Anna Hanchett

I joined the Department of Media Studies in the spring of 2019. Before my arrival at the Section for Fashion Studies, I received my BFA in studio art and my BA in art history from Calvin College (USA), and my MA in fashion studies from Stockholm University. I wrote my final MA thesis on the turtleneck and nomadic subjectivity, and I advanced to the PhD program shortly thereafter.

My most pressing intellectual interests include fashion history and theory; feminist, gender and sexuality studies; fashion and materiality; studies of corporeality and the body; and feminist philosophy.

My doctoral research project is at the intersections of fashion studies and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. By carrying out in-depth semi-structured interviews with women who have had a suit tailor-made, and by embodying the research subject myself, I investigate women’s embodied experiences with the tailored suit as a gendered garment. I approach the practice of tailoring suits from the perspective of women clients and through the feminist theoretical lenses of sexual difference and phenomenology of embodiment. The relationships between masculinity / femininity and gender / the body in the context of the tailor’s shop are therefore brought into question. The research reveals the different challenges and pleasures women face in terms of gender, both in the process of having a suit tailor-made and while wearing their suits in public. Such challenges and pleasures result from gender stereotypes and/or women’s gender identities. Moreover, the research underscores the multiple and diverse ways that women embody gender through tailored suits and, in turn, challenge the dominating masculinity that is attributed to the tailored suit.