Saturday 14 Nov 2026

Bath & County Club, Queen's Parade, Queen Square, Bath BA1 2NJ

Jennifer Parker currently works at Fashion Museum Bath and holds a master’s degree in art history and museum curating from the University of Sussex. She previously worked for the National Trust at Stourhead in Wiltshire having transitioned from a 12-year career in travel and tourism. Jennifer also works as a freelance fashion curator and researcher with a particular interest in fashion as a form of protest.
The Lolita fashion subculture, a clothing-oriented street style which first originated in Japan in the late 20th century, incorporates notable historic design elements from 18th-century European fashions. This presentation focuses on the revival of Georgian elite dress in Lolita designs and the adoption of this fashion subculture by young women in Europe and America. It explores how these elite historic influences allow proponents of the subculture to perform a type of aristocratic self-identification which places feminine styling as hierarchically superior to masculine, challenging Euro-American patriarchal values.