Professor Wendy Dagworthy is currently working on an exhibition that
focuses on British fashion in the 1980s, which will be shown at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in 2012, with an accompanying book. The
exhibition will include the origins of London Fashion Week, which are
still relatively unknown, with new
research and important historical knowledge about this period collated
coherently for the first time.It will aim to chart the social, economic and aesthetic connections made between familiar and broader cultures.
Wendy Dagworthy has also collaborated with Robert O'Byrne and Annette Worsley-Taylor on a new book, Style City: How London Became a Fashion Capital.
The book is a study of the London fashion industry between 1974
and 2000. The research analyses three decades of British fashion, during which time both the
design practice and the promotion of British fashion were totally
revolutionised.
Unlike many books and studies of fashion, this project is written from the insiders’ point of view and will
therefore be of particular interest to the emerging generation of designer
practitioners. Key designers of the time were interviewed, and the text is supported by individual designers'
rarely seen contextualised visual material.