It was a beautiful sunny day and after a cuppa at the Festival Hall I wandered off along the south of the river, past many sights, to the Fashion and Textile Museum.
It was my first visit here and I'd taken Gina's advice to go on a Wednesday when there's a free talk at 1pm. The talk and the exhibition were fascinating, tracing the history of 20th century art in textiles.
It's hard to pick favourites but here are a few:
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| 1950's Designs by Andy Warhol |
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| Screen prints by Estelle Laverne (1947), Ben Rose (1951) and Angelo Testa (1947) |
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| 1955 dress designed by Clare McCardell in a fabric designed by Picasso |
I also loved the smaller exhibition by Sarah Campbell 'From Start to Finish' (of course I knew I would as I'm a big fan of her work) - a room showing a film about her and her work and huge boards like this on the wall showing the journey, from start to finish, of a design (this one is for M & S bedding 2013).
After spending quite some time in the museum I then wandered up to Somerset House as I wanted to see the Boro exhibition. These are items made by the Japanese poor who couldn't afford the new cotton cloth so literally pieced together scraps and rags to make clothing and household goods.
Some were quite geometric whereas some really revealed the original shapes of the scraps of cloth.
Outside Somerset house, a costume drama was being filmed, so I stayed and watched for a while.
I have no idea what it was, or if any of the actors are famous, but it was fascinating to watch and the costumes were amazing.
Finally I made my way to John Lewis, really to look at curtains for the lounge but I seemed to end up in the dress fabric department and ended up coming home with this little lot (and no curtains!)
There's a distinct 1950s influence in the fabric I bought isn't there!
