PhD student wins fashion journal Emerging Scholar Award
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Floriane Fo Misslin, Visual Sociology PhD student, has been awarded the 2025 Emerging Scholar Award by the International Journal of Fashion Studies (INFS).
Floriane Fo Misslin, Visual Sociology PhD student
INFS announced Floriane’s win on Instagram, writing, “Their award-winning article, ‘Gender nonconformity at the impasse: Studying the infrastructures of fashion production in editorial photography,’ offers a rigorous and original intervention into queer and feminist fashion studies.”
Floriane is a research and design educator, pursuing a PhD in Visual Sociology, supervised by Professor Vikki Bell and Professor Kat Jungnickel. Alongside their doctoral research at Goldsmiths, they are a senior lecturer at London College of Communication and a tutor at Design Academy Eindhoven. Their research examines the approach of fashion production to understand the conditions in which representations of gender are managed.
They said, “I study fashion production through its infrastructure, drawing attention to the underlying processes and relationships that repeatedly marginalize and delegitimize the casting, styling, and portrayal of gender nonconforming people in editorial photography.”
Reacting to winning this award, they said: “I felt a big pat on my shoulder!”
The award gives me confidence in continuing the research with a stronger understanding of the contribution I can make in the field of fashion studies and beyond.
Floriane Fo Misslin, Visual Sociology PhD student
Explaining how they became interested in fashion photography, Floriane said, “I wanted to develop research skills to question the production of media imagery. Fashion remains a great case study for that as it’s an industry established on the gender binary, with nearly every single product marketed as either womenswear or menswear. There are thus great frictions between any practices of gender nonconformity in fashion design or communication and the system of cultural production they emerge from.”
Floraine added, “The thesis further examines the negotiations of gender nonconformity amongst multiple stakeholders, in an industry often assumed and idealised as a transgressive queer hub. Gender nonconformity is approached as a threat to the industry's economy and order, yet also a way for fashion organisations to positions themselves as innovative risk-takers.”