Dr Elizabeth Currie

Visiting Research Fellow

e.currie@vam.ac.uk

Women Textile Designers of the Twentieth Century

I am a lecturer and author specializing in the history of textiles and fashion. I currently teach at Central St Martins and have previously held various roles at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I have published widely on fashion and design for general and specialist audiences. Together with V&A curators, I am writing the first book to offer an overview of women’s role as textile designers throughout the twentieth century. It will explore printed, woven, and embroidered fabrics for furnishings and fashion and contain profiles of well-known names, such as May Morris, Anni Albers, and Althea McNish, alongside more overlooked designers, from countries around the world.

Selected publications

Street Style: Art and Dress in the Time of Caravaggio (Reaktion Books, forthcoming 2025)

Editor and introduction author, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, Vol. 3: Fashion in the Renaissance (1450-1650) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)

Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)

‘Braggadocio: A Brief History of Swagger’ in Claire Wilcox and Rosalind McKever, eds., Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2022), pp. 104-113

Claire Wilcox & Elizabeth Currie (contributor), Bags (Thames and Hudson, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2017)