The Rise of Mass Fashion in the Black Country, Talk by Dr Jenny Gilbert 

Artsfest / Artsfest 2020 / The Rise of Mass Fashion in the Black Country, Talk by Dr Jenny Gilbert

As part of Artsfest Online, the University of Wolverhampton is excited to bring you a talk by Dr Jenny Gilbert on The Hodson Shop Collection: The Rise of Mass Fashion in the Black Country.

E.A and F.S Hodson General and Fancy Drapers traded in Willenhall from 1920 to around 1971. The shop was located in the front room of the Hodson family home and ran by sisters Edith and Flora Hodson. Following Flora’s death in 1983, over 5,000 items of unsold shop stock were acquired by Walsall Museum. The Hodson Shop Collection now forms one of the UK’s most significant collections of unworn and everyday clothing.

In this talk, Jenny Gilbert introduces the collection and the archive that accompanies it. Items from the collection will be shown to chart how, during the period 1920-1960s, fashion radically changed and became an integral part of working people’s everyday lives in the Black Country. Jenny will also draw on her research into the Birmingham wholesale clothing trade to show how ideas about fashion and taste were communicated between Birmingham and the Black Country.

Jenny completed her AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Wolverhampton in 2016. She has since worked as a lecturer in Design Cultures at De Montfort University, Leicester before returning to the Black Country in 2019 to coordinate the Black Country Studies Centre, a partnership between the University of Wolverhampton and Black Country Living Museum. She also works as a researcher at the BCLM and is an Honorary Research Fellow in History and Cultures at the University of Birmingham.

Twitter: @DrJenGilbert 

Artsfest 2020

Beatrice Warde's VE Day Diary - A reading by Jessica Glaser / Liz Berry and Tom Hicks: In Conversation / In Conversation: Artist Dean Kelland and James Latunji-Cockbill Part 1 / Dr Max Stewart and Glass Artist Allister Malcolm in Conversation / Lisa Blower and Rob Francis in conversation / Louise Fenton - Lethal in Lace: The Story of a Witchcraft Poppet / Finding our Funny Roots: delving into Black Country humour / Books Across the Sea - Talk by Jessica Glaser / Dr Dean Kelland and James Latunji-Cockbill from IKON In conversation Pt2 / The Rise of Mass Fashion in the Black Country, Talk by Dr Jenny Gilbert / VJ Day Diary of Beatrice Warde - Reading By Jessica Glaser / Printing and Print Culture in the Midlands: a Webinar / Black Country Geopoetics, Talk and Workshop with Writer R.M. Francis / The Haunted and Cursed Dolls in Greyfriars Bothy, Dr Louise Fenton / Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles at Seventy, a talk by Dr Phil Nichols / Pen, Print and Communication in the Eighteenth Century: Webinar Book / We are Invisible, We are Visible / HoPIN Launch Event (History of the Printed Image Network) / 'Somehow', Poetry Reading and Talk with Helen Calcutt / Myriad Editions Literary Salon / Liz Berry Chats Dialect and Poetry with R. M. Francis