Friday Focus - Artistic Dress and the Glasgow Style

Accessing the Talk Online

This talk will take place over Zoom. You can access the online link details here. You will need a registered Zoom account to join the talk.

Introduction

Artistic Dress and the Glasgow Style: Aesthetic Ideals in Practice

This talk explores the connection between Artistic Dress and the Glasgow Style, showing how aesthetic principles shaped fashion and design in late 19th- and early 20th-century Glasgow.

Artistic Dress was a way for individuals (artists, patrons, or those seeking to express an ‘artistic attitude’) to identify with artistic circles, life, and philosophies that might today be termed counterculture. Glasgow provided a fertile ground for artists and designers associated with the Glasgow School of Art, such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, who embraced similar philosophies.

This talk introduces Artistic Dress, its influences, and the clothing and textile designs of the Mackintoshes, along with Frances Macdonald McNair, Jessie Newbury, and Ann Macbeth.

Image: Photograph of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, T & R Annan & Sons, 1902-04.

Biography

Dr Robyne Calvert is the Effective Learning Adviser at the College of Arts & Humanities. A Cultural Historian focused on material culture of the long 19th century, she’s lectured at UofG and the Glasgow School of Art, is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has appeared on BBC radio, television, and STV programmes. Her monograph, ‘The Mack: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and The Glasgow School of Art’ (Yale University Press, 2024), won the 2024 Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion for Architecture from the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

About Friday Focus

Friday Focus is an online talks series hosted by The Hunterian, University of Glasgow. Each session features a different speaker, sharing a deeper insight into our exhibitions and collections, research and work going on behind the scenes at The Hunterian.

The talks take place at 1pm over Zoom, and are 25 minutes long with time for questions afterwards. Recordings of the sessions will be made available on our YouTube channel.