Flying the flag for city’s fashion industry
AN exclusive, hand-made latex dress celebrating Plymouth’s legacy is to be unveiled at The Box museum and gallery tomorrow.
Plymouth-based global latex clothing brand Westward Bound produced the dress which will sit within The Box’s Dress Code collection – Plymouth’s first exhibition dedicated to fashion.
The museum says including the modern dress in its collection shows The Box encompasses everything from lace to latex.
The dress, titled ‘Brand Me, Flag Me’, is green, black and white in a nod to Devon’s heritage and also represents the city’s history of garment manufacture. It features a white neck to waist harness to reflect Westward Bound’s history.
Steve Beech, founder and managing director of Westward Bound, was invited to create a dress specifically for The Box. He said: “We went for a relatable, funky-punky vibe for this dress. We want to reshape public thinking. People nowadays have been polluted into assuming that anything that isn’t modern, or that you can buy or sell, isn’t important.
“We’ve been made to think that knowledge is boring. Culture is fundamentally important, and being informed isn’t dull. It is power!
“Gallery connections need to be alive. You need to capture people’s imagination, and our dress has very much done that.”
Terah Walkup, Curator of Art at The Box, added: “We are acquiring the ‘Brand Me’ dress because of Westward Bound’s local history and importance, and its representation of 21st-century fashion.
“Our dress history collection has items from the 1700s to 1970s, but very little material after that. We wanted to acquire this dress to represent the contemporary production of fashion and garments in Plymouth to continue the story of Plymouth’s history of garment manufacture represented in our collections.”
In addition to creating this dress, Westward Bound have also created two dresses to represent The Box’s Cottonian Collection – one in aubergine and gold and another in classic, creamy-white with a mixture of Elizabethan and Victorian design styles.
The Cottonian Collection contains several thousand fine and rare prints, drawings and watercolours from across the world, including works by Plympton-born, renowned 18th-century portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds.
It was also awarded national Designated Status by The Arts Council England in 1998, meaning that it’s one of the UK’s most important collections.
Images of Westward Bound’s dresses against the backdrop of Sir Joshua’s paintings will be hung within this collection.
Mr Beech said: “A lot of thought went into these dresses because it meant an enormous amount.
“For a brief moment, you’re a part of the history of that collection, and you have to be serious about that.
“We’re presenting these dresses in a very traditional context and paying homage to an iconic collection. We are very much embracing it and looking at how we can integrate ourselves into it because it’s a great honour to leave our mark on it.”
The Brand Me – Flag Me dress will be on display at The Box’s Dress Code exhibition until September 4.