My research addresses the historical cross-industry relations between Hollywood and the fashion industry. I am particularly interested in studying how Hollywood's intermedial reach helped propel the international fashion system through the global circulation of cultural and economic capital. I depart from the study discourses originating in public relations, advertising, marketing, and other institutional practices to understand how ideas travel into popular culture and manifest in social and cultural phenomena. My work contributes to the pool of knowledge about the United States's rise to power in the global arena through the circulation of popular culture to promote their cultural ideals and propel consumer culture during the 20th Century. My research is heavily driven by archival sources and integrates fashion, cinema, and media history. 

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My latest book, Fashion on the Red Carpet: A History of the Oscars, Fashion, and Globalisation, historicizes the Academy Awards' red-carpet phenomenon, tracing the liaison between Hollywood and fashion institutions to explain how public relations campaigns and the media articulated fashion discourses around the Oscars leading to the institutionalization of the red-carpet as a fashion event in its own right. 

 

I am currently developing a digital humanities project associated with The Media Ecology Project (Dartmouth College) and the Moving Image Research Collections (University of South Carolina).