Creative Industries Festival: Fashion, film, and organisation studies

Fashion has been an ever-growing subject of interest among scholars of Organisation Studies. And what better way to observe the phenomena of style and glamour than to glimpse them through the lens of a major documentary. Share the stories of triumph and struggle. Hear about the inspiring on-screen narratives offering compelling glimpses into the paradoxes, tensions, and controversies between the outsized personalities of the world's most iconic brands.

Our extraordinary round table discussion invites award-winning filmmaker Frédéric Tcheng (of the film Dior and I (2014)) and ground-breaking fashion scholar Dr Yuniya Kawamura, Professor of Sociology at Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, in discussion with Oxford Brookes Business School doctoral researcher Mitaali Katoch. Our conversations will explore how fashion documentaries are conceived as we reflect on their significance as tools for gaining academic insight into their often insular, almost mythical business and organisational worlds.

Frédéric Tcheng is a filmmaker known for his extraordinary fashion films such as Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008), Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011), Dior & I, and his recent release Invisible Beauty (2023), which presents a peek into the fashion industry through the eyes of model Bethann Hardison.

Dr Yuniya Kawamura is a Professor of Sociology at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, and is known for her unique insight into the world of fashion. She is the author of Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies (2004), Fashioning Japanese Subcultures (2012), Sneakers: Fashion, Gender, and Subculture (2015) and Doing Research in Fashion and Dress (2020).

Mitaali Katoch is a doctoral student at Oxford Brookes Business School, an alumnus of the Royal College of Art, and the Managing Director of Development and a shareholder of a multi-business-unit holding company—based in London and New York—specialising in arts, culture, media, and technology industry investments.