This presentation will explore how the rose – the most ravishingly beautiful and fragrant of flowers – is entwined with fashion and our everyday dressed appearances. Almost everyone can look, and maybe even feel transformed, by wearing or holding one or more roses, real or artificial, wild or cultivated. This presentation will explore these narratives by referencing historical dress and contemporary fashion, art and literature, juxtaposed with everyday objects such as snapshots and tea-cups. Amy will discuss how, working with collaborators, she variously interpreted these to create two very different rose-themed exhibitions, one at the Museum of Fashion Technology (New York 2021), the other at London’s Garden Museum (2022) during the pandemic.
Amy de la Haye is Professor of Dress History & Curatorship at London College of Fashion (LCF). Formerly she was curator of modern fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Her work is united by an emphasis on analysing dress to develop stories about lives lived. Forthcoming exhibitions include Making More Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain (LCF 2024,working with the Museum of British Folklore and the London College Fashion’s Centre for Fashion Curation of which she is joint director) and Oh Boy! Dressing Boys 1770-1930, with collector Alasdair Peebles, at London’s Fashion Textile Museum. She writes for SHOWstudio and her book Chanel: Couture & Industry has been revised and republished to coincide with the major exhibition opening at the V&A.