Prof Lou Taylor

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Lou Taylor

           

arts research University of Brighton

E.P.Taylor@brighton.ac.uk

Professor Lou Taylor's work over the last twenty years has focused on the development of critical approaches to the discussion of the objects of clothing in their historical, material culture and museology settings, through teaching, publishing, exhibition curating and PhD supervision. Her first book Mourning Dress, A Costume and Social History was published by Allen and Unwin in 1983.

Taylor has written an account of her views on dress history methodologies and the collection, display and interpretation of dress in museums, in her two books:The Study of Dress History, 2002, and Establishing Dress History, 2005, both published by Manchester University Press. Establishing Dress History deals with the historiography of dress history and the creation and interpretation of dress collections in museums of every kind. Alyea, in the American Journal, Dress, 1/32 2005 noted: "[Taylor] highlights just this: how do the conscious and unconscious aims of the curator or institution affect what is collected, what is excluded, and how a collection is maintained, studied and exhibited. The call to self-awareness is the fundamental lesson for future generations of curators."

Taylor's application of material culture and consumption studies has positively transformed dress history. She is driven by the conviction that transdisciplinary approaches to the construction of history, including working with surviving garments, offers a fresh, close understanding of the cultural 'eye' of a specific period or community. Taylor also has a longstanding interest in the history of the teaching of fashion in British art Schools (IHTP 2007).

She works internationally with dress historians in New York, with Valerie Steele (FIT paper 2006); in Paris with Veillon and Ruffat of the IHTTP; (chapter, 2007 and conference paper, 2005); in Copenhagen with the Designskole (paper 2005); in Stockholm with the Swedish Ethnographers Association (Wiman 2005) and in Warsaw with the Polish Academy of Sciences (2002 ' Kultura i Spoleczenstwo) and Warsaw Academy of Fine Art (paper 2006). And by invitation she has worked with colleagues in Milan and in Paris - (the IHTP Dress History Group) on issues of design, material culture and national identity related to British ‘youthquake’ fashion in the the1960s.