Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum exploring the archive, studio and creative process of the designer Zandra Rhodes. As the museum holds the Zandra Rhodes archive this was inevitably just a snap shop of some aspects of her work and focused on bead work, the Conceptual Chic collection of 1977, her post punk collection and her most recent work. The bead work was spectacular and it was interesting to see the process behind it of printing the fabric, sending it to India for the beading to be done and then making up the garments in the studio. I was also interested to see that the design of fabric helps to create the shape of the finished garment. The Conceptual Chic collection was her punk collection although she says she was never a punk she was looking more at Surrealism and the work of Elsa Schiaparelli. Her latest work has seen her starting to work with digital rather than hand printing and using her won sketches to create a fabric and dres...

Colourful exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum of the work of Kaffe Fassett. You could not fail to be hit by the colour in this beautifully displayed exhibition which mixed patchwork quilts, needlepoint, knitting and paintings culminating in “The Orangery” a physical still life mixing all aspects of his work into a modern country house interior. The film was very interesting and well worth a watch to add depth to the objects. I was fascinating to hear him say that he felt he’d not really understood colour as a painter he only really discovered how colours worked together when he started working in yarn. He described pattern as “colours moving around”. It did leave you thinking of him as an artist rather than a designer. The real discovery was his paintings which were still lives of lots of similar objects either in contrasting or complementary colours. Of course I particularly liked the blue and white section!

Glamorous exhibition at the London Fashion and Textile Museum of the work of the designers Normal Hartnell and Hardy Amies who both designed for the Queen at various stages in their careers looking at how they established London as a centre of couture at the start of the 20th century. I would have liked a bit more context with the outfits but the clothes were beautifully displayed and it was lovely that you could get so close and they were not behind glass. It was easy to see the detail on the items both the classically plain the luscious embroidery. I would say though that everything would have looked even more glamorous if the gallery had not smelly so strongly of curry! It was quite distracting!   The 1950s section was the most elegant including a beautiful copper coloured strapless cocktail dress. I also liked a funky 60s mini coat in pale blue a gold. There was also a nice section of hats by Frederick Fox including a copy of the Queen’s silver jubilee bell ha...