Exhibition on the Designers Behind Princess Diana’s and Mick Jagger’s Clothes Is Extended
LONDON — “Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style” at the Museum of London Docklands is being extended to July 7 due to its popularity.
The exhibition is a celebration of the Jewish community’s contribution to the British fashion industry and highlights women’s and menswear designers, as well as milliners.
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The showcase was curated by Dr. Lucie Whitmore, the fashion curator at the Museum of London.
‘It was vitally important for us throughout this project, and in the exhibition, to also look at the crossovers between London’s Jewish workers and the other migrant groups who have come to London, particularly to the East End, and found the means to establish themselves in a new city through work in the garment trades,” she said.
The exhibition displays more than just clothes, but also stories of communities coming together.
“A favorite story of ours is of Winston Giscombe, the Jamaican tailor who came to Britain with the Windrush and worked for the Jewish firm Julius & Co. We also have a powerful display of the sewing machine used by Bengali seamstress Anwara Begum, working for both Bangladeshi and Jewish owned factories from her home on Quaker Street,” Whitmore said.
The most famous name in the exhibition is David Sassoon, who dressed Princess Diana more than 70 times and made her cantaloupe-colored going-away outfit on her wedding day, as well as her maternity wardrobe.
However, his links to the British royal family started in 1960, when he and his then-partner Belinda Bellville were asked to make a long dress for 10-year-old Princess Anne, who was to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of Lady Pamela Mountbatten to interior designer David Hicks.
Other names in the exhibition include Netty Spiegel, Otto Lucas and Mr. Fish, who dressed Muhammad Ali for his “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match in 1947 and put Mick Jagger in a dress made for men for his role in the film “Performance.”
The flamboyant designer also worked on the film “There’s a Girl in My Soup,” starring Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn.
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