Style Histories: Cloth Cultures with Amber Butchart

Style Histories seeks to amplify contemporary and historic fashion narratives from local and global geographies, and give voice to everyday styles and practices that disrupt, de-centre and challenge Eurocentric fashion histories.

The series launches on February 9 2022 with a talk from curator, fashion historian and broadcaster Amber Butchart. Amber will discuss ‘Cloth Cultures’, the exhibition and podcast she curated this year for the British Textile Biennial, exploring the global nature of textiles and the relationships they create, both historically and today. Using pieces from the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection, the exhibition explored threads of imperialism, telling stories of movement, migration and making through cloth by focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton – and the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

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