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)

10am – 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

11am to 12pm — Break

SESSION 2: IN PERSON

12pm – 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

1pm – Sarah Kirby, University of Melbourne

The ‘Golden Human Chrysanthemum’: Music, Celebrity, and the Press Reception of Percy Grainger’s Hair

1:30pm to 2:30pm — Break

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

3pm – 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

4pm to 5pm — Break

Session 4: ONLINE (and streamed live at the Grainger Museum)

5pm – 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)

6pm – 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)

9am – Stephen Amico, University of Berge

Music, Fashion, and Synaesthetic/Kinetic Experience

9:30am – Márton Szives, University of Pécs, and Emese Lengyel, Széchenyi István University, Hungary

EXXISTERE – a case study on the connection of painting, music and fashion

10am – Kendall Winter, University of Kentucky

Fashioning Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century American Sheet Music Iconography

10:30am to 11am — Break

SESSION 6: IN PERSON

11am – Dylan Henderson, University of Adelaide

Haute-Couture Pianos: Chopin, Fashion and Philosophies of Touch in Nineteenth-Century Paris

11:30am – Emmanuela Wroth, University of Cambridge

From Vittoria Tesi to Joséphine Baker: Performing Race, Gender, and Sexuality across the Centuries

12pm – Marie Comuzzo, Brandeis University

The Pure Musical Vessel and the Aesthetic Regime of Classical Music: Fatphobia, Hierarchy, and Embodied Discipline

12:30pm END PAPER SESSIONS

6pm to 7:30pm – KEYNOTE LECTURE with Sophie Knezic, 2025 Grainger Museum Creative Research Resident

'Peacock Aesthetics': Grainger's Towel Clothes, Gender Fluid Fashion & Performative Flair

Please book for the keynote lecture here.