Yorkshire Fashion Archive

17/05/2025

16/04/2023

in 1912 at 2:20 am, the British ocean liner Titanic sank. Remembered as a survivor of the Titanic, Lady Duff Gordon, the designer known simply as Lucile, was one of the most innovative couturières of the Edwardian era. Like her novelist sister Elinor Glyn, who coined the phrase “It Girl,” Lucile loved interior decoration. Her fashion house in London, with its pale gray walls and carefully chosen antiques, inspired her close friend Elsie de Wolfe. Wolfe is remembered as the first professional “lady decorator,” while Lucile’s interiors have been largely forgotten.

“Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors” is on view through May 14, 2023. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum/exhibitions/designing-women.php

Lucile, Lady Duff Gordon / (L) evening dress, blue silk taffeta, chiffon, and metallic embroidery, circa 1912, England, gift of Cora Ginsberg / (R) afternoon suit, beige silk velvet and cotton lace, circa 1913, USA, museum purchase

16/04/2023

Dame Mary Quant (1930-2023)

It’s impossible to overstate Quant’s contribution to fashion. She represented the joyful freedom of 1960s fashion, and provided a new kind of role model for young women.

She helped to define Britain’s global identity as a centre of streetstyle and innovation, with signature looks such as PVC macs, colourful tights, and the skinny-rib sweater.

Fashion today owes so much to her revolutionary and trailblazing vision.

📸 - Mary Quant and Vidal Sassoon, 1964. © Ronald Dumont/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

16/04/2023

16/04/2023

16/04/2023

Friday Treat Time and a beautiful blue and white striped cotton gauze day dress from the 1870s 💙 Trimmed with fringe, bows and bands of blue silk, it features brilliant bell-shaped sleeves and a draped overskirt that creates an apron-like effect from the front.

It was customary throughout most of the nineteenth century for daytime bodices to have a high neckline, but the 1870s saw more revealing styles come into fashion. The open square neckline on this ensemble is edged with pleated silk ruffles that echo the trim of the sleeves and overskirt and makes the perfect shape to showcase a prominent piece of jewellery such as a pendant or choker.

16/04/2023

Costume volume 57 is all about the connections between paper and fashion. This follows on with our theme from the 2021 conference. Members should have already received their hard copies, but you can also access the journal and all previous editions online at Edinburgh University Press.

You can read articles such as “A fur coat and a blunted vocabulary are misfits.” Representations of fashion and class during the First World War’ by Jenny Richardson.
This article presents a new insight into the way fashion was used to identify and disseminate discourses surrounding patriotism and class during the First World War. Using postcards and cartoons to examine this subject with a particular focus on the fur coat.

Image: personal collection of author ‘To dress extravagantly in War time is unpatriotic, 1917. Artist Gladys Peto