Fiction In Fashion

23.10.2013 | Culture | BY:

This week the Fashion and Textile Museum opens a new exhibition that takes a look at the literature adored by fashionable women since the 1950’s. Curated by writer and journalist Sarah Vine the selection features novels such as Bonjour TristesseLady Chatterley’s LoverCouplesLace and The Secret History. The fiction in question has been choosen from the archives of Penguin Books, displayed together with designs by British couture house Bellville Sassoon, they explore the changing taste of some of Britain’s most glamourous women across six decades. With both literary classics and conterversal titles alike, authors such as L.P. Hartley and Truman Capote to Shirley Conran, Marian Keyes and Zadie Smith are highlighted, giving us an alternative view into a certain social history.

‘The design of Penguin paperbacks has always both captured and contributed to the visual culture of the day, connecting writers both old and new with the contemporary reader,” says Joanna Prior, Managing Director of Penguin General.  “This selection of novels, alongside the glamorous Bellville Sassoon dresses on show, provides a glimpse of what the fashionable, style-conscious woman was reading during these decades.’

Fiction in Fashion is open until 11 January 2014.

www.ftmlondon.org

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