Speaker biographies
Professor Regina Lee Blaszczyk, School of History, University of Leeds
Regina Lee Blaszczyk is the Project Leader for The Enterprise of Culture. She joined the School of History, University of Leeds, as Chair in the History of Business and Society in 2013. She is an editor at the Journal of Design History and has published seven books and numerous articles on the history of design, innovation, and consumer culture. Her most recent book, The Color Revolution (2012), examines the little-known history of the creative profession known as colour forecasting. Recently awarded awarded the Sally Hacker Prize by the American Society for the History of Technology, The Color Revolution focuses on US developments, but it has laid the groundwork for similar explorations in the European context. Professor Blaszczyk’s inaugural lecture will focus on the theme of her book, tracing the relationship of colour and commerce, from haute couture to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of colourists in consumer culture.
Dr Véronique Pouillard Maliks, Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo
Véronique Pouillard Maliks is a specialist on the business-cultural history of fashion and of advertising in Paris, Brussels, and New York. She has published three books—La publicité en Belgique, 1850-1975. Des courtiers aux agences internationales (2005); C’est du belge. Dit is Belgisch. The History of Advertising in Belgium (2004); and Hirsch & Cie, Bruxelles, 1869-1962 (2000). She has contributed articles on fashion, public relations, and marketing to several peer-reviewed journals, including Business History Review, Revue du Nord, and Cahiers d’Histoire du Temps Présent. Besides her post in Oslo, Véronique is affiliated with the European Institute at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and with the Institut d‘Histoire du Temps Présent in Paris.
Nelly Rodi, Founder of NR Agency, Paris
While doing under-graduate studies in business, Nelly Rodi did an internship at Prisunic and discovered the fashion and design world. Her first job was as assistant in Woolmark’s Paris office, she was then fashion director for the International Cotton Institute and worked for André Courrèges as Communications Director. In 1975 Nelly Rodi was named Director of CIM (the Fashion Industries Coordination Committee). She conceived the first trend slide show presentations and advised over 500 international companies in the development of new products. In 1985, she left the CIM to found her own trend agency which was an immediate success. She invented new ways for working based on her double intuition: first that fashion is not just creation but also marketing and second, that fashion phenomenon don’t only influence clothing and textiles but influence an individual’s entire universe : beauty, home decoration, food, automobiles, technology. In 1987, the NellyRodi agency opened an affiliate in Japan and went on to build a strong network of international agents throughout the 90’s. It now has a base in 21 countries.
Prof Dr Francesca Golfetto, Università Bocconi, Milano
Francesca Golfetto is Director of the Business Communication and Events Division for the CERMES - Research Centre on Marketing and Services of Bocconi University. Director of MIMEC – Master in Marketing and Communication. Her research interests focus on value creation, marketing communications in industrial markets, trade shows, the European and Italian manufacturing industry. Member of editorial board and reviewer of various International Scientific Journal. Consultant in Business Strategies and Marketing. She was member of advisory board for primaries Italian enterprises. Previous works were published on Harvard Business Review, Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of Business Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Economic Geography.
Dr Diego Rinallo, Kedge Business School, Marseille
Diego Rinallo is associate professor of marketing and consumer culture at Kedge Business School, Marseilles. Previously, he was assistant professor of marketing at Bocconi University, Milan, which also granted his Ph.D. in Business Administration & Management. He is associate researcher at CERGAM, Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche en Gestion d'Aix Marseille, and affiliated researcher at CERMES Bocconi's Trade Fair Observatory, where he has conducted several applied research studied in the context of the trade show industry. His research interests include fashion, consumer culture, and trade shows. On these topics, he has published widely in top academic journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Ethics, Industrial Marketing Management, Economic Geography, and Journal of Business Research. He is co-author of Trade Shows in the Globalizing Knowledge Economy, Oxford University Press, 2014. Some of his research can be downloaded from https://kedgebs.academia.edu/DiegoRinallo
Cher Potter, V&A, London
Cher Potter is Joint Senior Research Fellow in ‘design futures’ at London College of Fashion and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She founded and ran the Creative Direction at WGSN – a worldwide leader in fashion and forecasting - from 2008 to 2013, where she analysed socio-political and cultural trends in relation to emerging design practice. She is currently a Senior Consultant at WGSN and is a visiting lecturer on the subject at London College of Fashion and the Architectural Association. She organises the London-based design salon Alterfutures - a group of invited artists, designers, film-makers and scientists interested in the future of design. Having studied and worked in the UK, Europe, Southern Africa, China and Japan, Cher’s experience of global design cultures lead to her appointment as curator of the 23rd edition of the Impact Arts Festival in 2012 in Utrecht. It examined the concept of 'postwestern' arts and design. She is currently compiling a special edition Journal on Design Futures; and developing a pan-African network for emerging trends in design.
