Fashion will be undressed, addressed and redressed during a conference April 7-8 at UC Davis that explores global trade and production, mass-media images and consumer ethics.

The highlight of Undressing Fashion: Redressing Global Disconnects will be a runway show in which college students and professional designers have been invited to showcase apparel that addresses major social issues.

"People think fashion is frivolous or irrelevant," said Kadie Corless, a graduate student involved in the student-organized conference. "On the contrary, it is at the center of critical issues concerning cultural representation, body image, design aesthetics, global trade and production, and professional and consumer ethics.

"We're expecting quite a show with entries that are addressing at least one of the conference's primary themes of globalization; diversity in bodies, identities and cultures; and social responsibility," she said.

Open to the public, the conference is expected to draw more than 300 people, including students from throughout California and professionals from the United States and Great Britain in the fashion industry, academia and media.

California boasts the largest fashion production and distribution industries in the nation, and UC Davis has long had a strength in educating its students in textiles, clothing and fashion design. Many UC Davis alumni are national leaders in textile, fashion design and retail clothing industries.

Panels during the conference will range from social critique to practical advice. Some panels will address body image and media issues as well as workers' rights, animal rights and the marketing consumption chain. Conference participants will also hear from industry experts regarding ways to find jobs in fashion design, museum curating and retail management.

The conference will showcase a number of prize-winning student films and videos that focus on fashion issues, and winning entries from other contests for textile and fiber art.

Key speakers include Christopher Breward, a fashion historian from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; Kimi Lee, executive director of the Garment Worker Center, a service and educational non-profit organization in the Los Angeles Fashion District; Lauren Ornelas of Viva! USA International Voice for Animals; Jill Vlahos, director of environmental analysis at sportswear maker Patagonia; Katie Quan, chair for the Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley; and Brenda Winstead, designer and owner of Damali Afrikan Wear.

While most of the conference events will take place in the room MU II of the Memorial Union, the fashion show will be set in Wyatt Pavilion Theatre.

Fashion show entries promise to be quite varied. One contestant, UC Davis re-entry student Elizabeth Kaino Hopper, has created a 14-inch-tall shoe that critiques American companies' outsourcing of jobs. Another UC Davis undergraduate, Alyssa Lichtenstein, has submitted a dress that communicates environmental awareness through the words printed on the fabric and through its web of fabric strips, thread and leaves that engulf the garment.

The conference comes in the middle of a three-year teaching project by Leslie Rabine, director of women and gender studies, and Susan Kaiser, chair of textiles and clothing. The two professors were given UC Davis Presidential Chair awards to develop and deliver a research-enriched undergraduate experience in the transnational production and consumption of fashion.

Unlike applied fashion programs, students at UC Davis obtain a strong liberal arts background that offers flexibility for their future academic and career goals, Kaiser said.

"The unique feature of our textile and fashion programs is our interdisciplinary breadth, from design to science to cultural studies to business management," Kaiser explained. "We offer students an opportunity to make those important connections between the sciences and the humanities."

For more information or to register to attend, go to the conference Web site at http://fashionresearch.ucdavis.edu.