Defining Haberdashery: The House of Haberdash Review

7 August 2025, by Dr Babette Radclyffe-Thomas

In this week’s blog post, Costume Society News Editor Dr Babette Radclyffe-Thomas reviews the House of Haberdash exhibition at the Torriano Meeting House in London.

A group exhibition and community arts project at the Torriano Meeting House in Kentish Town, London, explores the eclectic definitions of haberdashery. Curated by Lottie McCrindell, the exhibition presents over 30 contemporary artists, poets and fashion designers, whose work explores the objects you might find in historical, modern or fantastical haberdasheries.  

According to exhibition curator Lottie McCrindell, ‘Haberdashery’ is an elastic word whose meaning has shapeshifted through time and cultures. Its roots trace back to the early 13th century, but its etymology remains elusive. In medieval times, ‘haberdashery’ included everything from hawk’s bells and swords to gloves and caps, but now ‘haberdashery’ is generally understood to mean small sewing items, such as buttons, zips and pins. The OED defines ‘haberdashery’ broadly as ‘the goods and wares sold by a haberdasher’, and so the exhibition embraces the wide-ranging interpretations of this ancient word through textiles, poems, paintings, prints, sculptures and garments.  

London Lace Club presents a collaborative lace piece crafted during their regular gatherings at the Torriano Meeting House, and MILK (Molly Crisp and Sophia Dowson Collins) display brooches and pins crafted from their mudlarked findings on the Thames. Usoa García Sagüés’ textile sculpture ‘Hats off to Women’, crafted of over 20 handmade hats, encourages visitors to sit beneath it and reflect upon women who have cared for and inspired them. Sally Gaukrodger-Cowan’s Passementerie wall hanging, The Journey is made entirely from reclaimed and leftover thread and explores the endangered art of passementerie. 

Poetry is a key element of the show, as a visual poem written by the curator and inspired by all the showcased work is projected onto the ceiling of the meeting house. Pieces respond to a wide range of issues such as repair, climate change, community, memory, resistance, craft, motherhood, grief and home. 

We asked Lottie for more insight into the exhibition curation, theme and highlights and present the following as a Q&A format. 

“In summer 2023, I co-curated TEXTUS’ founding exhibition, TEXTUS: in-between text and textile, with artist and one of my oldest friends, Keziah Florin-Sefton. While Kez focused on completing her MSc this year, I was eager to continue building the community we started and curate a second exhibition under TEXTUS. I knew I wanted to use our original principle of gathering interdisciplinary creatives through a mix of open call and invitation to explore, critique and reimagine fashion and textiles, design, culture and language.   

The concept for HOUSE OF HABERDASH evolved intuitively. I had been researching the history of the safety pin and thinking about its rich cultural meanings. I was drawn to the ideas of connection, improvisation and protest the safety pin carries. There’s something talismanic about safety pins. This curiosity led me organically to the expansive world of haberdasheries, spaces filled with small, often overlooked objects, full of poetic potential, such as safety pins, buttons, zips, needles and thread.  

Haberdashery is a strong open call concept because it stimulates many conversations about repair, memory, craft, collecting, local economies…I wrote in my open call that I was interested in work that explored the objects you might find in historical, modern or fantastical haberdasheries, encouraging inventive interpretations. ‘Haberdashery’ is a wonderfully elastic word, the meaning of which has shapeshifted through time and cultures. I hoped people would lean into that elasticity, treating it as an invitation to stretch and reimagine, which they certainly did! 

Thinking about how a show on haberdashery in the Torriano Meeting House might come to life, the title HOUSE OF HABERDASH immediately clicked. Metaphorical and generative, it evokes not only the physical space of a haberdashery but also the spirit of assembly, improvisation, and movement, of dashing about and piecing things together. ‘DASH’ nods to punctuation and language, while also suggesting speed, energy, and spontaneity. The title, so language and metaphor, was a key starting point.” 

Were you surprised at how varied the interpretations of the theme were? 

Less surprised and more energised. One of the joys of curating using an open call is seeing just how differently each person interprets a shared prompt. In the call-out, I described the theme as ‘an offering, a starting point for your unique interpretation,’ and encouraged contributors to ‘have fun with it, be inventive with it, get political with it, to let your imaginations run and dash —’ It was amazing to see how that spirit of creative freedom was taken in different directions.  

Curation is a hugely collaborative process, but open calls heighten that sense of shared authorship. Using an open call expanded the show beyond what I could envision on my own. For example, Hannah Ekuwa Buckman introduced me to ‘epiphytes’, plants that grow on the surface of other plants, as part of her ecological reading of haberdashery. And Simiran Lalvani, introduced me to toggles in a digital context, drawing a conceptual line between toggles as both garment fastenings and digital mechanisms. 

