The way we wore then

If pinnies culd talk, what would they tell us?

“I think there are a lot of stories pinnies could talk about,” says Christopher Bailey, the Halifax lad who is now chief creative officer of world-renowned British luxury brand Burberry.

Bailey is also patron of the Yorkshire Fashion Archive, a resource created by the University of Leeds School of Design. which collects items of clothing to provide a unique historical and cultural record of Yorkshire life in the 20th century.

What’s important, he says, is having people understand that there is a soul behind clothes. “There is a beautiful craft, there is function and design. There’s such skill that goes behind making clothes, but there’s a real soul and I think that’s what this archive does – it really talks about the stories and the romance behind everything that we own.”

Bailey, who describes himself as a “very, very proud Yorkshireman”, has donated four Yorkshire-made Burberry trench coats to the archive, which is staging an exhibition that opens on Saturday at Salts Mill in Saltaire.

“My roots are hugely important to me,” he says. “We still have our factory in Castleford and have almost 700 people in that factory so we are very much a part of this community as well. This is something that we all need to get behind and be proud of.”

The exhibition will show pieces that represent what the archive offers, including wedding dresses and a Crombie coat worn by a mill owner, explains Claire Watson, senior teaching fellow in fashion at the university’s School of Design.

“It’s garments that have been either worn or made in Yorkshire, so that it’s more about the wearer than the garment,” she says. “We want to know about when they were worn, why they were worn, where they bought them. When you get people talking about their clothes, they start to reveal so much more about themselves. They say, ‘Oh, you won’t want to hear this,’ but yes – I do. We want to stress that it’s not just about posh frocks but people do keep special pieces, wedding dresses, ball gowns.”

Pinnies, she says, would be very welcome, as would items that reflect Yorkshire’s multi-cultural diversity.

Most people, she points out, had a family connection to the textile industry, working in retail or cloth manufacture. “It reveals such a lot about Yorkshire,” she says. “A lot has been made at home because they were brought up with dress-making skills.

David Backhouse, leader in fashion design at the university, says the archive is providing a vital resource for budding students: “We do a project in product design where a student looks at the archive garments and then re-engineers them. It makes them think out of the box.”

GARMENT GIFTS GO ON SHOW

dress Rehearsal: An Exhibition of Garments from the Yorkshire Fashion Archive runs from Saturday, April 16, to Sunday, May 15, at Gallery 2, Salts Mill in Saltaire. The exhibition showcases pieces donated to the archive, often supported with photos.

There is also a website which will become a database of items, on www.yorkshirefashionarchive.org.

To donate, call the School of Design on 0113 343 3793.