Clare Wilkinson-Weber is a social anthropologist interested in arts, media, gender, and work. Her research has been focused on India, where she has done two major studies. The first was a study of the economics and aesthetics of the Lucknow embroidery industry, and led to her book, Embroidering Lives: Women’s Work and Skill in the Lucknow Embroidery Industry, published by SUNY Press in 1999.

Since 2002, she has been researching costume production in the Bombay (Mumbai) film industry, collecting over 100 interviews with designers, tailors, embroiderers, wardrobe managers (dressmen) and costume suppliers (dresswalas).  Planned future projects are to study the changing roles of women in film production, and a comparative analysis of film costume production in Vancouver B.C.

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Selected Publications

2006. The dressman’s line: transforming the work of costumers in popular Hindi film.  Anthropological Quarterly, 79(4): 581-608.

2005.Tailoring Expectations: How film costumes become the audience’s clothes.  South Asian Popular Culture: Special issue on Bollywood Audiences. 3(2):135-160

2004. Behind the Seams: Designers and Tailors in the Hindi Film Industry.  Visual Anthropology Review 20(2).  20(2): 3-21.

2004.Women, work and the imagination of craft in South Asia. Contemporary South Asia 13(3): 287-306