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Making clothing is a fundamentally corporeal experience. Yet histories of dress, textiles, and manufacture often lack awareness or acknowledgement of the physicality of garment making. Such processes were rarely captured in text, and extant material objects usually only represent the finished product. Experimental methodologies are well established in disciplines such as archaeology and technical art history but have only recently gained traction amongst historians, as recreation and practical approaches have often remained outside the academy. The recent 'making' and 'embodied' turns, led largely by dress historians, have asked scholars to consider how these objects interacted with and were formed by historical bodies. Despite the field's growth, there is little cohesion or field-wide acceptance of key terms and methods. Research in this field has been undertaken by scholars and practitioners fragmented across the UK, USA, Europe, and Australia, working on different periods, or employed outside traditional academic institutions.
The Making Historical Dress Network is an AHRC-funded network that explores how picking up a needle and thread can enhance our knowledge of the past. It will unite established and emerging scholars of dress across the disciplines of History, Literature, Art History, and Cultural Studies with practitioners in the worlds of costume production, curation, and conservation, as well as the social media community of historical costumers. In doing so, the network will provide a forum for the discussion and establishment of a shared fundamental rubric for the field. Over 2023 to 2025, the Network will hold a variety of in-person and virtual events, as well as a mentorship scheme and opportunities for publication, bringing together scholars, curators, and makers to consider how we can best work together to uncover and share this making knowledge.
2023 - 2025
Active