Interviewer Bio
Annette Becker is a part-time History PhD student and full-time director of the Texas Fashion Collection, both at the University of North Texas in Denton. Becker's research closely engages with the Dallas fashion industry, primarily creating curatorial projects and informal research presentations featuring TFC artifacts that were purchased, modeled, sold, manufactured, or designed by people in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
This oral history project draws motivation through two paths: primarily because of graduate coursework and advising by Dr. Todd Moye (director of the UNT Oral History Program) and secondarily by a desire to expand the narratives surronding TFC artifacts and narratives in fashion history more broadly. Under the supervisioin of Dr. Moye, this project began in summer 2020 as a graduate seminar project, which was framed as a series of interviews that would be indexed and shared as a digital humanities project. That context was then expanded to relate to the material culture represented at the TFC, centering the creative labor surrounding those artifacts' cultural meaning and place in cultural memory. Future outcomes for the project include a chapter in an edited publication focused on American fashion capitols.