In 2003, the award was granted to Macushla Goacher, a third year PhD student at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.
Macushla's thesis was the consumption of costume in Ireland 1750-1800. She used the award towards travelling expenses enabling her to conduct crucial object based research in the V&A Museum, and to visit the National Trust Snowshill Costume collection, stored in Berrington Hall, England and the Museum of Costume collection in Bath.
Her full report: I was awarded the Patterns of Fashion Award to fund two planned research trips to England. The purpose of these trips was to study surviving items of eighteenth-century costume in three different costume collections the Museum of Costume, Bath, the Snowshill Collection at Berrington Hall; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The principal objective of this research was to examine the construction and stylistic development of costume during the second half of the eighteenth century which would allow me to increase my expertise in the field and would also provide a contextual framework within which to assess Irish costume of the period.
The first trip to Bath and Berrington Hall took place in January. At the Museum of Costume, Bath, as well as visiting the permanent exhibition, I made a study appointment to examine eighteenth-century dress from the reserve collection. A selection of various garments of male and female dress was made available for my inspection, including some notable examples of eighteenth-century waistcoats. During my next trip to Berrington Hall, I was only able to examine a fraction of the large Snowshill Collection, but all the items I saw were of optimum quality in workmanship and design. Notable were several eighteenth-century French court suits, with exquisite examples of embroidery. The curator, Althea MacKenzie, was very generous with both her time and her experience, and tried to show me as much material as possible in the time available. There are several garments with an Irish provenance in the collection; they are confirmation that there is little to distinguish eighteenth-century Irish costume from mainstream contemporary English fashions.
My second research trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, took place in March. I undertook a week's intensive research there. Four appointments were scheduled over the first two days, during which I was able to examine a broad selection of European male and female costume dating from the 1770s-1800. The highlight was a French Neo-Classical-style robe dating to the late 1790s, comprising of a silk gown and overgown embellished with fine silver-thread embroidery in the chinoiserie style. In one appointment I saw surviving examples of waistcoat shapes before being cut for assembly. This particularly gave me an opportunity to examine designs for embroidery for costume, an area which particularly interests me. The curatorial staff at the Victoria & Albert Museum were extremely obliging and made available for viewing as much material as possible. The eighteenth-century costume collection at the V&A is notable for its diversity and high quality, and the research I conducted here was extremely beneficial. I had several days left to work in the National Art Library - in this excellent study-resource, I was particularly able to find published material on French and Italian costume which is impossible to find in Dublin.
The aim of these trips was for me to gain a greater knowledge and expertise on the construction of mid/late-eighteenth-century dress and the changing stylistic trends of the period. I feel this was attained. The chance to make such a broad visual survey of costume from one period, and in so doing train the eye to the subtleties of style, was one of the most rewarding results from these research trips. I give my sincere thanks to the Costume Society for granting me the Patterns of Fashion Award' and giving me this study-opportunity. This research will be of great benefit to my doctoral thesis.
