Style Histories: Cloth Cultures with Amber Butchart
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About this event
Style Histories seeks to amplify contemporary and historic fashion narratives from local and global geographies, and give voice to everyday styles and practices that disrupt, de-centre and challenge Eurocentric fashion histories.
The series launches on February 9 2022 with a talk from curator, fashion historian and broadcaster Amber Butchart. Amber will discuss ‘Cloth Cultures’, the exhibition and podcast she curated this year for the British Textile Biennial, exploring the global nature of textiles and the relationships they create, both historically and today. Using pieces from the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection, the exhibition explored threads of imperialism, telling stories of movement, migration and making through cloth by focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - and the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Amber Butchart is a curator, writer and broadcaster who specialises in the cultural and political history of textiles and dress. She is the author of five books on the history and culture of clothing, and has written for The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, ArtReview and BBC Culture. She is a regular contributor to Frieze, writing on the politics of dress and design, and she is an Associate Lecturer in the Department for Cultural and Historical Studies at LCF.