How does HOUSE OF HABERDASH differ from, or build upon, any themes from your first exhibition at Torriano Meeting House? 

HOUSE OF HABERDASH builds on the foundation of our first exhibition, TEXTUS: in-between text and textile, in how it uses poetry and metaphor not just as content, but as curatorial tools. Formally inspired by Cleo Heywood’s Red Box, I wrote a poem made of words and phrases written in response to or drawn directly from all the pieces gathered within the exhibition and projected it onto the ceiling. It is titled House of Haberdash After Red Box by Cleo Heywood. That felt like a turning point for me. Poetry is not just a featured art form, it’s embedded in the structure, in how the exhibition is built and experienced. Curating HOUSE OF HABERDASH through poetry and metaphor gave me a sense of creative freedom and confidence in following a curatorial instinct grounded not in academic authority or historical narrative, but in imagination and emotion. 

Curating via metaphor opens up space rather than closing it down. Unlike historical exhibitions, which often aim to convey specific narratives or facts, this approach welcomes viewers into a kind of dream logic. HOUSE OF HABERDASH has a surreal, Alice in Wonderland-like quality that encourages intuitive engagement. Like walking into a haberdashery, the exhibition invites visitors to explore and find what speaks to them.  

Each poem, textile, garment, sculpture, print and painting contributes something vital. They all come together and speak to each other in layered, powerful ways.   

Iman Asif’s watercolour گفتگو (Conversation), captures something at the heart of HOUSE OF HABERDASH. At its centre, two oversized painted safety pins suggest human figures in dialogue, set against an Indo-Islamic architectural backdrop. The curved forms of the safety pins echo the arches behind them, drawing a link between our personal encounters and the larger structures that shape them. The entire composition is bordered with actual rusted safety pins. Asif lyrically uses safety pins, objects that both fasten and pierce, to express the complex, tender and often painful nature of human connection.  

In our exhibition map, each artist shared a short reflection, and Asif wrote about how ‘simple objects can hold deeper meanings’ and how ‘every small element plays a crucial role in shaping larger connections and structures.’ That sentiment resonates across the entire exhibition. Measuring just 5 x 7 inches, Conversation is small, but its emotional and conceptual weight is profound. It beautifully encapsulates one of the show’s central ideas: that the smallest things,  objects, gestures, encounters, can carry profound poetic and political weight. As individuals, we may feel small in relation to the world, but we each hold the capacity to connect, to impact, and to shift the structures around us. 

What do you hope that people take away from seeing this exhibition? 

Taken as a whole, I hope HOUSE OF HABERDASH speaks to the power of collaboration, grassroots organising and interdisciplinary thinking. 

One piece I particularly hope will mobilise people, is Kite for Palestine (2024), a community project organised by Kate Neil and inspired by Refaat Alareer’s poem ‘If I Must Die, Let It Be a Tale’ (2011). Embroidered by many hands, the kite was made in collective grief, resistance, and hope for a Free Palestine. In 2023, Palestinian poet and professor, Refaat Alareer, whose poem inspired the making of this kite, was killed by an Israeli airstrike alongside six of his family members. Their deaths are part of the abhorrent ongoing genocide against Palestinian lives.  

The Kite hangs in the front window of the Torriano, next to Layla Al Idrissi’s Embroidered Identity, a mixed-media work that also incorporates Tatreez, traditional Palestinian embroidery, as a language of cultural memory and political resistance. As Layla Al Idrissi writes, ‘it is a work about visibility, belonging and how something as small as a stitch can carry the weight of identity and resistance.’

On the second weekend of the exhibition, we took the kite down and walked with it from the Torriano to Parliament Hill to join Eid Kite Day: In Solidarity with Palestine, alongside Camden Friends of Palestine, Kites in Solidarity and many other grassroots organisers. Since Alareer’s death, his poem has resonated around the world as a powerful symbol of Palestinian resistance. It has been translated into over 100 languages and read by millions. It has galvanised the making and flying of kites in solidarity with Palestine globally.  

Kite for Palestine speaks to the political power of art, its ability to connect people, amplify calls for justice and peace and inspire action. As Kate Neil writes, “If this project has moved you, speak out for the rights of Palestinian people and all people. Defend the principles of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Donate to a charity like Medical Aid for Palestinians. Carry compassion into your own community.” 

The Torriano Meeting House is a volunteer-run arts and community space in Kentish Town, London and the exhibition is curated, organised and run entirely by volunteers. The Torriano hosted TEXTUS' founding exhibition in summer, 2023: TEXTUS: in-between text and textile. TEXTUS is a curatorial project that brings interdisciplinary creatives together to explore, critique and reimagine fashion and textile environments, design, history, culture, language and logic. 

The exhibition runs until 10th August 2025. 

For more connections between textile crafts, culture, and political movement in Palestine revisit our previous blog post reviewing Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery.