Membership
Treat yourself or a loved one with the gift of Membership: enjoy free access to all exhibitions, access to our Members’ Room, priority booking to evening talks, and much more.
Join today
Lunchtime Lectures: Fashion, Feminism and Fiction around 1900
This event is part of the free V&A Academy Lunchtime Lecture series. No booking is required.
Fashion and feminism were inextricably entwined around 1900, from radical cycling suits to strategically stylish suffragists. Feminist authors – whether writing about dress reform, being caricatured as inelegant or posing for fashionable celebrity portraits – were at the centre of this confluence. Drawing on her recently released book Dress, Feminism and New Woman Writing (Cambria Press, 2025) and V&A objects from corsets to sportswear to posters, Claire Allen-Johnstone will explore first wave feminism’s close and often complex relationship with fashion and the importance of dress to late Victorian and Edwardian literary culture. The lecture will highlight the revealing and enduring nature of these connections, considering developments across the 20th century and beyond.
Claire is an Assistant Curator in the V&A’s Performance, Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department. She is a Trustee at the Museum of Cambridge and Newsletter Editor for the Dress and Textile Specialists network. Her other publications include contributions to Lives of the Great Makers (Thames & Hudson/V&A, 2025), Dior Scarves. Fashion Stories (Thames & Hudson, 2024) and Silk: Fibre, Fabric and Fashion (Thames & Hudson/V&A, 2021), for which she was part of the editorial team.
Header image: Edward Penfield from The New York Public Library A woman sitting on a high-backed red chair, wearing a white blouse with voluminous sleeves and a striped blue and white tie