Early Modern Dress and Textiles - A Research Network
Fashion Knowledge
Early Modern Dress and Textiles is live again!
Following the award of a second Arts & Humanities Research Council follow-on funding grant, from January 2016 the Early Modern Dress and Textiles Research Network is undertaking a new, twelve-month project. By bringing together the original members of the 2007-2009 network, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s (V&A) Learning Department, and the School of Historical Dress the project seeks to ensure that the benefits of the original network is shared with an even wider audience.
There is an international fascination with both fashion and garments; in a historical context, dress makes the past tangible. It’s both familiar – we can imagine ourselves wearing these garments – and exotic – how could anyone have managed to wear such odd and uncomfortable clothing? But dress and textiles are fragile objects that require specialist display facilities; remaining behind glass, historic fabrics cannot be handled or examined. Costumes that the public most want to touch or even try on are removed from all but the most experienced visitors. Paradoxically, the materials that offer one of the most accessible routes to understanding our shared past are amongst the most difficult to access.
In a joint initiative between King’s College London and the V&A, the 2016 project, ‘Early Modern Dress in Your Hands’ will break down these barriers by creating a new, stimulating experience of early modern dress for a range of different audiences. It will use the learning and understanding that resulted from the 2007- 2009 network to animate the understanding of early modern fashion at the V&A. The museum’s curatorial and learning staff and their collaborators will reach a broad audience through two in-depth, museum-based projects. These will create new resources for secondary school teachers, and design and deliver a performance project with a higher-education community group. There will be additional on-line resources for a general audience, including a professionally produced film, which will provide insights into how clothing was perceived from both literary and historical perspectives. The entire project will be book-ended by three evaluation workshops with key partners, and it will ensure that the broader museum community benefits from the resultant scholarship.
For more information or to be involved please contact Professor Evelyn Welch, evelyn.welch@kcl.ac.uk
Introduction
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has funded a two-year investigation into Early Modern European Dress and Textiles. The topic was chosen because of dress studies' increasing importance as a scholarly discipline and its role in understanding the past. The Early Modern Dress and Textiles Network finished its work in Spring 2009, but this website will continue to be updated, and our virtual discussion list remains active.
In Early Modern Europe, what you wore was supposed to define who you were. Identities (gender, social, geographic) were meant to be clearly displayed on the body from the hat or kerchief on the head to the stockings and shoes on the feet. Much of this was made from expensive textiles and the investment in clothing at all levels of society was enormous, generating a constant concern to monitor and regulate this form of display.
An increasing number of scholars in different disciplines are now turning to dress and textiles and their histories in order to better understand the multiplicity of meanings that they offered in different parts of Europe between 1500 and 1800. Their study often involves archival work and literary analysis. At the same time those involved in preserving and displaying these items, and those concerned with reconstructing dress (often for theatrical purposes) have developed a much deeper understanding of the material qualities of Early Modern dress and textiles- what they were made from and how. This network has brought these researchers, who often work in very diverse settings and with very different sources together over a two-year period in order to address a series of common questions.
Aims
- To bring together scholars and practitioners working with early modern dress and textiles in different disciplines and settings to identify common areas of understanding and to develop new research tools
- To debate common practical and theoretical problems concerning early modern dress and textiles
- To pool data, bibliography and glossaries for web dissemination
- To establish a virtual discussion group for continued discussion and debate.
Audience
Network workshops are restricted to project members but a final conference, which took place at the Victoria and Albert Museum, was open to the public. A full report of this event can be found under Project Events.
The virtual discussion list is open to all. If you would like to join please send the Network Facilitator an e-mail. This will also allow non-network members a chance to ask questions of the group, propose additional bibliographic or visual material for the website and offer glossary definitions and problems.
Site maintained by Juliet Claxton.
