talk
In Conversation with Anna Robbins
Thursday 17 September
Join us for a special Members’ evening celebrating costume design
Award-nominated Scottish costume designer Anna Robbins will share her experience of creating some of the most unforgettable looks of Downton Abbey*Italic, exploring the artistry of fashion on screen and its links to the early twentieth century runways in [*Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show**](/whatson/exhibitions/catwalk-the-art-of-the-fashion-show). Anna will be joined by V&A Dundee curator Kirsty Hassard for this insightful in-conversation event.
The evening will include a short audience Q&A, followed by the chance to explore Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show after hours with your guests, making this a memorable opportunity to experience the exhibition through the lens of fashion history, design and spectacle.
About the speakers
Anna Robbins
Anna Robbins is a Scottish multidisciplinary designer, based in London, working within the worlds of costume, fashion and textiles. Anna has costume designed numerous award winning productions, building a strong reputation for creative flair and excellence and continues to work across both period and contemporary genres in film and television.
Taking over as costume designer for Downton Abbey in 2013, Anna designed the fifth and sixth series, earning her two Primetime Emmy nominations. Since then Anna has gone on to design features ‘Wild Rose’, ‘The Father’, ‘Last Letter From Your Lover’ and the widely anticipated ‘Downton Abbey’ feature films which have earned her a Critics Choice Award nomination and CDGA nomination in 2020 and 2025.
Alongside costume, Anna works as a design and image consultant and is a fashion and textiles designer. Anna has worked with Fortuny, the legendary Venetian textiles house, for a number of years within textile development. Anna has led a small team to rediscover the infamous Fortuny pleat bringing an iconic textile back into circulation a century on from its inception.
Anna has recently completed filming on feature films Frank and Percy, starring Ian McKellen and Roger Allam and The Housekeeper, based on the real life of Daphne du Maurier, directed by Richard Eyre and starring Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter.
Kirsty Hassard
Kirsty Hassard is a senior curator and fashion historian at V&A Dundee, and previously worked in the Furniture, Textiles and Fashion department at V&A South Kensington, where she was assistant curator on the Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion exhibition.
At V&A Dundee, she co-curated the museum’s flagship Tartan exhibition, as well as Night Fever: Designing Club Culture, Mary Quant, and Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show, and contributed to its accompanying publication.
She has published on women and work, fashion journalist Frances Farquharson, and the relationship between fashion and print culture in the eighteenth century.