Sonya Abrego
Biography
Dr. Sonya Abrego is a New York City-based design historian specializing in American fashion. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining the interconnections between dress, popular culture, art, craft, and design.
Dr. Abrego has published in scholarly and popular venues and presented at conferences across North America. Her book, Westernwear: Postwar American Fashion and Culture, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic.
Research Interests
westernwear, American fashion, modern textiles, film, denim, labor history, modern art
Selected Publications
2022 “Westernwear: Complicating an American Iconography,” in Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour, edited by Michelle Finamore. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 2022. (forthcoming)
2021 “Cattle Branding to Corporate Branding: Denim Trademark Design,” Journal of Design History 34, No. 2. (March 2021): 116-128. doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epab007
2018 “Cone Mills Denim: An Investigation into Fabrication, Tradition, and Quality,” Fashion Theory 23, No. 4-5 (Jan. 2018): 515-530. doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2017.1420540 Book Chapters
2014 Six essays in The WORN Archive: A Fashion Journal about the Art, Ideas, and History of What We Wear, edited by Serah-Marie McMahon. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2014. 2010 Four designer biographies in Knoll Textiles, 1945 –
2010, edited by Earl Martin. Bard Graduate Center and Yale University Press, 2010.
2009 “For Every Tatter in its Mortal Dress: Costume and Character in No Country for Old Men,” in No Country for Old Men: From Novel to Film, edited by Lynnea Chapman King, Rick Wallach, and James Welsh. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009.
Conferences and Presentations
“Pendleton at Disneyland: A Curious Case of Midcentury Retail,” Costume Society of America National Symposium, Minneapolis, MN (upcoming) 2022
“Denim, Smartphone Fade, and the Markings of Contemporary Labor,” Fashion Unraveled exhibition colloquium, Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, September 29, 2018
“Just try to stop the gals from wearing ‘em: Postwar Westernwear’s Gendered Divisions,” Design History Society Conference: Design and Displacement, New York, September 8, 2018
“Domesticating Otherness: The Squaw/Patio Dress in Midcentury America,” Pasold Foundation Conference: Dressing Global Bodies: Clothing Cultures, Politics and Economics in Globalizing Eras, University of Alberta, July 7-9, 2016.
“Beef-borne Hieroglyphics to Corporate Branding: The Cattle Brand in Twentieth-Century Design,” Branding the American West, Brigham Young University Gallery,March 4-5, 2016.
Courses
- FT 626 Modern Textiles: Designers, Makers, and Markets
- FT 541 Proseminar: Critical Writing, Research Techniques, and Documentation Methods
Website
Connect
Instagram: @postwarwesternwear