A love story — with clothes as heroes

On the weekly ‘opinions’ afternoons, the public would arrive with carefully wrapped parcels holding items to be identified, writes Claire Wilcox. Sometimes this was a length of Brussels lace, sometimes a gown that could be dated not just to the year but to the season, because the fashion then was known:

Once, someone brought a box of medieval leather shoes and everyone was sent home while a specialist in protective clothing and mask was called in, in case they had come from a plague pit.

She was talking of the textile department of the Victoria & Albert Museum, where she had been senior curator of fashion since 2004. Among exhibitions she has organised at the museum are Radical Fashion, Vivienne Westwood, The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957 and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. She also instigated live catwalk events in the museum and has numerous other distinctions.

The Romans, with their hand-spun wool, were as driven mad by clothes moths as we are

In short, Professor Wilcox, a fashion intellectual, not only cares about clothes and the materials they are made of, she has a deep interest in their history. ‘We are caring for the high-quality detritus of the past to understand who we are.’

Some of this is detailed in Patch Work, an extraordinary mixture of museum work interleaved with memoir — her life told in snapshots of a page or two (not always chronologically), followed by a description of, say, Fortuny dresses, pleated like those worn by Greek goddesses, rolled and then coiled to stop the narrow pink, silver-grey, ivory, black and pale blue pleats of finest silk falling out; or a disquisition on clothes moths, which are especially keen on cashmere jumpers. The Romans, she says, with their hand-spun wool, were also driven mad by them.