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POP CONFERENCE 2025

Baby, It’s a Look!
Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge

March 13 - 15, 2025

Los Angeles, California

Presented by USC Thornton School of Music

With the  International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US) and Critical Minded


Over three exciting days of panels, roundtables, keynotes, and special events, the 23rd annual Pop Conference will explore the deep and complex relationship between popular music, style, and fashion. This year’s theme, “Baby, It’s a Look: Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge,” draws its inspiration from a 2017 Leikeli47 lyric and marks the first joint gathering of PopCon and IASPM-US since 2012.

Fashion and music are inextricably linked, from Josephine Baker’s banana skirt, Cab Calloway’s zoot suits, Billie Holiday’s signature gardenia, to The Beatles’ mop-top haircuts. Today, the connection between pop music and fashion remains stronger than ever. Visualizers thrive on streaming platforms; fashion runways in Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg deploy pop music to bring designers’ visions to life; and musicians themselves blaze new trails designing streetwear collections and serving as creative directors for major fashion houses. 

But style has always been much more than just commerce or escapism—it has long been a space for critique, refusal, defiance, and radical expression. At its most powerful, style challenges norms, blurs boundaries, and pushes artistic and cultural frontiers, moving us right to the edge. 

This year’s conference returns to USC’s Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles just months after January 2025’s catastrophic Eaton and Palisades wildfires, and during a time of profound global upheaval and turmoil. The 2025 “Baby, It’s a Look: Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge” conference presents a remix, an opportunity to reconsider how fashion and music shape the world we live in, reflecting our realities, struggles, and aspirations while leading us toward the very edge of what feels possible.

Open to the public and free admission with conference registration on Eventbrite. Some events may require separate registration.
Type: Keynote clear filter
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Thursday, March 13
 

7:30pm PDT

Opening Night Keynote - Something Better Than You Are Today: Fashion, Style and Pop Music in Times of Crisis
Thursday March 13, 2025 7:30pm - 9:30pm PDT
A Pop Conference Keynote Conversation

with

Atlantic Records singer and songwriter RAVYN LENAE
Oscar-nominated costume designer and stylist ARIANNE PHILLIPS
Grammy-nominated songwriter, producer and performer JUSTIN TRANTER

Moderated by
NPR Music writer and author ANN POWERS

Pop music has always been rich with fashion and style references: from blue suede shoes and diamond-soled feet, to boots made for walking and raspberry berets; from Adidas tracksuits and pink Cadillacs; to cowboy hats and shout-outs to Versace and Gucci. Over the decades, fashion and style have been inseparable from the influence and reach of pop music. Many of music’s fabulous figures—from Frank Sinatra and Little Richard, to Fela Kuti and Grace Jones, to Harry Styles and Doechii—have revolutionized the ways we think about sartorial agency. Music audiences—long prior to the 1980s rise of televised music videos—have equally contributed to pop’s visual language, using fashion to aspire, defy, and resist. In pop music, style is connected to pleasure, fun, and frivolity. But it can also be a powerful, and at times divisive, weapon.
The opening night keynote of the 23rd Annual Pop Conference—hosted for the second consecutive year at USC by the Thornton School of Music—focuses on the role of fashion and style in pop music, particularly in times of crisis. There’s an argument to be made that music and fashion play a heightened role during times of political turbulence and despair, offering us all ways to move through the world, or escape from it.

This year’s keynote—moderated by acclaimed NPR Music critic ANN POWERS (author of Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell)—welcomes Chicago-reared singer-songwriter RAVYN LENAE; JUSTIN TRANTER, founding member of the glam-punk group Semi Precious Weapons turned hitmaker for artists like Justin Bieber and Chappell Roan; and ARIANNE PHILLIPS, the visionary designer and stylist known for her decades of work with Madonna before emerging as a four-time Oscar-nominated designer for films like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and A Complete Unknown. They’ll explore and illuminate the complex and changing intersections of music, fashion, and style.

Doors open at 7:00 pm.

Bovard Auditorium, Bovard Administration Building, University of Southern California
3551 Trousdale Pkwy, Los Angeles, CA 90089

This event is free and open to the public with advance registration.
No one will be admitted without advance registration. Admission to the venue is first come first serve for those who are pre-registered; seating is not guaranteed.

Recording devices will not be allowed in the venue.
Keynote produced by Jason King.

For additional information, contact: wearethepopconference@gmail.com
Speakers
avatar for Ann Powers

Ann Powers

Writer, NPR Music
Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent. She has worked at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Village Voice, and is the author of four books, most recently Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell (2024). With Evelyn McDonnell, she edited Rock She Wrote: Women... Read More →
JK

Jason King

Producer, Pop Conference 2025 Jason King, Dean of the USC Thornton School of Music, is a multi-talented Canadian-American scholar, journalist, author, musician, performer, producer, songwriter, radio and video host and event curator. Before his appointment at USC, King was chair... Read More →
avatar for Justin Tranter

Justin Tranter

Justin Tranter is one of the most in-demand producers and songwriters in music today, an ACLU Bill of Rights Award-winning activist and founder of Facet Records and Facet Publishing. With over 75 million single sales, 100 billion streams on Spotify and YouTube alone, 3 diamond-certified... Read More →
avatar for Arianne Phillips

Arianne Phillips

Arianne Phillips is one of the most unique creative forces in the fashion and entertainment industries. As a multi-dimensional visual artist, she brings her exemplary vision to film, fashion, theater, opera, music, and media. Known for her cutting-edge designs, Phillips’s Costume... Read More →
Thursday March 13, 2025 7:30pm - 9:30pm PDT
Bovard Auditorium
 
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