Welcome to The Montevallo Project Site!
This website is for Fashion & Identity in Modern America, a course created as a part of COPLAC Digital sponsored by a Mellon Foundation Grant. More about our course and COPLAC can be found on the course website Fashion.CoplacDigital.
The Enduring Resonance of the 1980s
Our initial research with our COPLAC class took us into fashion from the 50s to the present. We chose to focus on the 80s and what the fashion here at our college, the University of Montevallo, looked like. Some initial research into school yearbooks led us to the creation of our project, a comparison of similarities between fashion of the 80s and the present on campus. For what we found was not what we expected. We expected the stereotypical wild trends the 80s are famous for. Instead, the majority of the outfits and styles were comparable to the present day.
Our research found that much of fashion of the 80s still resonates today at Montevallo. We thought looking back on Montevallo more that thirty years ago would be like stepping into a time machine. Our time machine brought us to a very familiar world. There were some wild and crazy looks, but the more prevalent discovery was the striking similarities in much of the items people wore then and what our peers wear today. This unique phenomena had to have some kind of cause.
Our explanation for initial discovery is based on our further research. Montevallo has always been unique, as it is the only public liberal arts college in Alabama. The culture of Montevallo itself has consistently drawn similar personalities to the school over the years, and they have expressed that personality through fashion. The culture of the Montevallo campus is strong enough to impact the fashion of its students decades later.
Navigating the Site
Our website has several different pages that cover different topics. These include the history of Montevallo, the fashion of the 1980s, and present day fashion at the university. Beneath each main page are sub-pages that go more in-depth into each topic.
About the authors/students/researchers:
Emma McCurdy is a sophomore at the University of Montevallo. She is a Communications major with a French minor. She is interested in fashion, specifically the goth subculture, and any sort of spooky-themed aesthetic. However, her interest in fashion began from an interest in making clothing, specifically for cosplay, which is where someone dresses up as a character they like. She found several internet personalities with a gothic aesthetic and fashion, and almost immediately fell in love with it.
Katherine Pearce is also a sophomore at Montevallo. Currently working toward a degree in Retail Merchandising with a Business minor, Katherine’s interest in fashion comes from her future business plans. She plans to start her own small business selling sewing patterns, take over the fashion industry, and ban fake pockets. Her personal fashion style is rather eclectic, with a polished mix of trendy, vintage, and bohemian looks.