The Fashion Museum has announced that award-winning fashion journalist and educator Iain R Webb will select the Museum’s Dress of the Year 2020.
Each year, the Fashion Museum invites a top name from the fashion industry to select an outfit that encapsulates the prevailing mood of fashion, represents the past year and captures the imagination.
The chosen design becomes part of the Fashion Museum’s world-class collection.
Iain, who currently resides in Bath, grew up in the area and has visited the Museum since his school days when he used to sit and sketch the fashions on display.
From those early beginnings, Iain went on to become an award-winning fashion journalist and, as Professor of Fashion & Design at Kingston School of Art, is now one of this country’s leading fashion educators.
Among his academic roles, he is an associate lecturer at Bath School of Art and Design at Bath Spa University, and Central Saint Martins, where he inspires generations of fashion students, frequently drawing on and referencing the Fashion Museum’s collections.
Iain said: “I am thrilled to be invited to select Dress of the Year 2020, especially as the first person to be asked twice since the scheme’s inauguration in 1963.
“The Fashion Museum has always been part of my life. As a boy visiting the Museum, I could hardly have imagined that I would get to collaborate on so many amazing projects.
“Selecting Dress of the Year 2020 will be a real challenge. The world has changed so dramatically in just one year and the fashion landscape along with it. It will certainly be a formidable task to choose an ensemble that embodies such a unique moment.”
Councillor Paul Crossley, cabinet member for Community Services at Bath & North East Somerset Council, said: “We are delighted that Iain R Webb, who has been such a great supporter of the Fashion Museum over the years, has agreed to select the Dress of the Year 2020.
“We look forward to finding out what he has chosen when the Dress of the Year is revealed later this year. The outfit will go on display at the Fashion Museum when it reopens in March 2021.”
Rosemary Harden, Fashion Museum Manager, said: “Throughout his career Iain has continued to support and to advocate for the Fashion Museum.
“I can think of no one better suited to make the Dress of the Year selection for the Museum in 2020, surely one of the most challenging years in recent history.
“2020 is the year of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter, as well as the continuing critical challenge of the climate emergency and sustainability.
“How has fashion responded to these issues that are shaping and defining our times? How has it joined the conversation, reflected these huge issues, or indeed changed its practise?
“I have no doubt that Iain’s selection of the Dress of the Year 2020 will prove an insightful and stimulating take on this extraordinary year.”
In 1998, Iain selected womenswear by Sonia Rykiel and menswear by Chris Bailey for Jigsaw as the Dress of the Year.
The Dress of the Year 2020 will be announced in December and will go on show at the Fashion Museum when it reopens on 29th March 2021.
