Belonging: Fashion & A Sense of Place

Tweddle, Janie ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7274-7520 and Knight, Nicola ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-5826-7573 (2021) Belonging: Fashion & A Sense of Place. [Show/Exhibition]

Abstract

The output is an exhibition, the culmination of a collaborative project between Tweddle and Knight, which explores how the West Riding of Yorkshire has influenced contemporary fashion. Collaboration contribution: Tweddle and Knight collaborated as co-curators, working with an external museum and archive (Bankfield Museum), in partnership with the museum’s curator, Elinor Camille- Wood. Approximately thirty fashion practitioners, as well as a range of organisations contributed to the project by participating in interviews and loaning items. Research Process: This is a curatorial investigation, which focuses on how a sense of place can influence fashion, and to what extent it can manifest in a practitioner’s aesthetic and ethos. Qualitative research methods consist of literary enquiry into the historical context of the region, an analysis of key pieces from the archive at Bankfield Museum and contemporary fashion collections, as well as anecdotal interviews with a range of fashion practitioners. As a result, themes such as ‘landscape’, ‘textile industry’ and ‘community’ have emerged, informing the curation of historical and contemporary garments, accessories, images, film, artefacts, articles and poetry, in response. Research insights: Research findings have shown that the landscape attributes of the West Riding of Yorkshire have influenced contemporary fashion via the characteristics and constructed meanings associated with the place, the way in which the environment was occupied and utilised for textile production, and through emotional attachment. Collaborating with a museum curator aimed to enhance cultural heritage preservation and interpretation in a fashion context therefore this knowledge would be useful to curatorial, heritage, and fashion research communities. Dissemination: Research findings were predominantly disseminated through a free entry exhibition in The Fashion Gallery at Bankfield Museum, which was open to the general public from 18/09/21- 05/03/22. The total visitor figures were 9503. National and local publications also circulated the project to a wider audience.

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