Fashion & Folly: Developing a Site-Responsive Fashion Exhibition for Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill House
type: CreativeWork
description: This practice-based, cross-disciplinary thesis contributes to the fields of fashion curatorship and fashion studies through the development of a proposal for a siteresponsive exhibition entitled Fashion & Folly. Fashion & Folly revives the eighteenthcentury bibliographic practice of extra-illustration as a metaphor, method and format for site-responsive exhibition-making. The proposal for Fashion & Folly is delivered in the format of an extra-illustrated book created in response to Walpole’s own extra-illustrated version of the guide to Strawberry Hill that he first published in 1774. The Fashion & Folly extra-illustrated proposal is a document of curatorial practice, a working proposal and an experiment in the revival and re-appropriation of a scholarly pastime of Walpole’s era that simultaneously highlights the palimpsestic nature Strawberry Hill, extra-illustration and fashion exhibition-making. Topically, Fashion & Folly examines fashion history through the presentation of four centuries of fashion graphic satire in tandem with historic and contemporary dress interwoven with the history and biography of Strawberry Hill and Horace Walpole. The project posits site-responsive exhibitionmaking as a viable and innovative means for presenting fashion exhibitions in venues other than museums with dress or textile collections. This exhibition model holds the potential to enrich dialogues among historic sites and contemporary fashion curatorial practice. In this project the practice of exhibition-proposal writing becomes the object of interrogation and is temporarily isolated from the practical considerations of mounting a large-scale exhibition, in order to focus on the creative development of the concept. To an independent curator, the period of conceptualising and proposing exhibitions is crucial to successfully procuring and realising exhibitions with host venues or organizations. Research supporting the exhibition’s construction, and the recording of its development…
abstract: This practice-based, cross-disciplinary thesis contributes to the fields of fashion curatorship and fashion studies through the development of a proposal for a siteresponsive exhibition entitled Fashion & Folly. Fashion & Folly revives the eighteenthcentury bibliographic practice of extra-illustration as a metaphor, method and format for site-responsive exhibition-making. The proposal for Fashion & Folly is delivered in the format of an extra-illustrated book created in response to Walpole’s own extra-illustrated version of the guide to Strawberry Hill that he first published in 1774. The Fashion & Folly extra-illustrated proposal is a document of curatorial practice, a working proposal and an experiment in the revival and re-appropriation of a scholarly pastime of Walpole’s era that simultaneously highlights the palimpsestic nature Strawberry Hill, extra-illustration and fashion exhibition-making. Topically, Fashion & Folly examines fashion history through the presentation of four centuries of fashion graphic satire in tandem with historic and contemporary dress interwoven with the history and biography of Strawberry Hill and Horace Walpole. The project posits site-responsive exhibitionmaking as a viable and innovative means for presenting fashion exhibitions in venues other than museums with dress or textile collections. This exhibition model holds the potential to enrich dialogues among historic sites and contemporary fashion curatorial practice. In this project the practice of exhibition-proposal writing becomes the object of interrogation and is temporarily isolated from the practical considerations of mounting a large-scale exhibition, in order to focus on the creative development of the concept. To an independent curator, the period of conceptualising and proposing exhibitions is crucial to successfully procuring and realising exhibitions with host venues or organizations. Research supporting the exhibition’s construction, and the recording of its development…
author: Rossi-Camus, Jennifer
language: en
keywords: Design Practice
identifier: Rossi-Camus, Jennifer <https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/view/creators/Rossi-Camus=3AJennifer=3A=3A.html> (2019) Fashion & Folly: Developing a Site-Responsive Fashion Exhibition for Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill House. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London.
date published: 2019-01
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:00:43Z
provider: University of the Arts London
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of the Arts London