What the Dresses Know – Sophie Oliver at Hatchards, Piccadilly

We are delighted to welcome scholar and writer Sophie Oliver with academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari to discuss

‘What the Dresses Know: A Women's History of Modernism Told Through Clothes’

Pioneering women were at the heart of the movement known as modernism. In ‘What the Dresses Know,’ Sophie Oliver offers a new account of their radical experiments and extraordinary lives, told through the clothes they made and wore.

From a dress Vanessa Bell rescued from the London Blitz to Frida Kahlo’s ‘huipiles’ and a waistcoat embroidered for Gertrude Stein by Alice B. Toklas, these special objects tell a story of artists seeking transformation. But getting dressed is rarely straightforward. Modernist women used clothes to think through the contradictions of the modern world: the inequalities of industrialisation, the terrible conformities demanded by fascism and racism and the call of feminists, socialists and avant-gardists to act differently and take up new forms of art.

‘What the Dresses know’ is an exhilarating account of women’s bold attempts to make history during years of tumultuous change. A distinctive new voice in cultural criticism, Sophie Oliver uses clothes to explore the challenges modernist women faced – and to understand her own impulses in writing about them.

It promises to be an absolutely fascinating evening, do come along if you can!