Author Biography

Jen Ayres resides in Philadelphia, holds a MA in Fiber Science and Apparel Design from Cornell, and is an Instructor at Parsons School of Design, The New School.

She is also finishing up her dissertation titled Enterprising Fashion: The Political Economy of Secondhand Clothes, Secondary Markets, and Vintage in American Studies at New York University. Her dissertation offers a comprehensive analysis of the labor, institutions, networks, and actors that comprise the world of vintage in order to provide a sketch of a cultural economy that deepens our understanding of how value is created at different points in the commodity chain and over the course of a commodity’s social life. What she shows is how the intersections of race, gender, class, immigration, and sexuality complicate simplistic notions about how fashion and the economy work.

Article Citations

MLA: Ayres, Jennifer. “A Fashion Exhibit Without Fashion.” Fashion Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2018, 1-35. https://doi.org/10.38055/FS010114.

APA: Ayres, J. (2018). A Fashion Exhibit Without Fashion. Fashion Studies, 1(1), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.38055/FS010114 

Chicago: Ayres, Jennifer. “A Fashion Exhibit without Fashion.” Fashion Studies 1, no. 1 (2018): 1–35. https://doi.org/10.38055/FS010114.