Half Term: Designing Decades

We want to help learners of all ages keep drawing this half term (and beyond!), so we've compiled a selection a excerpts from our best-selling book, How to Draw Like a Fashion Designer. Written by the Fashion and Textile Museum's Head of Exhibitions, Dennis Nothdruft, the book guides young fashionistas through the whole process of …

Kaffe Fassett: Paintings

Although he is better known for his kaleidoscopic knitting, quilts and needlework, Kaffe Fassett began his career as a painter. At the age of 19, he won a scholarship to study at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts School. Less than a year later, he left to paint in London. Kaffe would move permanently to England in 1964, following a dinner party where he encountered …

Sir Terence Conran: Pioneer of British Design

Sir Terence Conran, who died last week at the age of 88, was a visionary designer and entrepreneur whose business acumen transformed post-war British living. A “Bauhaus-educated chap” (as he described himself in an interview with Vanity Fair), Conran’s modernist principles and desire to democratise design have had a lasting impact on contemporary Britain. Image: …

Exhibition Archives: Knitwear – Chanel to Westwood

Introduction  Knitting is one of the most fundamental textile techniques, produced from a continuous yarn and simple needles, yet its origins are shrouded in the mists of time. Early examples of knitting dating from Coptic and Egyptian cultures still exist, along with hats, stockings and knitted undergarments from the sixteenth century. While their earliest history …

People’s Princess: The Style of Princess Diana

The Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki was recently announced to be taking over the role of Diana, Princess of Wales in the final two series of Netflix’s The Crown. Debicki will be picking up from Emma Corrin, whose performance is hotly anticipated in the upcoming fourth series (due for release this November). Pictures of Corrin on set show that the costume department have remained particularly faithful to Diana's sartorial transformation from shy “Sloane Ranger” to the most …

Exhibition Archives: Pop! Design, Culture, Fashion

Introduction Pop was probably the most significant cultural phenomenon in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Pop was a broad-based, grass roots culture whose young exponents constantly blurred the boundaries of its primary vehicles of expression and communication; music, fashion and design. These interests had their origins in a popular culture far too diverse …

Throwback: Missoni on Film

In 2016 The Fashion and Textile Museum presented the exhibition Missoni Art Colour (check out our Exhibitions Archive post on the show here). We recently re-discovered a fabulous video from the blockbuster show, in which Head of Exhibitions Dennis Nothdruft sits down with Time Out to talk fashion as an art form and what curation …

Volunteer Voices: the Enduring Popularity of Animal Print

An Ode to the 90s - Forever Chic Taking a trip down memory lane, we can see where our obsession with animal print came from. The 1940s saw the print clawing its way into evening wear, in the 60s it conquered accessories and in the 1970s Debbie Harry helped introduce the rock and roll we …

Mary Quant: The Wet Collection

The UK’s recent heatwave has seen temperatures in London reach 34C or above for six consecutive days, the longest run of such temperatures since 1961. As this weather breaks, torrential rain approaches and we all reach for our umbrellas, we’ve been thinking about past methods of keeping dry. While the term raincoat doesn’t always conjure …

Exhibition Archives: Zandra Rhodes – 50 Years of Fabulous

Introduction To survive for fifty years in the give and take of the fashion world is no mean feat. To remain an independent spirit, plowing your distinctive furrow while the winds of change swirl about you is an extraordinary one. Dame Zandra Rhodes is one such designer. This exhibition celebrates the founding of Rhodes’s fashion …