”
Written by: Kandace Clifton, MA Fashion Studies 2018-2020
Photo by: Rocio Sanchez, MA Fashion Studies 2018-2020
Book Cover Photo Courtesy of: I.B. Tauris
Featured Photo Courtesy of: Pamela Oliveras
