LUNCHTIME LECTURE – Sophie Oliver ‘What the Dresses Know’
House of Books and Friends is excited to introduce the next guest for their ‘Lunchtime Lecture’ series: Sophie Oliver, author of What the Dresses Know: A women’s history of modernism told through clothes. Join us on 10th November to hear Sophie discuss her book.
The talk will begin at 1pm and last for 1 hour.
Tickets
As always, we have a limited amount of complimentary tickets for this event for anyone who needs it. Please contact us directly at bookworms@houseofbooksandfriends.com or call 07597365380.
About the book
Pioneering women were at the heart of the movement known as modernism. In What the dresses know, Sophie Oliver offers a new account of their radical experiments and extraordinary lives, told through the clothes they made and wore.
From a dress Vanessa Bell rescued from the London Blitz to Frida Kahlo’s huipiles and a waistcoat embroidered for Gertrude Stein by Alice B. Toklas, these special objects tell a story of artists seeking transformation. But getting dressed is rarely straightforward. Modernist women used clothes to think through the contradictions of the modern world: the inequalities of industrialisation, the terrible conformities demanded by fascism and racism and the call of feminists, socialists and avant-gardists to act differently and take up new forms of art.
What the dresses know is an exhilarating account of women’s bold attempts to make history during years of tumultuous change. A distinctive new voice in cultural criticism, Sophie Oliver uses clothes to explore the challenges modernist women faced – and to understand her own impulses in writing about them.