Inside the Westminster Menswear Archive

by Andrew Groves, Danielle Sprecher

Overview

Inside the Westminster Menswear Archive is a unique guide to the role of garment archives as an industry resource for designers to research and examine both historical garments and the work of their peers.

With exclusive access to over 120 key garments from the Westminster Menswear Archive, spanning the last 275 years, each piece is brilliantly photographed in close-up detail and annotated with curator commentary, to inspire new generations of designers.

Highlights include garments from: A-COLD-WALL*, Ahluwalia, Aitor Throup Studio, Alexander McQueen, Belstaff, Bernhard Willhelm, Burberry, Casely-Hayford, C.P. Company, Carol Christian Poell, Comme des Garçons, Craig Green, Dior Men, Fred Perry, Helmut Lang, Hussein Chalayan, Jean Paul Gaultier, Junya Watanabe, Louis Vuitton, Martine Rose, Meadham Kirchhoff, Nigel Cabourn, Paul Smith, Prada, Stone Island, Umbro, Undercover, Vexed Generation, and Vollebak.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350330979
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/25/2024
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.65(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Andrew Groves is Professor of Fashion Design at the University of Westminster, UK, and the Director of the Westminster Menswear Archive which he established in 2016. It houses over 2500 examples of some of the most significant menswear garments and is used daily by industry and students to inform their design practice.

Danielle Sprecher is the curator of the Westminster Menswear Archive at the University of Westminster, UK. She is a historian with a focus on men's clothing and fashion and has worked as a curator of historic dress and textile collections for museums in the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Forewords
Lorenzo Osti, President, C.P. Company
Jonathan Faiers, Professor of Fashion Thinking, University of Southampton, UK
Dr Samuel Ross, Artistic Director, Founder - A-COLD-WALL*

Introduction

1. Capes
2. Camouflage
3. Black Jackets
4. Travel
5. Underwear
6. Armour
7. Worn
8. Flight Jacket
9. Sportswear
10. Blue Jeans
11. Technology
12. Ceremonial

In Conversation with Mark C. O'Flaherty: The Future of the Westminster Menswear Archive
Company Appendix
Notes
Selected Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

When I met Andrew for the first time in 2017, he told me he wanted to set up the archive, and it was the first time I had heard about a fashion school taking that approach to design education, offering their students the chance to work the same as my father did. It's a game-changing way to form and shape new designers and develop an alternative way of working. I'm very humbled that Andrew was inspired by my father's archive, and I'm grateful that he is offering this unprecedented opportunity to a new generation of designers.” —Lorenzo Osti, from the Foreword

“Far more than acting as a dormant academic study resource, the archive and this book both play an active role in shaping how students and fashion designers are thinking about the social definitions of masculinity today, and in the future.” —Sarah Mower MBE, fashion critic, Vogue

“Andrew Groves and Danielle Sprecher open the door on a tantalising glimpse of the significant collection of the Westminster Menswear Archive. Focussed essays and lavish illustrations make this book a truly valuable insight into a wide range of historic and contemporary, designer and utilitarian menswear garments.” —Dr Shaun Cole, Associate Professor in Fashion, Winchester School of Art, UK

“This rich visual guide makes the diverse, dynamic and important menswear collection of the Westminster Menswear Archive accessible to new audiences. Focusing on construction, design, and the materials of manufacture, it demonstrates how creativity, care and consideration have long characterized the production of men's dress.” —Dr Benjamin Wild, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Cultures, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

“The Westminster Menswear Archive is one of the most important clothing archives ever created; it captures the undervalued, the ordinary, the mass produced and the everyday, with a rigor observed through archival garments. This extraordinary collection has been compiled into a book with writing as unique as the objects themselves.” —Professor Shelley Fox, Donna Karan Professor of Fashion, Parsons School of Design, New York

“The Westminster Menswear Archive allows us a unique, non-hierarchical insight into menswear, a space where it is possible to examine anonymous everyday clothing alongside the work of celebrated designers and retailers and to contrast clothing constructed for utilitarian purposes with clothing made for leisure. Most significantly it collapses the distance between the past and the present, the unique and the commonplace allowing us to understand the history of menswear as a process that is continually evolving.” —Professor Jonathan Faiers, Professor of Fashion Thinking, Winchester School of Art, from the Foreword

From the Publisher