MÉLODY THOMAS
Enseignante / Educator
En tant qu'enseignante mon objectif est de former la nouvelle génération créative qui s'apprête à entrer sur le marché du travail en lui apportant : une connaissance contextualisée de l'histoire de la mode, du monde des médias, des nouvelles narrations ainsi qu'une capacité à exercer une réflexion critique sur nos vêtements, de la manière dont ils sont fabriqués, portés et perçus.
As a teacher, my goal is to train the new creative generation to enter the job market by providing: contextualized knowledge of the history of fashion, the world of media, and new narratives as well as 'an ability to critically reflect on our clothes, how they are made, worn and perceived.
Fashion & Criticism
Parsons Paris
(2022 - )
This seminar investigates the history, present state, and possible futures of fashion criticism. With it, I question the role and definition of criticism and its resonance in the field of fashion. Considering the tradition of criticism as it was forged in art history and literary studies, I discuss possible models and their application to objects or images, performances or displays specific to the fashion industry.
This investigation is based on the 20th and 21st centuries when globalization changed our vision of criticism. Questioning the identity and position of the critic within the fashion system, with this class, I consider different paradigms as they emerge throughout the 20th century: types of criticism and ‘spaces’ where it thrives will be explored to grasp more contemporary issues.
Beyond a history of fashion mediations, the aim of this class, conceived as a research seminar, is to assess and imagine ways of formulating a critical understanding of the present. Group discussions and debates informed by weekly readings are central to this class.
Fashion & News
I.F.M
(2018 - 2021)
This class was co-created with Alice Pfeiffer, a journalist and author analyzing fashion through the prism of gender. With 'Fashion & News' our aim was to tell a contemporary history of fashion and the numerous conversation that emerges within the industry through the prism of the evolution of the media field incorporating through social networks of new “practitioners”. The themes chosen highlighted fashion as a place of production of identities and thus of media representations - therefore political through their publicity, opening up to criticism in the public space and by extension - digital space.
The question of the body, political clothing, gender, race, mass culture and new discursive forms borrowed by fashion (such as sustainable narration) were analyzed with the students in the form of courses articulating discussion and putting into historical and theoretical perspective. This program took a critical look at public debates (also animating the theoretical world), aiming to get out of an overly "Eurocentric" study of fashion and to bring a colonial and intersectional perspective to it.