The Association of Dress Historians

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The Association of Dress Historians supports and promotes the study and professional practice of the history of dress, textiles, and accessories of all cultures and regions of the world, from before classical antiquity to the present day. ADH believes that the history of human clothing and adornment is taught, learned, explored, researched, developed, and advanced through a wide range of practices

, including education, design, archaeology and conservation, commerce, journalism and publication. These histories are also pursued academically and professionally in the related and relevant fields of anthropology and material culture, art and literary history and theory, tourism and heritage interpretation. Our goals are to bring students and professionals together to share knowledge and experience, to provide opportunities for the presentation of new research, discoveries and practices, and to support dress and textile history in all its aspects through the provision of grants and scholarships.

The ADH is excited to announce the third event in our Winter-Spring Seminar Series 2025-26 ✨ Our third talk led by Sarah...
22/12/2025

The ADH is excited to announce the third event in our Winter-Spring Seminar Series 2025-26 ✨

Our third talk led by Sarah Grant, Senior Curator at the V&A, will explore the curatorial processes behind their current exhibition 'Marie Antoinette Style', now exhibiting at the V&A South Kensington.

This exhibition explores the origins and countless revivals of the style shaped by the most fashionable queen in history, Marie Antoinette. A fashion icon in her own time, and an early modern ‘celebrity’, the dress and interiors modelled and adopted by the ill-fated Queen of France in the final decades of the 18th century have had a lasting influence on over 250 years of design, fashion, film and decorative arts.

Tickets can be purchased via the link in our bio. Attendance is free to ADH Members.

'Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World' is now on display at the National Portrait Gallery, London ✨ Cecil Beaton – ‘The King...
19/12/2025

'Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World' is now on display at the National Portrait Gallery, London ✨

Cecil Beaton – ‘The King of Vogue’ – was an extraordinary force in the 20th-century British and American creative scenes. Renowned as a fashion illustrator, Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist and writer, Beaton elevated fashion and portrait photography into an art form.

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is the first exhibition dedicated solely to Beaton’s ground-breaking contributions to fashion and portrait photography. The exhibition showcases Beaton at his most triumphant – from the Jazz Age and the Bright Young Things, to the high fashion brilliance of the fifties and the glittering, Oscar-winning success of My Fair Lady. Via London, Paris, New York and Hollywood, his era-defining photographs captured beauty, glamour, and star power in the interwar and early post-war eras.

With over 200 items displayed, including photographs, letters, portrait sketches, fashion illustration and costume, Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World features portraits of some of the twentieth century’s most iconic figures, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando; Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret; as well as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí.

Image 1: Audrey Hepburn in costume for My Fair Lady, 1963 Cecil Beaton Archive © Condé Nast.
Image 2: Cecil Beaton c. 1935 by Cecil Beaton, Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, © Condé Nast
Image 3: Cast Members in costume for My Fair Lady, 1963 by Cecil Beaton, Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, © Condé Nast

This week's is a robe of a Daoist priest ✨ This sumptuous robe made for use in Daoist religious ceremonies is embroide...
17/12/2025

This week's is a robe of a Daoist priest ✨

This sumptuous robe made for use in Daoist religious ceremonies is embroidered with 350 deities and immortals. Daoist priests were very important people, and the sumptuousness of their costumes reflects this.

This is a 'robe of descent' - square in shape, sleeveless, with a round hole for the neck. It would have rested on the shoulders of the Daoist priest, and when he held up his arms, its decorative scheme would have been seen in all its glory by the onlookers. The 350 deities depicted represent the gods of the Daoist pantheon, including the Three Purities, the Three Celestial Worthies and the Jade Emperor.

Image 1 and 2: Robe of a Daoist priest, satin silk with embroidery in coloured silks and gold thread, China, Qing dynasty, 1650-1700 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

'Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop' is now on display at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London ✨ Cosprop has chan...
12/12/2025

'Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop' is now on display at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London ✨

Cosprop has changed the way that costume is designed and created. Founded by Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer John Bright in 1965, legendary London based Cosprop specialises in period costume for film, television and theatre. Through his work as a costume designer, a costumier, maker, advisor, collector and historian, Bright’s intelligence and eye for detail is in thousands of film, television and stage productions.

This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition features many costumes never seen in public before. Helena Bonham Carter in A Room with a View, Meryl Streep in Out of Africa, Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, and Leslie Manville in Mrs Harris Goes to Paris. Cosprop is synonymous with dressing iconic characters in award-winning films and television.

This exhibition is a celebration of sixty years of Cosprop’s creativity and a unique opportunity to see behind the scenes of this celebrated costume house. Through stunning costumes, accessories and sketches, the visitor will learn the design and making process from script-to screen. Leading costume designers and actors will share their thoughts on favourite costumes, showing how Cosprop brought these magical moments to life.

Image: A Room with a View (1986), Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands © Merchant Ivory / Goldcrest / Kobal / Shutterstock

We are proud to announce 'Spanish Fashion in the Age of Velázquez' by Amanda Wunder as the 2025 ADH Book of the Year! ✨
10/12/2025

We are proud to announce 'Spanish Fashion in the Age of Velázquez' by Amanda Wunder as the 2025 ADH Book of the Year! ✨

'The Marie Antoinette Style' exhibition is now open at the V&A South Kensington! This exhibition explores the origins an...
05/12/2025

'The Marie Antoinette Style' exhibition is now open at the V&A South Kensington!
This exhibition explores the origins and countless revivals of the style shaped by the most fashionable queen in history, Marie Antoinette. Let's take a look at some of the amazing pieces inspired by the fashion icon herself ✨

A portrait of Marie Antoinette, painted by female portrait artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, caused quite a stir when it was exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1783. Believing the Queen was only wearing a chemise, a form of undergarment for ladies, many were outraged at the sc****ly clad depiction, leading to its swift removal from the Salon. Vigée Le Brun quickly painted a new portrait depicting Marie Antoinette wearing a blue silk dress, a more fitting outfit for the Queen of France.

It is not known what happened to the original Chemise portrait, but the artist produced five subsequent versions with variations in costume, including the first image of Marie Antoinette waring a straw hat and muslin dress.

Image: Marie Antoinette in a Muslin dress, 1783, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Image in public domain.

The Association of Dress Historians invites all members to the upcoming Annual General Meeting, held online on Monday 8t...
03/12/2025

The Association of Dress Historians invites all members to the upcoming Annual General Meeting, held online on Monday 8th December, 6pm GMT. Please join us via the Zoom link sent to your associated ADH email.

This week's is a beautiful hand-knotted carpet made by William Morris and his assistant J.H. Dearle ✨ This is the gran...
03/12/2025

This week's is a beautiful hand-knotted carpet made by William Morris and his assistant J.H. Dearle ✨

This is the grandest of all the hand-knotted 'Hammersmith' carpets made by Morris & Co. Its design and technique are based on ancient Persian and Turkish examples which Morris collected.

Although Morris believed that Persian carpets were the greatest ever made, he adopted the coarser Turkish (Ghiordes) knot for his own hand-knotted carpet manufacture. They were woven at a thickness of 25 knots to the square inch. The design includes many motif devised by Morris for carpets. It also shows later, more formal elements characteristic of Henry Dearle's work. There is a strong possibility, therefore, that the carpet was a collaborative project.

Image: Morris, William. "Bullerswood Carpet". Image courtesy of the V&A.

'Design and Disability' is now on display at the V&A South Kensington ✨ Design and Disability showcases the radical cont...
28/11/2025

'Design and Disability' is now on display at the V&A South Kensington ✨

Design and Disability showcases the radical contributions of Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people to contemporary design and culture from the 1940s to now.
The exhibition shows how Disabled people have designed for every aspect of life through their own experience and expertise, tracing the political and social history of design and disability. 170 objects are on display across three sections – Visibility, Tools and Living – spanning design, art, architecture, fashion, and photography.

The exhibition also explores the rich history of Disabled designers challenging ableism in the design industry, as well as the practitioners working today to 'hack' pre-existing design to make it more usable.

Image: Jewellery Becomes Law by Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye. 2024, Intoart Collection. © Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye. Photo by Adama Jalloh

the four-cornered hat was devised and diffused by two Central Andean civilisations; the Wari and the Tiwanaku. These n...
26/11/2025

the four-cornered hat was devised and diffused by two Central Andean civilisations; the Wari and the Tiwanaku. These neighbouring but independent cultures thrived during the Middle Horizon period in pre-Columbian South America (circa 500-1100 CE), and placed similar importance on cloth as a tool for non-verbal communication. The intricacies of their respective craft traditions are testified by this finely-woven headgear, defined by four pointed tips that emerge from a square crown.

Both Wari and Tiwanaku hats were made from skilfully-dyed camelid (i.e llama or alpaca) fibres, and feature various elaborate motifs that range from geometric designs to stylised flora and fauna. Just as later Western societies came to view hats as conveyers of social standing, the Andean four-cornered hat was reserved for suitably high-ranking men, such as warriors and officials, to denote the wearers' power and status within society. Some surviving examples of four-cornered hats - most of which excavated from burial sites - show signs of repeated wear and tear, revealing their usage as everyday dress in life as in death.

The example shown was knotted with pile, and can therefore be attributed to the Wari. Each side is adorned with a four-part concentric diamond, while concentric squares decorate the crown and corners of each panel, revealing a fascination with symmetry and spacial concepts that permeates ancient Andean dress and textiles.

Image: Four-Cornered Hat, Wari, 500–900 CE, gifted in 1983 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The ADH is excited to announce the second event in our Winter-Spring Seminar Series 2025-26 ✨ Our second talk led by Dan...
24/11/2025

The ADH is excited to announce the second event in our Winter-Spring Seminar Series 2025-26 ✨

Our second talk led by Danielle Thom, Curator at the Design Museum, London, will explore the curatorial processes behind their new exhibition 'Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s', now on display at the Design Museum until March 2026.

'Blitz: the club that shaped the 80s' is a major exhibition on the legendary Blitz club night that transformed 1980s London style, and generated a creative scene that had an enormous impact on popular culture in the decade that followed – from fashion and music, to film, art and design.

Tickets can be purchased via the link in our bio. Attendance is free to ADH Members.

is a women’s sporting dress from the 1880s. It could have been used for tennis, yachting or seaside walking. The silho...
05/11/2025

is a women’s sporting dress from the 1880s. It could have been used for tennis, yachting or seaside walking. The silhouette of the dress is a classic 1880s silhouette, with a bustle, and is made from white and navy striped silk and cotton fabric, which was a fashionable choice for sport and leisure attire.

It became more and more acceptable for women to participate in sporting and leisure events in the 19th Century, but their sporting clothes were still expected to be suitable for the current fashion, including the corsets and undergarments. Sporting dresses were often striped, or plain white or beige, and had less trimmings than everyday and formal dresses, even though the silhouette was kept the same.

Image: Dress, 1885-88, American, 2009.300.2477a, b, © The Met

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