Join fashion designer and author Alice V Robinson in her ground-breaking journey into the origin story of leather, and the connections she makes from field to fork and into fashion.
As a fashion student, Alice started to question the material she worked with. Leather is universally acknowledged as a luxury material, from which desirable bags, shoes and clothing are made. But how much do we know about where it comes from? Alice’s questions led back to her childhood home in rural Shropshire, where she decided to buy Bullock 374 and follow its journey from a local farm to the abattoir, then to the butchery and finally to the tannery. The journey culminates with Alice’s own design practice as she creates a collection based on this single hide. In doing so, Alice would begin to see the bigger picture – and connect farm, food and fashion for the first time to understand the true meaning of provenance, value and beauty.
Rachel Worth is Professor Emerita (History of Dress and Fashion) at the Arts University Bournemouth, UK, and lives in Dorset. She read history at Cambridge, studying for her MA and PhD in the history of dress at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She is an authority on the history of rural working-class dress and the history of fashion retailing. She is the author of Dress and Textiles (2002), Fashion for the People: A History of Clothing at Marks and Spencer (2006), Clothing and Landscape (2018) and Fashion and Class (2020). She is a sewer and passionate advocate of ‘slow fashion’.
—
The Hidden Life of Clothing Historical Perspectives on Fashion and Sustainability, published by Bloomsbury is available to purchase in the Museum and via our online shop.
Upon booking, you will receive an automatic booking confirmation email which includes details on how to access this event. This talk will be live-streamed on Microsoft Teams and you will receive a unique access link via email prior to the event. Ticket sales are suspended two hours before the start of the event.
If you are using a smartphone or tablet, you will need to download the Microsoft Teams app from your relevant app store. Please also ensure that you are using the most recent version of your operating system and that you can access Microsoft Teams so that you will have the best experience.
The talk starts at the time specified above and lasts for approximately 1.5 hours, followed by a Q&A session at the end.
Online events take place live at the time and date specified above. A recording of the online event is not included in the purchase of your ticket. If you are unavailable at the time and date above, please keep an eye on our On Demand page, where all recordings that meet our quality specifications will be available to purchase in due course.
If you have any queries about this event, please get in touch.
Final day of the exhibition is Sunday 8 September 2024.
Tickets & info All exhibitions