Cinderellas in Breeches

Selvedge is a specialist textiles magazine with an international circulation.

An article which documents the biography of a pair of breeches issued as part of the uniform of the Women’s Land Army during the Second World War. It considers the history of corduroy and its decline as a UK textiles industry, garment styling, manufacture and distribution to the land girls. How, where and when they were worn and the postwar biographies of breeches as ‘authentic’ uniform for living history or as stylish vintage fashion.

Amy de la Haye

Research Interests

Fashion in the context of the museum
Fashion and dress history 1850 onwards
Material culture/object-based analysis
Women's Land Army

Current Research

I am writing a book, with LCF colleague Judith Clark, on the discipline of curating fashion for Yale University Press. As a trained dress historian and museum curator I will explore history and current practice and Judith, as a qualified architect and exhibition-maker, will focus upon design and installation issues. It centres around the 1971 Cecil Beaton exhibition at the V&A. To be published 1912.

With Valerie D. Mendes, I am writing a book about the archive of the House of Worth, which is housed at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It contains evidence about the couture house’s later, and lesser known, history from the 1890s through to the 1950s and its recent revival.

I would like to develop another curatorial project, possibly on fashion in the Edwardian era.