Project launch at Leeds

The EOC launch at Leeds took place on 4-7 December 2013. It involved the core project team (the Principal Investigators and Associated Partners or their representatives, the Postdoctoral Fellow,and the Project Administrator), our internal Leeds affiliates (ULITA - an Archive of International Textiles and the Marks and Spencer Company Archive), academics and students from Leeds and other UK universities, curators, archivists, fashion designers and members of the general public.

The principal component of the launch at Leeds was a public conference, Unpicking the fashion business, on 5 December 2013 which attracted more than 100 registrants. The Project Leader, Regina Lee Blaszczyk, introduced the Enterprise of Culture, while several team members—Véronique Pouillard Maliks from the University of Oslo, Sonnet Stanfill from the Victoria and Albert Museum, Ben Wubs and Postdoctoral Fellow Thierry Maillet from Erasmus University Rotterdam—discussed their historical research. Topics included intellectual property in the French and US fashion industries; the Italian fashion business; and fashion-textile trade fairs such as Première Vision and Interstoff.

The audience was introduced to the role of business archives in fashion history by Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson of the Centre for Business History in Stockholm and by Katharine Carter of the Marks and Spencer Company Archive, which is housed on the campus of the University of Leeds campus.

The afternoon conference was followed by a visit to the Marks and Spencer Company Archive, where delegates networked and toured the permanent exhibition on the history of M&S. Members of the Core EOC Team served as judges for Sustainable Fashion: Next Generation Student Challenge, a competition for design students at the University.

The day concluded at the Leeds University Business School with The Colour Revolution, the Project Leader’s inaugural professorial lecture, and an award to the best design for the ‘Sustainable Fashion’ competition. The evening event attracted a wide audience from departments across the University, including Design as well as Colour Chemistry. As part of the evening, the University’s Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine displayed artefacts relating to the discipline of colour chemistry at Leeds, while ULITA opened its exhibition halls to delegates. Audience surveys from the day were extremely positive.

The second day of the launch at Leeds (6 December) had several components: a tour of a woollen textile mill in Leeds for the Core EOC Team and a few guests; a public lecture by Tony O’Connor, Head of Menswear at M&S business meeting for the PIs; and a planning session for the EOC Core Team.

The factory tour took place at Abraham Moon & Sons, one of the UK’s few extant vertically integrated woollen textile mills whose customers include global fashion brands such as Burberry and Ralph Lauren.

The launch events at Leeds included additional networking activities:

On the morning of 5 December, a senior urban designer at Leeds City Council took members of the Enterprise of Culture team on a walking tour of the historic centre, including Kirkgate Market (where M&S founder Michael Marks once operated a stall) and the city’s famous Victorian shopping arcades.

On 6 December, the Leeds team met with the Stockholm team to plan Swedish Innovations and High Street Fashion, the upcoming EOC event to be hosted by the Centre for Business History in Stockholm on 27-28 March 2014.

The launch was featured on the front page of the University of Leeds’ website and was covered by Drapers, the UK’s major trade journal for the fashion industry [Suzanne Bearne, ‘University of Leeds Launches €1 Research Project into the Fashion Industry’, Drapers (26 November 2013)]. The university’s staff magazine, The Reporter, publicized the project launch in two articles: Unpicking the Fashion Business and A Colourful, Revolutionary Lecture.

Images (from top): Regina Lee Blaszczyk speaking at the launch of the Enterprise of Culture; Dahlia dye bottles from the collection of the Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine; inside Abraham Moon & Sons' mill, Guiseley