Saturday 15 February 2025

Bath & County Club, Queen's Parade, Queen Square, Bath BA1 2NJ

Sally has worked as a designer for Issey Miyake and freelance for Warehouse and became a Senior Lecturer at Liverpool Metropolitan University and Cardiff University. Her academic research continues into the work of designeers such as Ossie Clark, Celia Birtwell and Anthony Price.

Sally is the recipient of four Society of Antiquities Janet Arnold Awards for her research into 1960’s and early 1970’s UK fashion. She studied fashion and textiles at Winchester School of Art and then pattern cutting at the London college of Fashion and Fashion History.

She is also the recepient of a Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries of London for 2024 and she will be looking at the influence of North African traditional dress on the work of Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark 1969-1975.

The designer Alexander McQueen was, and remains, a unique talent and a fashion visionary whose exacting, unusual and uncompromising technical ability, combined with an extraordinary artistic language took British fashion to a whole other level: to the realms of high art.

His ability to cut and execute his extraordinary vision and collections set him apart at a young age: apprenticed to a heritage tailor in Saville Row, McQueen ascended quickly to the world-renowned MA in Central St Martins, and on to a career at Givenchy as Head designer and the upper echelons of Paris Haute Couture.

Themes of violence in nature, anxiety and even death pervaded his collections – a powerful aesthetic when combined with exquisitely embroidered and printed textile and macabre imagery. Themes such as those were unusual and disturbing in equal measure – bringing a whole ‘otherness’ to fashion and the fashion industry that was timely and equally of its time. Born in the east end of London, he battled to gain access to the rarefied world of fashion, always knowing that that was where his talent belonged. Of his own media image as the bad boy he said: ‘Yes there has been this big thing about the east end yob made good… at the end of the day you’re a good designer or not and it doesn’t matter where you come from… I don’t think you become a good designer, or a great designer, or whatever. To me, you just are one.’

A uniquely talented artist, he did gain access to that world; a world that ultimately destroyed him. In this talk we will touch on his unique contribution and the lasting impact of his legacy.

Event Programme

14:00 AGM
14:30 Tea/coffee break
15:00 Sally Chidlow Grant's talk
16:00 Close

Price Per Person: Member Free, Non Member £10.00

Included:

Tea/coffee