FASHION THEORY

Oriole Cullen and Stephen Jones, courtesy of V&A images

... for an interview that was published recently I met the Victoria & Albert's fashion curator Oriole Cullen, who is a real darling, and very smart on top of that. She told me about the challenges in curating fashion, and staging it properly - and about the expectations of museum goers.

Concerning fashion archives and fashion theory, and the relationship between fashion historians/theoreticians and journalists, she stated the following:

"I think that journalists are forming public taste in a way,
and people look to them because they have got the input for doing that.
In a way, I feel that this isn't our mission since we take one step back to observe and record for the future, to try and make a record of a particular moment in fashion and design. Which is easier said than done, by the way."

Well, absolutely - and since someone recently mentioned that they thought fashion theory was dead (a very Roland Barthes thing to say...) or about to die or whatever - I think if that were the case, fashion would be dead altogether. One should never underestimate the long-term impact and influence of historiography and theory, that's my firm conviction ...