Fashion and Film share many qualities and have always influenced each other. Both are spectacle and performance; both are bound up with emotions, desire and the experience of modernity. Fashion and style became reachable for the masses through cinema and, with the genre of fashion film, this continues today.

The Italian Style project aims to show how central clothing and costume design are for film as a vehicle for conveying what has been recognized as an "Italian" style. Focusing on a number of key films and directors from the silent era to the present, the lecture will offer an in-depth exploration of the interaction between fashion and Italian cinema.

Speaker: Eugenia Paulicelli, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, City University of New York, U.S.A.

Response from Pamela Church Gibson, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London

Followed by a wine reception

A BIRTHA Distinguished Lecture

In conjunction with the Institute for Advance Studies Benjamin Meaker Fellowship