Your Wardrobe Unlock'd

This month we interview Hilary Davidson, a curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London.

British costumier Suzi Clarke has over 35 years' experience working with costume for theatre, including the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal National Theatre, Amsterdam Opera, film, T.V., museums, and for static displays, re-enactors, historical dancers and costumed interpreters.

Friend of both Jean Hunnisett and Janet Arnold, she talks a bit about them and shares some tips with us.

This month, our interviewee tells us all about her work as a designer and maker of fine historical costumes.

Laurie Tavan's obsession with costuming comes as something of a surprise to many people, including herself. She trained in the life sciences at Cornell University, diving into study of ornithology and marine ecology with great enthusiasm. Nobody would have expected that just a few years after leaving school for the "real world," she would be on another track entirely, having fallen completely in love with historical costuming. She approached it with her signature single-minded zeal, personifying the concept that "anything worth doing is worth overdoing." She brings to costuming a potent blend of rigorous historical research and free-spirited artistic drive.

Costuming projects tend to fall, more or less, into one of two categories: there are those projects in which we strive for historical accuracy and detailed facts, and there are those in which we depart on a tangent, using our own ideas to create a personal but fictional vision.

Neither is a less worthy pursuit than the other, but the fictional is often dismissed as sloppy or simply wrong. Extraordinary Belgian artist Viona Ielegems is here to show us otherwise. Her work demonstrates the enormous value in playing with fact to create a compelling and beautiful fiction...

Katherine Caron-Greig is the epitome of the obsessed amateur costumer. A teacher by trade, she spends an inordinate amount of her free time collecting and recreating historical costumes for her own amusement.

Despite her taxing profession, she seems to retain boundless energy for her sewing and now boasts a historic wardrobe of dizzying proportions, most of which you can see for yourself at her website, www.koshka-the-cat.com.

With experience of almost every historical period of clothing from the 1550s to the 1950s, Katherine has a special understanding of the pitfalls and opportunities that await the passionate hobbyist.