Amy de la Haye will be coming to speak at the Modern Design History Seminar on Wednesday, October 2, 2013. Her talk is entitled “Objects of a Passion: Exhibiting Fashion and Dress in the Museum.”

Amy de la Haye is Professor and Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Dress History & Curatorship at the University of the Arts London (UAL). She is also the Joint Course Director of the MA Program in Fashion Curation at the London College of Fashion at UAL. De la Haye received her BA in the History of Design from Brighton University and her MA in Cultural History from the Royal College of Art in London. Her numerous curatorial projects include Coco Chanel: A New Portrait by Marion Pike, Paris 1967-1971 (Fashion Space Gallery, London College of Fashion, and Palazzo Morando, 2013-2014); The Land Girls: Cinderellas of the Soil (Brighton Museum, 2010); Fashion & Fancy Dress: The Messel Family Dress Collection 1865–2005 (Brighton Museum and Birmingham City Art Gallery, 2005-2006); Liberace’s Stage Costumes (Selfridge’s, Oxford Street, London, 2005); and Catherine Walker: 25 Years, British Couture (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2002). De la Haye has published extensively on British and continental European fashion. Her publications include Chanel: The Couturiere at Work, co-author, Shelley Tobin (London: V&A Publications, 1994); A to Z of Style (London: V&A Publications, 2011); Exhibiting Fashion: Before and After 1971, co-author, Judith Clark (London & New York: Yale University Press, 2013); and Worth: A Biography of an Archive, co-author, Valerie D. Mendes (London: V&A Publications, 2014).

In her presentation at the BGC, Amy de la Haye will discuss the design-led curatorial strategies utilized within the first two exhibitions of modern fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London – Britain Can Make It (1946) and Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton (1971). Additionally, the presentation will explore the speaker’s own socio-historical curatorial interventions in which she has exhibited worn and unworn garments as evidence of women’s lives lived.

Light refreshments will be served at 5:45 pm. The presentation will begin at 6:00 pm.

RSVP is required.

PLEASE NOTE that our Lecture Hall can only accommodate a limited number of people, so please come early if you would like to have a seat in the main room. Registrants who arrive late may be seated in an overflow viewing area.