2025 Grainger Symposium: Music and Fashion

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 schedule:

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)

9:00am

Stephen Amico (University of Bergen) – Music, Fashion, and Synaesthetic/Kinetic Experience

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

Please book for the keynote lecture here.