UC Davis experts: Fashion and culture

The UC Davis faculty has a broad expertise regarding fashion and culture.

Social meaning of clothes

Textiles and clothing professor Susan Kaiser can talk about the social meaning of clothes, with current emphasis on issues of style and subjectivity in relation to gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. She can also talk about pre-teen and adolescent style issues,including tween fashions, and sexuality. Kaiser is studying the globalization of clothing and how its production has been made invisible to the consumer by studying three important fashion-producing cities, Los Angeles, Paris and Dakar, Senegal. Contact: Susan Kaiser, Textiles and Clothing, (530) 752-9277, sbkaiser@ucdavis.edu.

How consumers make choices

Textiles and clothing professor Margaret Rucker studies consumer information processing and decision making in the selection and use of clothing and other textile products. Rucker can talk about the advantages and disadvantages ofWeb, catalog and in-store shopping from consumers' points of view. She also can discuss the gift-giving process and what people value in gifts. Rucker is also an expert in domestic and international marketing and the role of clothing and other textile products in occupational health and safety. Contact: Margaret Rucker, Textiles and Clothing, (530) 752-2018, mhrucker@ucdavis.edu.

The ethnic influence

Environmental design professor Victoria Rivers researches "endangered" ethnographic textiles and has visited India, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey, among other countries, to study their creation and influence. She can talk about how ethnic designs and textiles have become fashionable in clothing and housewares on a global scale. She can also talk about how the mass distribution of home decore catalogs have broadened people's attitudes toward home design. Rivers wrote "The Shining Cloth: A Survey of Ethnographic Light-Reflective Textiles and Dress." Contact: Victoria Rivers, Environmental Design, (530) 752-0805, vzrivers@ucdavis.edu.

Media contacts:

• Claudia Morain, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9841, .

• Pat Bailey, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9843, pjbailey@ucdavis.edu.

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