Fashioning Our World
Unpicking the past to thread together the future
By Katy England from The Salisbury Museum
As we become more aware of the need to act now to help our planet, many people are thinking differently about the future of fashion. But what can we learn about fashion sustainability from looking at the clothes and accessories from the past that survive in museums?
Many fashion collections include items that have been repaired, re-worn or refashioned and the threads, patches, and fabrics can tell us the story of the garments and the people who wore them. The darker side of fashion history is also highlighted by many objects, including those made from materials such as coral or feathers which were often collected from the natural world at great cost to the habitats they came from.
Earlier this year we launched Fashioning Our World: unpicking the past to thread together the future at The Salisbury Museum. The project is discovering the hidden stories of sustainability told by clothes and accessories from the past and working with young people to share these and change attitudes to fashion in the future.
We are very excited to be working in partnership on the project with Sustainable Fashion Week. The team will bring to Fashioning Our World their expertise in sustainable fashion and will be working with the young people to share some of their tips and advice on how to empower people to make positive changes by telling the stories of clothes and fabrics.
We have already uncovered many intriguing stories hidden in the collection at the Salisbury Museum. One that was inspiration for Fashioning Our World was the remarkable tale of a military greatcoat.
It was worn by local man Howard Harris, who went on to become Mayor of Salisbury in 1897. Howard served in the Crimean War and fought in the Battle of Inkerman. He was hit by shrapnel during the campaign, which caused a large rip down the back of the coat. He survived and repaired the tear before going on to witness the Charge of the Light Brigade. Howard wrote about his experiences and described the coat, which may have been made from a blanket, as his ‘old friend’. It is currently on display at the Fashion Gallery at The Salisbury Museum.
Other items recently uncovered include a beautifully embroidered satin waistcoat from the 1700s that was repurposed into a women’s bodice front in the 1800s and a patchwork quilt that was made from remnants of fabric over a period of over 50 years from the 1870s to the 1920s.
The young people taking part in the project are also working with textile experts to learn the skills needed to repair or repurpose their own clothes, inspired by the stories from the collection and they are trying patching and mending as well as re-purposing.
Fashioning Our World aims to inspire other museums and heritage settings to work in a similar way with their fashion collections and young people. Dorset Museum, who also have an important collection of textile items, will take part in the second year of the project.
Fashioning Our World is kindly supported by a grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, delivered by the Museums Association, for £87,828.
For more information on the project see www.fashioningourworld.org.uk or Instagram @fashioningourworld.