‘Was it all Swinging? – revisiting the 60s’
Saturday, October 17th 2015
TIME: 10:30 – 16:30 followed by complementary drinks
VENUE: London College of Fashion, 20 John Prince's Street, London W1G 0BJ
Prompted by a growing popular interest in the history of fashion, The Costume Society was founded in 1965 at a time of excitement and revolution. After 50 years of debate, discussion and discovery, The Costume Society is celebrating its Golden Anniversary through a number of events.
This study day will take the opportunity to revisit the decade in which the society was born. We’ll take you back to an era which saw London taking centre stage in innovation with designers such as John Bates, John Stephen, Mary Quant, Tuffin and Foale, Mr Fish, Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, and Barbara Hulanicki (Biba) creating some of the most iconic fashions of the decade. It was a time to be daring, experiment with fabric and pattern, revolutionise the making and selling of clothes and a time when the relationship between art, photography and fashion flourished.
But it was also a time in which not everyone was part of the swinging scene and they negotiated their dressed appearances and relationships with clothes and fashions in other and different ways. The sixties has returned in terms of dress and style on a regular basis over the last fifty years demonstrating the lasting appeal of sixties style.
Speakers for the day are:
Unseen Biba,
Martin Pel, Curator of Fashion and Textiles, Brighton Museum
The Phenonemon of the Swinging 60s
Sylvia Ayton, MBE
Sylvia Ayton established The Fulham Road Clothes Shop with Zandra Rhodes before going to work as a designer for Wallis outwear collections. She shares some of her personal experiences during this groundbreaking decade.
Marion Donaldson: From Carnaby Street to Sauchiehall Street
Jade Halbert
Jade is a dress historian working on her PHD at the University of Glasgow. She is also a curatorial volunteer at Kelvingrove, assisting with their 19th and 20th century dress and textile collections
Swinging Paris: Les Minets, Renoma and La Bande du Drugstore 1963-68
Vadim Kosmos
Vadim Kosmos is a writer with a particular interest in post-war French popular culture.
Socialist Good Taste and the Mini Skirt – the Influence of Swinging London on Hungarian Fashion in the 1960s
Ildikó Simonovics
Ildikó Simonovics, senior curator, textile collection, Kiscelli Museum, Budapest has worked on a number of exhibitions focusing in French fashions and its relationship to Hungarian dress.
Fashion, Utopia and the 1960s counter culture: Cosmic Couture and Fantasy Visions
Angela Smith
Foundation for Freedom: St Michael underwear in the 60s
Lorraine Hamilton Smith
A recent graduate of the MA History and Culture of Fashion course at London College of Fashion, Lorraine Hamilton Smith’s research focus is twentieth and twenty-first century lingerie, and the title of her Master’s dissertation was 'From Kestos to Ultrabra: Technological Changes to the Bra in the UK, 1930-1994'. Lorraine was the 2014 recipient of the Costume Society's Yarwood Award, and the bras purchased to help with her research have been donated to the LCF Archives.
Lunch is not included but there are several places nearby.
Biba
Image Credit:Martin Pel
Biba
Image Credit:Martin Pel
Biba
Image Credit:Martin Pel
Budapest Salon Haute Couture, 1967 
Bra and Girdle, 1966, © The M&S Company Archive 
Mini-dress in printed cotton furnishing fabric by Heal's, 1966
©Jade Halbert, courtesy of Marion and David Donaldson, ©CSG CIC Glasgow M