Ninke Bloemberg, Fashion Curator, Centraal Museum, Utrecht
Ninke Bloemberg (1976) studied art history at the University of Amsterdam and Visual Marketing in Fashion at AMFI. Subsequently she worked at the Rijksmuseum, Gemeentemuseum and Arnhem Mode Biennale, among other institutions related to fashion. Since 2009 she is fashion curator at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, where she organized exhibitions such as: Mode de musical (with Piet Paris), Blue jeans, The new craftsmanship (with Iris van Herpen), Fashion for thought (with Alexander van Slobbe) and Miffy in fashion, including the accompanying publications. She is also co-responsible for Modemuze.nl and Europeana Fashion. Bloemberg is board member of section Collections of the Dutch Museums Associations, member advisory board of the VU section Art & Culture, member advisory board of the Dutch Textile Comity, project manager of the conferences in 2014, 2010 and 2009 and member advisory board of In-Fashion.
Karen Trivette Cannell Ma, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), New York
Karen Trivette Cannell is the current Head of Special Collections and FIT Archives at the Fashion Institute of Technology, a part of the State University of New York (SUNY); she has held this position since 2008 and is its first incumbent. She holds a Master of Library Science degree with a concentration in Archives and Records Management from the University at Albany (New York) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from UNC-Chapel Hill (North Carolina). She has worked primarily in art libraries and art archives including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, Massachusetts), and the Jenny Holzer Studio (Hoosick Falls, NY). She also held an over three-year post at the New York State Archives where she primarily advised practitioners on archives and records management matters. Cannell recently was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Librarianship (2013).
Mariette Hoitink, Director, HTNK, Amsterdam
In 1989, Mariette Hoitink graduated in Fashion Design from ArtEZ Arnhem. During her career she had various creative and commercial management roles that put her in the sights of headhunters. Those experiences in turn motivated her to give fashion recruitment a new, specialist and personal approach. In 1997 Mariette founded HTNK; Amsterdam’s premier fashion recruitment and consultancy agency with global reach. Aided by the Amsterdam denim boom of the last 15 years, HTNK has grown -seemingly by chance - into the only recruitment agency in Europe to specialize in denim. Next to it’s core business, the HTNK foundation aims to actively shape and contribute to the development of the fashion industry as a whole. Mariette is also the co-founder of the House of Denim foundation that strives towards a ‘brighter, more sustainable blue’ for the denim industry. The recent launch of the first ever Jean School in Amsterdam last year is the HoD’s first feat. On the agenda for the coming years are a sustainable denim lab in Amsterdam, an upcycling workshop and a dedicated denim B2B / consumer event in Amsterdam.
Prof Dr Dominique Jacomet, IFM, Paris
Dominique Jacomet is Director General and Dean of the Institut Français de la Mode. Graduated of Sciences-Po Paris and Paris University in Economics and Management, he has a PhD (University of Paris) in Business economics. He joined the textile and clothing business in 1982 and held various positions inside the Indreco Group (Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix) and Lacoste. From 1999 to 2007, he was Chairman and CEO of Lacoste US, then Executive Board Director of Lacoste. Dominique Jacomet is the honorary Chairman of the European Textile and Clothing Association (Euratex). He teaches at Sciences-Po and, as an affiliated professor, at ESCP Europe in Paris. His latest book, written with Franck Delpal, is Economie du luxe (The luxury economy) (published by Dunod in Paris, 2014).
Tets Kimura, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
Tets Kimura is a qualified investigative journalist with expertise in both Australian and Japanese media. He is also an accredited interpreter for Australian federal government agencies. These roles provide opportunities to observe cross-cultural issues between Australia and Japan. He is now conducting his doctoral research on influences of Japanese fashion in Australia at the School of International Studies, Flinders University, as a recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award. The initial outcome of his PhD research “Understanding Cool Japan: Validity of fashion as a vehicle of soft power” was delivered to international fashion scholars at Fashion in fiction: Style stories and transglobal narratives (City University of Hong Kong, 12-14 June 2014). His recent publications include “Focus on Japan” in Fashion Theory, and “Japanese fashion in Australia: Will Uniqlo and Australia make a fairy tale couple?” in the Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia: Peer-reviewed full papers.
Ornella Bigami, Elementi Moda, Milano
Enriched by an uninterrupted dialogue within the profession for over 30 years, through a fine tuned skill in deciphering major trends and social changes, Ornella Bignami has earned a wide credibility in the field of fashion and textile industry, home textile products and ceramic industry. From fibres to yarns, from colours to fabrics, from apparel to knitwear, from accessories to cosmetics and decoration, Ornella Bignami cooperates with companies which make creativity an essential element of their working process.
Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson, Centre for Business History Stockholm
Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson is an art historian, ethnologist and former Director of the Swedish Fashion Council. She is currently the President of the Swedish Vision AB and Senior Advisor at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm which houses the archives of H&M, the Swedish global fashion retailer. As a curator of a number of costume exhibitions in Sweden and abroad, including Sweden in ten shapes, and the initiator of the establishment of the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, she has worked on many levels to highlight fashion as an cultural expression.
Roger Gerards
Creative Director at Vlisco Netherlands B.V.