Bath in Fashion Returns

Bath in Fashion 2016 brings couture and colour to the World Heritage city of Bath.

Bath in Fashion (18-24 April) inspires and informs with a varied programme of craft and design-led talks, workshops, installations and a colourful yarn bomb. Colour and textiles are interwoven into the festival agenda with a line-up of top fashion designers and media speakers including fashion icon Zandra Rhodes, Erdem, Julien MacDonald and Nicholas Oakwell. Tickets are on sale from 22nd February 2016.

This year the RUH Forever Friends Cancer Care campaign has been chosen as the nominated charity Bath in Fashion. Queen of crochet, Emma Leith will once again be creating a colourful yarn bomb on Milsom Street inspired by the vibrant colours of Zandra Rhodes, a headline speaker at the festival. “Having been recently diagnosed with breast cancer, I am thrilled that we can support the RUH in raising awareness of their Cancer Care appeal which will provide a much needed facility for the region” said Emma Leith. Generously Sponsored by Mulberry, flower posts in the heart of the World Heritage city will be wrapped in crocheted scarves and adorned with a spectacular arrangement of vibrant flowers using yarn that been kindly donated by Rico Design.

Regular community crochet with coffee sessions take place in Carluccio’s in Milsom Place, Bath and Bath in Fashion is calling out to crochet enthusiasts across the country to get involved with the project (download the pattern from emmaleith.co.uk).

Emma Leith - Crochet for Cancer

Working with the RUH community team, crochet fans are being invited to crochet a flower and patients at the hospital will also be able to get involved in a series of workshops.  

Highlights of the festival include Pattern talks curated by Bath Spa University: Patternity, Darkroom and Eley Kishimoto and the University’s Designer in Residence Joe Richards talking about accessing the archive at Bath’s Fashion Museum , an invaluable resource to students of Fashion Design for which Bath Spa University has an outstanding reputation.  Joe will also be in conversation with The Telegraph’s Fashion Features Director, Kate Finnigan about his most recent collection, inspired by the William Morris archive.

Nautical is always on trend and West country brand, Seasalt will be holding a Sailor Shirt Embellishment Workshop;  the Royal School of Needlework is running a millinery workshop and Yarn bomb artist Emma Leith offers the opportunity to crochet a colourful basket.

Susan Kay-Williams, Chief Executive of the Royal School of Needlework will deliver a guest lecture on the types of embroidery popular in fashion. Liberty, bastion of Arts and Crafts, will be explored by Cleo and Mark Butterfield owners of the C20 Vintage Fashion Archive used for the recent Liberty exhibition at the Fashion & Textiles Museum, in conversation with fashion historian and author NJ Stevenson.

The Fashion Museum with its new exhibition “The History of Fashion in 100 Objects” is offering a series if intimate “Behind the Scenes” tours with curator Rosemary Harden and hosting a talk by Sir Roy Strong.

A Wearable Tech Masterclass examines the state-of-the-art in the exciting fusion of fashion with technology and Bath’s Bonnie Binary founder Annie Lywood will be holding an e-textiles workshop exploring this fast-moving area of design. 

A Nicolas Oakwell couture gown, commissioned by No 10’s GREAT Britain campaign to showcase British couture design around the globe, is heading for Bath in April.  This exquisite gown, which took 2320 hours and 90 metres of fabric to create is embellished with hundreds of rubies and 200,000 ostrich feathers, each of which were hand sewn in place by students of the Royal School of Needlework. Fashion illustrator, David Downton will be talking about this project and his monograph “Portraits of The World’s Most Stylish Women”.

Bath in Fashion, funded by The Bath Business Improvement District (BID) will be running workshops, exhibitions, catwalks, talks and shopping events from 18-24 April with tickets on sale from 22nd February, please see bathinfashion.co.uk for details.

For media enquiries and images please contact Nicky Hancock on 01225 332299 or e-mail: [email protected]