Launch

29 June 2013, People’s History Museum, Manchester

Workshop 1: Dress: Art and Industry

11 July 2013, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter

This workshop explored conceptual debates on the artistic and industrial production of clothing as well as their impact on the emerging ready-to-wear industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Workshop 2: Uniforms and Identity

13 September 2013, Sutherland Building, Northumbria University

This workshop analysed the role of clothes and textiles (especially uniforms) in the organisation of professional groups.

Workshop 3: Labour Behind the Label: Working with Textiles

8 November 2013, Sutherland Building, Northumbria University

This workshop investigated how operational and professional developments relating to the British textile industry (Taylorism, Fordism, health and safety) affected workers and workers’ communities.

Workshop 4: Women, Clothes and the New Workforce

July 2014, University of Exeter

The final workshop examined the role of clothing in discourses on women’s professional opportunities and challenges (e.g. First World War, shop girls, typists, mannequins, domestic labour).

Network Conference: Clothes, Working Lives and Social Change (1880-1939)

12-13 September 2014, Bishopsgate Institute (London)

The final network conference brought together archivists and employees in the heritage sector with literary scholars as well as researchers from social and economic history, fashion and design history.