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The Personal Style Blog and Other Dying Arts
At the beginning of the year when the world went quiet, behind closed doors multiple industries were falling into chaos. They were scrambling to rethink their business strategies; how to continue when their captive audience became quite literally captive in their own homes, far, far away from the front doors of their stores. One of these industries was fashion retail, which, while still somewhat floundering, was perhaps more well-equipped to deal with the unexpected turn of events than the rest. Influencing in a pandemic Already a well-established online industry – the rise and dominance of sites like PrettyLittleThing, Missguided and Boohoo are cases in point, to name just a few…
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Adaptive Clothing: How to Dress an Unruly Body
In 2019, the Irish fashion writer Sinead Burke stood in plaster that, over ten long, long hours, slowly created a mold of her body. She had loaned two pieces of clothing – an exquisite Christopher Kane dress in light blue, and a Burberry trench like none you’ve seen before – to an exhibition being developed by the National Museum of Scotland, but the museum had run into a problem. They didn’t have a mannequin to match her body frame. Sinead is 3ft 5in. She has Achondroplasia. Achondroplasia is a genetic disease whose primary feature is dwarfism. For the museum, it wasn’t as simple as sourcing an appropriate mannequin from elsewhere,…
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All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go: Clothing in the Time of Covid-19
I’ve recently taken up learning Italian. Although, to say I’ve taken up a language seems a little frivolous, as if I could put it down again like another lockdown whim. The word recently, too, is somewhat deceiving. In actuality, I have been learning Italian for more than a year, but the slow process of rewiring your brain for a whole new process of understanding has an uncanny way of making you feel like a permanent beginner. What I have – so far – is a good grasp of the basics. I can translate simple children’s stories and it’s a thrill each and every time I do so at an almost…
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How Diverse Costume Design Has an Impact Both On and Off the Screen
I spent a recent birthday enjoying one of the most beloved of British traditions: afternoon tea. My family around me, we guzzled down rounds of tea and Viennese coffee, held tiny sandwiches between our fingers and ate miniature scones, and then another, and another. Meanwhile, at a table on the other side of the room, a large group of African women in their traditional choir dress sat together and began to drum on the table, their voices joining in soon after. This meeting of two very different cultural pastimes was a sight for the eyes. Even today, in a country that claims to be a multicultural one, sights like the…
