In conversation with Judith Clark

“I love the discipline of exhibiting fashion as much as I did 30 years ago. It never exhausts itself for me …”

 - Judith Clark

 Portrait of Judith Clark, UAL. Photo: Loro Piana.

Judith Clark is a curator and fashion exhibition-maker, and currently Professor of Fashion and Museology at the University of the Arts London. She lectures on the MA Fashion Curation and is a founding Director of the Centre for Fashion Curation. From 1997 to 2002, she ran London’s first experimental fashion gallery in Notting Hill, and in 2020, she launched a new interdisciplinary studio space on Golborne Road, West London. Clark has curated major dress exhibitions internationally across galleries and museums, most recently If You Know You Know: Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence at the Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai (March–May 2025).

We recently caught up with Judith to discuss her latest project, I-01: Aprons, a collaborative residency with cultural historian and writer Carol Tulloch, which took place at Chelsea Space, UAL Chelsea College of Arts.

What originally drew you to fashion curation, and how has your understanding of the role of a curator shifted since your earliest exhibitions?

I studied architecture and wanted to put that together with my interest in fashion’s histories. I have always, therefore, thought of the role of the curator as absolutely embedded within the exhibition space. I guess how it has changed over the years is that I have had the great fortune of having staged exhibitions in many different spaces and countries and have developed a more nuanced practice. I used to be scared of mannequin wigs and props, whereas now I feel excited by the details and collaborative commissions that can be embedded in a project.

How has your approach to storytelling through clothing evolved over the years, and what continues to excite you about this field?

I love the discipline of exhibiting fashion as much as I did 30 years ago. It never exhausts itself for me and fortunately the context has changed. At first it was about making a case for fashion exhibitions, now as many more people recognise it as a distinct field of research it can be politicised more. It can not only say “dress is important” or “this is how dress evolved”; it can ask questions of the fashion industry.

I:01 APRONS residency workshop at Chelsea Space, Chelsea College of Arts (2025). Photo: Kit Lovelock. Courtesy of University of the Arts London

It seems like we are seeing a renewed interest in utilitarian garments, including aprons, on runways and in cultural conversations. Why do you think fashion is returning to function and workwear aesthetics at this moment?

Utilitarian fashion [like all fashions] come and go in cycles. What has been fantastic about looking at aprons and the relationship with fashion, is how it migrates from being a decorative panel, showing flourishes of embroidery, to a protective layer, to a pocket on a ribbon, to a fragment for the Avantgarde to experiment with. And then there is the greater persistence of course with aprons tailor made for specific trades that, given the choreographed nature of the craft, remains more constant.

The apron is a multifaceted garment, connected to domestic life, creativity, and labour. What surprised you most in your research or collaboration with Carol Tulloch about the ways aprons carry meaning across different communities?

The apron spans so many cultures and communities and the workshops we have been running during the residency at Chelsea Space has confirmed this. We have spoken a lot about domesticity, how it has been represented and under-represented in the museum, the apparent modesty of some of the aprons we have studied and their extraordinary power. We have also studied an apron that was de-accessioned from the V&A - this tells us something.

Toby Glanville Cheesemaker Dorset, 1994

This project resists treating the apron as merely nostalgic. How do you balance sentiment with critical analysis when presenting garments that have personal and cultural resonance?

Nostalgia hovers around aprons. There is a picture of a, perhaps lost, domestic space that has been hugely problematic, but that is a powerful carrier of memory. I think it is about repetition. People tend to change their clothes, but aprons are personal. Their use is ritualised, and they carry the stains of everyday life. 

Given how much of fashion curation intersects with broader cultural narratives, race, class, gender, how do you see the industry adapting (or struggling) to engage more deeply with these layered conversations?

Carol Tulloch, who is a professor of dress, diaspora and transnationalism at Chelsea College of Arts, and I have been friends and colleagues for 25 years and the context in which we have worked together has changed seismically in that time. Fashion - about identity, about performativity, about sustainability, about the confluence of cultural systems and hierarchies - is now an area of research that can lead multiple debates. Museums are cumbersome institutions and so the projects for necessary change need to be made more reactive. Both Tulloch and I believe in temporary exhibitions to address this.

As the residency concludes with the publication launch, what do you hope people will take away from this project about the apron?

I guess it is about multiple readings of the apron. We have been incredibly delighted at the interest around this project. From community projects that are inspired by the workshops, to supporting individual researchers, to creating a collection that will be accessible within the BA (Hons) Textile Design course at Chelsea College of Arts, part of University of the Arts London (UAL). We have been clear all along that this wasn’t to be seen as an exhibition, but notes that document curatorial processes and exhibition-making considerations. I have brought mobile structures from my studio upon which to test material in 3D and the small publication is like a fold out map that contains the references we have been quoting along the way: from exquisite portraits of tradespeople by Toby Glanville, and Syd Shelton, a short story by Lydia Davis, books on whitework, the history of dress.

Website: judithclarkstudio.com

Instagram: @prefigured_