A collaborative embroidery project bringing women together to tell their stories through fabric and stitches.
We are very lucky in the UK to have the fabulous Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey Village, London founded by the wonderful Dame Zandra Rhodes in 2003. It is the only UK museum dedicated to showcasing contemporary fashion and textile design and is really worth a visit.
I often visit the museum for workshops or exhibitions and was reminded of ‘The Royal School of Needlework — From Crown to Catwalk’ which featured The Red Dress when Erie asked the question.
Inspired by the British artist Kirstie Macleod the dress started as a project seeking to create a dialogue through embroidery. Its aim is to unite people around the world.
Using millions of embroidery stitches by 372 embroiderers from 50 countries it is a collaborative project which took fourteen years to complete. Kirstie set out to create an artistic platform for women, many of who are vulnerable and live in poverty, to tell their stories through embroidery.
Whilst admiring the work on this beautiful dress, I was imagining the wonderful stories they would have told each other as they worked, the conversations and maybe new relationships they would have made. I thought about all the times I have come together with other women to embroider, sew or bead and the quietness created by the concentration and how it is pricked, like a needle into cloth, by the occasional conversation or song.
From 2009 to 2023, sections of the dress travelled the globe and were continuously embroidered. Made from 85 pieces of burgundy silk dupion, the dress was worked on by 363 women, 7 men and 2 non-binary artists from 50 countries. All of whom were paid and received a portion of the income from the exhibitions. Some of the embroideries were added by visitors to the exhibitions. Some of those involved in the overall project are professionals but many picked up an embroidery needle for the first time to create expressions of their own cultural and traditional experiences. The dress incorporates styles of complex embroidery used for hundreds of years juxtaposed with simple stitches which convey events from the women’s experience.
Although now complete, The Red Dress will continue to be exhibited in venues around the world. Go to see it if you get the chance.
See more of The Red Dress here
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