Join contributors to the new book, Refashioning Bill Gibb for the 21st Century for an insightful talk and discussions alongside the book’s editors Josephine Steed and Dr Shane Strachan as they come together to celebrate the life and legacy of pioneering British fashion designer Bill Gibb.
Awarded British Vogue’s Designer of the Year in 1970, Gibb was renowned for his bold, fantastical designs that captured the vibrancy of the era. Raised on a farm in Aberdeenshire, Scotland before studying at St Martin’s School of Art, Gibb went on to dress icons including Bianca Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor and Twiggy. Despite his influence, his work has remained largely unexamined until now.
Refashioning Bill Gibb for the 21st Century draws on expert essays, interviews with collaborators such as Kaffe Fassett and Giles Deacon, and previously unpublished drawings and garments from Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums, which houses the largest collection of his work offering a unique perspective on Gibb’s artistic vision. Copies of the book will be available to purchase from the museum shop.
Join Josephine Steed and Dr Shane Strachan together with Dame Zandra Rhodes, a contemporary of Bill Gibb and book contributors including curator NJ Stevenson and twentieth century fashion expert, Dr Marie McLoughlin as they come together to discuss Bill Gibb’s enduring legacy.
Order your copy of Refashioning Bill Gibb for the 21st Century via our online shop now!
About the speakers
Josephine Steed is a fashion and textile design researcher and Co-Director of the Studio for Practice and Research in Knowledge (SPARK*) at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University. Her research explores craft, sustainability and fashion and textile heritage. She has written publications on the future of heritage textiles including a chapter contribution to Crafting Textiles in the Digital Age, ‘Hand Knitting in a Digital Era’ (Bloomsbury 2016) and Weaving a Community: Securing the Intangible Cultural Heritage Created by Harris Tweed for New Disciplinary Approaches to Intangible Heritage (Routledge 2025). She was an organiser of the online symposium ‘Fashion, Fantasy, and Collaboration: The Legacy of Bill Gibb’ in partnership with Aberdeen Art Gallery in 2021. She is the co-editor for Refashioning Bill Gibb for the 21st Century and chapter contributor that discusses Gibb’s knitwear and collaborations in the 1970s.
Dr Shane Strachan is originally from Bill Gibb’s hometown of Fraserburgh and is a writer, performer and academic based in Aberdeen. His spoken word project ‘The Bill Gibb Line’ is available online and was exhibited at Aberdeen Art Gallery, followed by further Bill Gibb-related work for V&A Dundee and in his debut poetry collection DWAMS (Tapsalteerie). He was the 2022-23 National Library of Scotland’s Scots Scriever writer-in-residence for which he was awarded Scots Champion at the 2023 Scots Language Awards. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Aberdeen where he now lectures.
NJ Stevenson is a former fashion journalist and stylist, where she began her fashion curatorial career in 2009, with the major monographic exhibition of designer Bill Gibb at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London. She has since worked on many projects with venues including the Fashion and Textile Museum, University of the Arts London and The Southbank Centre. She has recently contributed to Kaffe Fassett: The Artist’s Eye (Yale University Press, 2022) and to ReFocus: The Films of Ken Russell (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). With Martin Green and David Cabaret, she recently co-curated ‘Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London at the Fashion and Textile Museum from 4 October 2024 to 9 March 2025, and with Martin Green is author of Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of Leigh Bowery’s 1980s London (Scala Arts and Heritage 2024).
Dr Marie McLoughlin is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Art and Media at the University of Brighton. Research into wartime clothing led to Paris Fashion and World War 2: Global Diffusion and Nazi Controls (Bloomsbury 2020), co-edited with Lou Taylor, which won the Association of Dress Historians Book of Year award for 2021. She is a founding member of the Women’s Tailoring Research Interest Group of the European body ACORSO (Appearances, Bodies and Societies) based at Rennes 2, France. Her chapter for Refashioning Bill Gibb for the 21st Century discusses Gibb’s education is at St Martin’s (now Central Saint Martins) and the founding influence of Muriel Pemberton at St Martin’s who established the art school fashion degree. Gibb arrived at St Martin’s during a period of upheaval, his talent spotted and nurtured by Pemberton. Marie herself followed in Gibb’s footsteps a few years later and was one of the last intake of students taught by Pemberton.
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