(MA in the History of Dress)

Dr Rebecca Arnold

course description


This course considers dress, fashion and textiles as image, object and text, as disseminators of meaning, and as part of an industrial process.  Adopting an interdisciplinary, thematic approach, a diverse range of sources is examined in each term, including fine and graphic art, photography, surviving dress, fashion journalism, literature, business records and film.   The course is divided into two parts.

The autumn term considers the subject’s breadth, and encourages students to examine the wider history of dress and textiles in relation to an exploration of methodologies, including visual and object analysis, theoretical approaches, and oral history. Significant themes within dress history, such as consumption, ethical issues and globalization are related to case studies in order to identify change over time and space. Museum and archive visits are central to this process.

The spring term comprises in-depth examination of the interwar period, and of dress and body as sites for modernity’s representation and construction. Cities including Paris, New York and London were zoned according to consumption, production, leisure and pleasure, with clothing designed to embody lifestyle requirements and aspirations.  Newly evolving body image and identity ideals were expressed through dress.  For example, Parisian couture’s elite luxury was encapsulated by Madeleine Vionnet’s avant-garde designs, New York sportswear’s ready-to-wear simplicity was promoted by Claire McCardell, and London’s burgeoning mass-market retail sector, was represented by Marks and Spencer’s.  The course explores fashion’s design, production, consumption and promotion in relation to the city as a locus for ideas of fashionability, modernity and identity.  It also considers wearers – from the working classes to the social elite, and from showgirls to film stars. Dress and fashion are analysed in relation to relevant theoretical approaches considering body, gender, space, class and ethnicity, and the interwar period’s wider artistic, cultural, economic and political contexts. This provides a template for the focused analysis required in the dissertation, which is researched and written during the summer term.


language and other requirements


Standard entry requirements.