FACTUM19 Conference

Hosted by the prestigious Congressi Stefano Franscini, conference platform of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Zurich, the Conference “Fashion communication: between tradition and future digital developments” was a major academic event, which aimed to promote theoretical and empirical interdisciplinary work on how various communication practices impact upon fashion industry and on societal fashion-related practices and values. In particular, the relation between tradition and innovation, as well as the impact of new technologies, digital communication and the internet were scrutinised.

Conference Chairs:

Lorenzo Cantoni, USI – Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano, Switzerland)
Francesca Cominelli, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris, France)
Nadzeya Kalbaska, USI – Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano, Switzerland)
Teresa Sádaba, ISEM Fashion Business School (Madrid, Spain)

Keynote Speakers:

Zhimin Chen, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Agnes Rocamora, University of the Arts London, UK
Thomaï Serdari, New York University, USA
Jochen Strähle, Reutlingen University, Germany
David Zajtmann, Institut Français de la Mode, France

The Programme: 

Have a look at the conference programme here.

Programme committe.

The main goals of the Conference were:

• to consolidate Fashion Communication as an academic field
• to establish and consolidate an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars in the field of Fashion Communication
• to share methodological approaches
• to expand the dialogue between communications studies, heritage studies and Fashion-related disciplines
• to collaboratively design a Research Manifesto on Fashion Communication
• to support junior researchers

The major topics of interest focused on communication aspects in the Fashion domain. They included but were not limited to:

• Communication of sustainability and ethical issues in Fashion
• Corporate communication in the fashion domain
• Digital Fashion Communication (e.g. digital media channels, blogging, User Generated Contents, online reputation)
• Fashion brands and communication with consumers
• Fashion communication in the retail environment
• Fashion shows as a communication object
• Intangible Cultural Heritage dimension of Fashion
• Intercultural Communication in Fashion
• Media in Fashion
• Visual communication in Fashion

The event gathered 55 participants from 15 countries:
Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, India, Korea, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, UK, USA

Call for papers – call expired

Fashion Communication in the Digital Age. FACTUM 19 Fashion Communication Conference, Ascona, Switzerland, July 21-26, 2019. Springer.

Editors: Kalbaska, N., Sádaba, T., Cominelli, F., & Cantoni, L. (Eds)

You can find the conference Proceedings published by Springer here.

During the conference FACTUM19 the document ‘Fashion Communication Research. A way ahead’ was designed and written.

The document has two main goals: to help consolidate Fashion Communication as an academic field, and to support an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars in the area, whose collaboration may lead to a larger body of research and, in turn, to further academic recognition.

To read the full document, sign it and view its supporters click here.

Congratulations to Katrien Laenen, the winner of the CSF Award for the best paper by a junior researcher: Multimodal Neural Machine Translation of Fashion E-commerce Descriptions.

The public event “Comunicare la moda. Fra tradizione e trasformazione digitale” was held in italian by the moderator Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni (USI-Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland) and the speakers Romana Andò (Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy), Francesca Cominelli (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France), Veronica Neri (Università di Pisa, Italy) and Jochen Strähle (Hochschule Reutlingen, Germany). The event attracted around forty attendees.

Check out our social media activity during the conference through the following #.

Instagram: #factum19

Twitter: #factum19

Below you can find some highlights from FACTUM19 Conference.

For more pictures click here. Enjoy!