Patterns of Fashion Award Winners 2025

On Saturday 5th July, the Costume Society announced the Patterns of Fashion and Patterns for Performance 2025 award winners at the Society’s Annual General Meeting held at Origin Workspace in Bristol.

The Patterns of Fashion Award honours the work of dress historian Janet Arnold (1932-1998), a founder member of the Society, through the recreation of historical extant garments that feature in her seminal book series. The award promotes Arnold’s methodological approach to historical dress research and now also includes Norah Waugh’s key publication.

Three finalists were selected for the Patterns of Fashion Award and the students exhibited their costumes and research at Origin Workspace for judges and Society members to view. The entries for Patterns of Fashion Award 2025 were judged by prolific costume and set designer, Tom Pye who has a wealth of experience in Costume for theatre and screen, including Gentleman Jack (2019) and Renegade Nell (2024).

Patterns of Fashion 2025 Winner: Lana Vargas 

A third year BA Costume Interpretation student at Wimbledon College of Arts Lana chose pattern 40 (XL) from Norah Waugh’s The Cut of Men’s Clothes (1964) to recreate for the competition.

The original pattern was taken from a coat in the Collection of the V&A which was unfortunately was unavailable for close examination during the research period of the project, however Lana was able to examine examples of similar coats in her college collection and she made good use of the increasing number of good quality online collections such as the John Bright Collection and the MET, as well as 19th century tailoring manuals and the V&A catalogue. Lana went to great lengths to source the specific wool and velvet fabrics used for the coat, boiling the velvet to lift the pile before dying it to get a good colour match, she made a detailed toile to ensure the construction and drape were correct and taught herself how to make the distinctive thread covered ‘grappé’ buttons used on the coat to achieve the perfect period detail.

“The Patterns of Fashion competition was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dedicate myself wholly to in-depth research and practice with the structure and support of my university and the costume society. I've learned so much, met so many brilliantly talented artisans in the process, and now have a portfolio piece and talking point that perfectly aligns with my career aspirations. I can't recommend it enough to any student considering taking on the challenge,” Lana said.

Pattern of Fashions 2025 Highly Commended: Verity Joy

Verity is an MA Costume student at University of the Arts Bournemouth and she has chosen to use ‘Pattern for a Pelisse Robe c.1824-27’ for her Patterns of Fashion Award entry. Originally featured in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 1 (1977 reprint), the pattern was recently updated for the revised edition of the book; Patterns of Fashion: The Content, Cut, Construction and Context of English women’s dress 1720-1860 (Arnold et al., 2021).

The pelisse pattern was taken from a garment in the Salisbury Museum Collection where Verity was able to examine the original and make detailed notes about its construction, using Arnold’s pattern as a guide. Verity also made detailed drawings of the garment, took photographs and was meticulous in matching the gown’s distinctive shade of green. Verity then conducted further research by examining other examples of pelite robes in Salisbury museum collection and visiting the Whitchurch Silk Museum to find out more about woven structure of the fabrics and dyes used for the original.

 “I’m absolutely delighted to have been awarded this prize by the Costume Society. It was an honour to share my work with so many fascinating people within the costume and museum/heritage industries, including the wonderful judge Tom Pye”, Verity said.

Patterns of Fashion 2025 Runner Up: Georgia Barclay

Georgia is a third year BA Costume Interpretation student at Wimbledon College of Arts and she used the Stitched Stays and Stomacher in Crimson Satin pattern from Patterns of Fashion 5: The Content, Cut, Construction and Context of Bodies, Stays, Hoops and Rumps c.1595-1795 (Arnold et al., 2018).

To research her entry, Georgia visited the gallery of Costume at Platt Hall, Manchester, where she conducted a full technical examination of the Filmer collection stitched stays and stomached (1640-1660) and while there, she took photographs, made sketches and extensive notes regarding the construction, condition and the materials used, all of which she used to inform her entry. Selecting just the right materials was a particularly important element of the project; the thread for the boning channels was teased out of a woven silk to get the correct thickness, and upholstery reed for the boning rather than baleen.

“​​I fell in love with historically accurate clothing and since I found out about this competition over two years ago I’ve been wanting to enter! It was an amazing opportunity to be able to do what I love for a reason and thus dedicate a good chunk of time to it. I’m really hoping to get a job that would allow me to sew historically accurate clothing (preferably by hand) and thanks to this competition affording me the opportunity to showcase my work I’m hoping that my dream job will come sooner rather than later wherever in the world that may take me. Most importantly though, regardless of a job I may get I’m just looking forward to continue to hand sew and to see my skills improve”, Georgia said.

For more information about this award including past winners, please see our dedicated Patterns of Fashion website page.

Images will be added to this page soon.