5 Questions With: London Museum’s Curator of Fashion

If you had a “day in the life” reality show about your job, what would be the most exciting episode?

I’ve been in my job for five and half years, and there is still so much about it that excites me. It can be action-packed, moving, and often quite surreal (especially days spent in the mannequin store) which I think would all make for good reality TV. Perhaps the day that we finished the installation of my exhibition, Fashion City, would make a good episode. The install was complex and myself and our amazing conservation, technicians and exhibitions team had worked flat out for a month. The day got off to a bumpy start, but everything came together perfectly and I got quite emotional as the final case fronts went on. It was particularly poignant as the last object we mounted was the ‘finale’ object in the exhibition – a wedding dress made by a designer who had come to London on the Kindertransport. The moment the exhibition soundtrack came on and the lights went down the atmosphere was transformed, it was a really exciting moment.

What “hack” that solved a problem are you most proud of?

I don’t know if this counts as a ‘hack’, but I often share this tip with new starters at the museum. It’s pretty simple: make a friend in every team. Once you know that there is a friendly face in each part of the organisation who you can go to with quick questions or guidance, everything gets that little bit easier. It also makes work a lot more fun, and you learn so much!

If you could instantly correct one public misconception about museums, what would it be?

I often find that there is such a misunderstanding about what curators do. Curators in a lot of museums very rarely actually get to work on exhibitions, but that is the part of the job most widely known about. We do so much other work (often not glamourous!) – cataloguing objects, answering research enquiries, strategising the future of the collections, acquiring new objects, providing collections knowledge to other teams, and countless other tasks. Collaboration is a huge part of the role, and working creatively with other teams is also my favourite part of the job. I think there is also a misconception that curators are well paid, which is often not the reality. There is a sector-wide problem with museum pay, and it can be a huge barrier to people wanting to pursue a museum career, particularly in London where the cost of living is so high.

It is a big responsibility to tell the stories of objects in the way we do, and these encounters remind me not to forget that.

What’s the most surprising connection you’ve made between seemingly unrelated objects in your collection?

My first display project at the London Museum was pretty surprising in every sense. It centred around the “vegetable dolls” – a group of cloth dolls with vegetables for heads made by a writer named Una Maw. They were the characters for her book, the Vegetable Kingdom, which was written around 1920. I had just finished my PhD on fashion in the First World War when I started researching the dolls, and was surprised to discover that a war fought within the Vegetable Kingdom closely mirrored real events of the First World War. There were refugee Brussel Sprouts from Belgium, Miss Beetroot joined the Women’s Land Army, and the prime minister – Lord Leek – was the spitting image of Lloyd George. As such I was able to make some very unlikely connections with First World War posters and propaganda elsewhere in the collections!

What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from a museum visitor?

Every encounter with visitors teaches me something, but my favourite interactions are the discussions about objects – whether in the stores or on display. It always serves as such an important reminder that there are countless ways to interpret objects, and my reading of them may be completely different to someone else’s. Talking with visitors to the Fashion City exhibition was quite humbling at times, because so many had personal connections to the items on display. It is a big responsibility to tell the stories of objects in the way we do, and these encounters remind me not to forget that.