If Looks Could Kill: Cinema's Images of Fashion, Crime and Violence (editor and author) (2025)

'Now You Are One of Us': Mafia Fashion On-Screen

Film, Fashion & Consumption, 2022

This article examines the role popular media have played in disseminating images of mafia fashion. Through the representation of criminal apparel on-screen spectators are encouraged to identify with the societal transgressions of the mafioso, engendering an abiding fascination with mafia style. By looking at Italian and Italian American productions from early silent cinema through contemporary television crime series, menswear becomes a primary means of harnessing spectatorial desire and identification that embraces enduring associations that link southern Italian identity with criminality and style. In the analysis of these texts it becomes apparent how costuming communicates a series of semiotic properties that reflect the complex interplay of masculine identities in an environment based on violence, power and appearance.

Vampirical Stick Pins, Deleuzian Folds, Noir Pastiches and other Wearability Conundrums: Fashion in Film

Catwalk: The Journal of Fashion, Beauty and Style, 2012

Review article of 'Fashion in Film' which discusses different aspects of the relationship between fashion and cinema as treated in the 14 contributions to the anthology edited by Adrienne Munich (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011, 360 pages, ISBN: 978-0-253-22299-2).

Through the Male Gaze: Fashion and the Visual Representation of the Femme Fatale in Hollywood

Treadwell, J. (2008) 'Call the (Fashion) Police: How fashion becomes criminalised', Papers from the British criminology Conference , 8(1): 117-133

On Fire: When Fashion Meets Cinema

The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory, 2022

Fashion and dress have been major forces in the cinema, with far greater significance than that of the various commercial relationships they have enjoyed. Their study offers a prism through which to reframe our understanding of cinema’s workings across its narrative and non-narrative forms. As two industries, art forms, institutions, and cultures, fashion and cinema have been profoundly intertwined — albeit with frictions and contradictions — and, crucially, have at times been mutually transformative. This is true not only in terms of their many converging practices but also in terms of their materialities, technologies, visual effects, and affects. The many and varied intersections between fashion and film are here used in part to problematise a conceptual separation that exists between “fashion” and “costume,” which, it is argued, is shared by both film and fashion studies, and has presented a major conundrum in the development of a unified field. A third term, “clothes,” is then added to the discussion, in order to emphasise another overlooked aspect of how clothing functions and performs in film.

Fashion in cinema: reframing the field

The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies, 2021

While the interest in fashion in cinema is now thriving, it had traditionally been overlooked within the wider fields of both film and fashion studies, considered a niche (and gendered) subject. This article traces the fragmented and uneven development of fashion in cinema into a field of its own, and considers the major forms of enquiry that have emerged in specific disciplinary contexts. But it also turns to forms of practice outside of the academy that have recently co-shaped the field: popular writing on film and film costume, fashion and film curation, film festivals, and fashion image-making. In bringing all these disparate strands together, the article argues for a reframing of fashion in cinema as a multifaceted and dynamic field whereby distinct – though variously interlocking – forms of knowledge and experience have been produced in distinct contexts.

A typology of fashion violence

Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, 2016

Murder by Design Interior Design, Fashion and Architecture in Sei donne per l`assessino and Tenebrae

Costume, nostalgia and sexuality in murder mysteries by Maria Lang and their adaptations.

Film, Fashion & Consumption, 2019

Crime novels by the prolific Swedish writer Maria Lang have been adapted into films during two periods: 1960–61 and 2013. This article situates the resulting films as media products of their time and examines the functions of costume and film style in the two adaptation periods. The article identifies nostalgia in Arne Mattsson’s 1960–61 films in how they contribute towards an old-fashioned film style. The string of films from 2013 engages in nostalgia-as-tourism and positions itself as ‘cosy crime’ by activating viewers partly as consumers and inviting them to a viewing mode of vintage window-shopping. The article locates nostalgic pastness in the assembling or dissembling of layered outfits, exploring this practice in conjunction with murder, vulnerability and culpability. Finally, the article traces attitudes towards sexuality and sexualization, addressing notions of respectability, the sexual liberation of contemporaneous Sweden (the ‘Swedish sin’) and points of contact between good taste, dress style and sexuality.

Introduction Exploring the Intersections of Fashion, Film, and Media

This special issue belongs to a series of activities under the umbrella denomination “Studying and Exploring the Intersections of Fashion, Film, and Media Studies,” created in 2014 by film scholar Anne Bachmann and I. Our goal was to promote an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of fashion, film, and media. This venture was launched with two activities at the 2015 edition of the annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, in Montreal. The first activity consisted of a panel featuring the on-going projects of four Ph.D. students working with these combined fields.[1] The second activity consisted of a workshop, in which presentations opened to discussions addressing how the use of archival material and film fan magazines, combined with film studies’ methodological approach to history, could benefit fashion research.[2] This workshop expanded into a Symposium at Stockholm University featuring established scholars who pioneered research in these fields of studies combined. This special issue of Networking Knowledge seeks to include early career researchers in such conversation, broadening the network of scholars and the combined field of expertise. Since its inception, a historical approach has been encouraged by the founders of this project. Yet, the semiotic roots used for textual analysis of costume design shall not be overlooked. In this sense, this special issue intends to present a panorama of the heterogeneous nature of studies in these interconnected fields.