Clothing
Childhood
Creativity
2021–2022
A research network bringing together scholars, curators, and creatives to explore new approaches to children’s clothing in museums and in the wider world.
About the Project
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Today children’s clothing is a vibrant and lucrative part of the global fashion industry, and costume brings histories and ideas to life in museums, schools, and heritage sites. Debates over how children and young people wear clothes—from school dress codes to ethical consumption to fancy dress—show that children's dress is being taken more seriously than ever before.
This network, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, created new approaches to the flourishing interest in clothing and childhood through a series of interdisciplinary events in 2021 and 2022. The project focused in particular on the relationship between children's clothing, design, agency, and creativity.
The network works to:
Generate fresh perspectives on the role of dress in childhood across time
Explore how dress can stimulate the imagination of young museum visitors
Inform curatorial strategies and practices for future exhibitions on children's dress
Place childhood studies and fashion theory in dialogue
Centralize dress in the wider field of childhood studies
Project Partners
Kindly supported by AHRC Research Networking grant AH/V001787/1.
Image above: Puzzleware workshop by Almaborealis. / Rose + Julien Photography 2019.