Online bookings are now closed, doorsales will be available outside the theatre from 4.30pm today.
A surprising amount of world fashion is bound up with botanical knowledge. The flower has been central to fashion’s forms and its supports – textiles – in nearly all cultures. The flower is much more than a motif. Subject to artful cultivation since ancient times, flowers indicated passion and hope in the middle ages, they were collected and traded in the Renaissance, classified and hybridised in the Enlightenment, and made sentimental, domestic and erotic in the 19th and 20th centuries. Learn how references to floriate forms within fashionable dress contributed to the creation of patterns of thought, status, gender and nation. Decide whether flowers are for you, or not.
The second in the series of lectures – Fashion matters: fashion, art and society
Save $25 when you sign up to the combo ticket for all remaining 5 sessions!
Fashion is all around us: it can enable change as well as challenge and even divide us. What is fashion: mirror, barometer or change agent? This lecture series opens up the world of fashion across cultures and societies. It explores how western fashion developed through an interaction with Asia and other regions. Understand better the intimate embrace of art and fashion. Learn how to read clothes from the past. Study images of fine fashion, jewels and accessories. Access rare and beautiful items of fashion, including many from private collections. Learn about the fashion worlds of men and women alike, from the middle ages to today. Find your own identities through fashion.
Dr Peter McNeil is a world figure in fashion research and has worked globally between Australia, Sweden and Finland. Currently Distinguished Professor of Design History at University of Technology Sydney and Finland Distinguished Professor at Aalto University, he was Foundation Professor of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University for ten years. He is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and heads its ‘Arts’ Section. An award winning author and sought-after public speaker, he has published dozens of works on fashion including the bestselling Shoes (with G Riello 2006; 2011). Recent works include Luxury: A Rich History (with G Riello 2016) and Pretty Gentlemen: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World (Yale, 2018). His works have been translated into many languages including Chinese and Hebrew. He was main writer for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s touring exhibition Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear 1715-2015, the largest show of men’s fashion ever assembled.