11 December 2025 1600-1700

TICKETS TO JOIN ONLINE

This presentation traces the evolution of consumption culture from its initial ideological roots to the present day, where arguably culture and the cultural practices (i.e., consumption) used to negotiate everyday life are defined by impermanence. The paper presents ‘transient consumption’ as a contemporary form of consumption, that is not marked by the pursuit of meaning, but rather, something else. Perhaps transient consumption just is, because consumption has become the quintessential cultural practice, and that to which we turn to feel complete. The paper analyses the evolution of this phenomenon and discusses the implications for cultural systems such as fashion, brands and the future for our cultural conceptualisations of meaning, value and experience.   

Dr Paddy Lonergan (Manchester Metropolitan University) is a multi-disciplinary researcher whose interests extend across brand culture, consumption and innovative research methodologies. Most recently, he has finished his first monograph entitled Brands, Hallelujah! Affective Encounters with Sensory Capitalism, and a further paper in Marketing Theory that applies the methodology of ‘onflow’ as a way of better capturing and articulating the multi-sensory constituents of everyday experiences.

19 January 2026 1600-1700

TICKETS TO JOIN ONLINE

This workshop introduces a philosophical framework for addressing the persistent gap between sustainability values and fashion consumption behaviours. Participants will explore the foundational stage of moral decision-making: understanding how individual values form, evolve, and influence our choices. Drawing on World Values Survey data and value change theory, alongside naturalistic approaches to moral reasoning, we’ll investigate why people hold different sustainability priorities and how these differences shape fashion consumption patterns. The session will provide participants with conceptual tools to understand the complex relationship between personal values and sustainable behaviour, offering insights relevant to researchers, industry professionals, and students interested in behaviour change and ethical consumption. 

Alice Paisley-Carruthers is a researcher specialising in the philosophical foundations of sustainable behaviour change, with particular focus on fashion consumption. Her work integrates moral philosophy and systems thinking to address the values-action gap in sustainability. Alice’s research examines how evolving societal values can be systematically translated into authentic consumer behaviour through philosophical reasoning infrastructure. She recently presented her research at the Yale Sustainable Fashion Research Conference 2025, exploring the transformative potential of providing consumers with transparent, values-aligned decision-making tools that honour individual circumstances while supporting collective progress toward sustainability. 

4 February 2026 1600-1700

TICKETS TO JOIN ONLINE

There has been an increasing academic interest in men’s underwear over the past 15 years redressing a balance of interest in women’s underwear (Cole 2010; Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion 2014 and 2022). Underwear is held across a variety of UK museum and archive collections from well-known such as V&A in London and Manchester Art Gallery to lesser known such as within National Trust and within Falmouth University’s Textiles and Dress Collection. This seminar presentation will outline his recent AHRC Catalyst funding bid that aims to record extant men’s underwear held in UK museum and private collections, to understand what is held, how it is defined, catalogued and accessed and how can a common terminology and open access record can be created? It will outline some of the work with collections of men’s underwear that Shaun has undertaken prior to submitting the bid. 

Dr Shaun Cole (University of Southampton) is a writer, lecturer and curator, specialising in sexuality, gender and fashion and style. He is Associate Professor in Fashion and Co-Director of the ‘Intersectionalities: Politics – Identities – Cultures’ research group at University of Southampton. His most recent exhibitions are ‘Dandy Style’ (Manchester Art Gallery, 2022-3) and ‘Collecting Sue Clowes’ (Winchester Gallery, 2024-5). His publications include ‘Don We Now Our Gay Apparel’: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century (2000), The Story of Men’s Underwear (2010), Dandy Style: 250 Years of British Men’s Fashion and Gay Men’s Style: Fashion, Dress and Sexuality in the 21st Century (2023). 

20 April 2026 1600-1700

TICKETS TO JOIN ONLINE

The work of fashion design is believed to depend on tacit knowledge that is locally “sticky.” However, a recent stream of case studies documents export-oriented design work from suppliers in Turkey, China, India, and Bangladesh. Drawing on ethnographic data from first-tier suppliers in India who design for over 100 U.S. and European brands, I show how designers in semi-peripheral locations anticipate and moderate buyer tastes months ahead of market impact. Co-presence, a mutual focus of attention, and emotions like boredom or excitement play key roles in the global production of fads and fashions. 

Dr Alexander Hoppe is currently the Kohli Fellow and postdoctoral researcher at the WZB (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung), where he studies the micro-foundations of capitalism.  His current book project, Routinizing Creativity: The Making of Mass Fashion, explains how uncertainty is organized in the global fashion industry.  His work has been published in outlets including Regional Studies, Socio-Economic Review, and Advances in Strategic Management , with recognition in the areas of social psychology, consumption, political economy, and international business. Before coming to the WZB, Alex worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

4 June 2026 1600-1700

TICKETS TO JOIN ONLINE

This interdisciplinary conversation explores fashion as a form of universal human communication and storytelling. It examines how clothing functions as cultural adaptation and learning, the persistent narratives conveyed through dress, and the disciplinary implications of viewing fashion as a sophisticated language for expressing social, cultural, and individual meanings. 

Dr Karina Grömer is director of the Department of Prehistory of the Natural History Museum Vienna. She studied Prehistoric Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology at the University of Vienna in Austria. Habilitation thesis (2019): “Archaeological Textile Research – Technical, economic and social aspects of textile production and clothing from Neolithic to the Early Modern Era”. She specializes in textile analysis, research on textile tools and reconstruction of prehistoric costume. Since 2008 she has been working at the Department of Prehistory of the Natural History Museum Vienna for different international research projects e.g.“DressID – Clothing and Identity in Roman Empire”, “CinBA – Creativity in the Bronze Age” and “Chehrabad Saltmummy & Saltmine Exploration Project”. Her current research focuses on the analysis of textiles from graves, settlements and saltmines, covering a timespan from 2500 BC till 1000 AD and a geographical area from Central Europe to Iran.

Dr Benjamin Wild is Reader in Fashion Narratives and lead of the F/fashion Narratives Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University. A historian (medievalist), he is interested in the function of stories and the utility of storytelling to spur social responsibility and behaviour change, chiefly within the fashion industry. Recent publications include Hang-Ups: Reflections on the Causes and Consequences of Fashion’s ‘Western’-Centrism (2024) and Appropriation (2026).