Kate Strasdin Q&A

Kate Strasdin is a dress and lecturer in Cultural Studies at Falmouth University and is a freelance consultant for dress and textile exhibitions. In 2016 she was given an anonymous album full of annotated dress swatches that had been kept in a trunk for over fifty years, its original keeper unknown. Kate spent the next six years unravelling the secrets of this album, and the lives of the people within a small handwritten caption and I decided to start deciphering them and see if I could find out more.

How did you discover who the creator of the diary was?

One of the swatches in the book mentioned the Preston Guild and so immediately Lancashire became a possibility. Once I had discovered Anne’s marriage certificate I was able to locate her place in the world and her life as a Lancashire woman.

How much research went into uncovering the story of Anne Sykes?

What was the inspiration behind writing The Dress Diary?

In 2016 I was given the album of fabric swatches by an elderly lacemaker who had herself been given the book in London in the 1960s. It had turned up on a junk stall in Camden Market with no provenance, no clues at all as to its origins. Above each of the fabric swatches in the album was

It took me the better part of six years to piece together the life stories of Anne Sykes, her husband Adam and a whole host of other people, all of whom were named in Anne’s dress diary. Although the swatches themselves are small they revealed all of life’s colour - love, loss, travel, home. It became a detective story as much as an historical study. Towards the end of the research and after lockdowns had been lifted I was able to travel to Lancashire and visit some of the places that Anne lived during her life.

How does it connect with Lancashire?

I discovered that Anne Sykes was born in Clitheroe in 1816. She was the daughter of a local mill owner, James Burton, and spent her early years in Tyldesley living in Burton House on Factory Street. After her marriage she spent almost ten years living abroad, first in Singapore and then in Shanghai, before returning to the county of her birth. She and Adam spent the rest of their lives in Lancashire. For twenty years they lived in a house near Bashall Eaves before retiring to the coast, first to Lytham and then finally to a large house called The Knowle in Bispham. The book is really a story of the Lancashire textile industry and how their lives were intertwined with the industry there.

What was the most surprising story or piece of information you came across during this journey?

Part way through the diary there is a very ordinary looking piece of red wool which is completely plain compared to all of the patterned silks and cottons that fill the album. Above this piece of wool the caption reads ‘Part of the pirate flag taken by the Admiral in Borneo, 1845’ At this point Anne was living in Singapore with Adam who was a merchant. I was able to discover that Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane was on anti-piracy duties in the region and frequently visited Singapore, meeting Anne somewhere along the way.

What does this book teach readers? How is it relevant today?

In part it is about the network of friends and family that enriched Anne’s life and how she memorialised them in her album, the importance of those relationships that endure today. It is also about the value of cloth. In an era when we have ceased to treasure clothes in the same way, we could learn a great deal about investing in the clothes we wear; reusing, mending and caring for them. It focuses on industries that have largely disappeared as well. Skills such as the calico printing that was an important part of Lancashire’s heritage feature often. Printed cottons are numerous in the book and sometimes local printworks such as Primrose Printworks and Broad Oak are mentioned by name.

What is your favourite piece of cloth in the book and why?

It has to be the single swatch of cotton above which Anne identified herself as the maker of the diary. In all 2000 of the swatches in the album, she only writes of herself in the first person this once and it was the key to unlocking the entire diary. She wrote _Anne Sykes’ dress May 1840. The first dress I wore in Singapore’ and demand for goods was extremely high. The reality was that the cotton came from the Southern States of America and was therefore picked by the hands of the enslaved. These realities are absolutely embedded in the economies of cloth at that time.

The Victorian dress etiquette is so different to our own – can you give us examples of how the Victorian middle classes might have used dress to convey different aspects of their lives and what these traditions might have involved?

Fabric would be purchased by the customer who would then take it to a dressmaker. A discussion about style, shape and cut would take place and then the garment would become a part of a wardrobe that was more carefully maintained. Given the rate at which textiles are consumed in the 21st century, there is much to be learnt from some of those earlier patterns of consumption.

You’ve obviously made fashion history a career – what do you love about it most?

So much of Anne’s story is intertwined with the British Empire and the role that fabric played within it – tell us a little about this.

For seven years Anne lived in the settlement that had begun to emerge amongst European merchants in Singapore and so the realities of Empire, trade and travel were a huge part of her life. Adam was a merchant involved with many of the decisions made in the locality but we never hear Anne’s voice. Cotton was king at this point in the nineteenth century

The diary is full of these nuances of dress that were so important in the nineteenth century. There are swatches of mourning clothes that would have demonstrated to the observer at which stage of mourning the wearer was in and so how long they had been grieving for a loved one. There are wedding dress swatches that capture those moments of connection. There are day dresses and evening dresses, garments that distinguish different times of day depending on the length of a sleeve or the cut of a bodice. These were not superficial concerns but an important way of navigating the world then.

In the book you suggest that the Victorians understood sustainability better than us, can you explain what you meant by this?

Cloth was so much more expensive in the nineteenth century and so dress was carefully considered.

Clothes are the closest we can come to our ancestors I have always felt. They are that outer shell that says something about the person and the society they inhabited. I love stories of people and clothes are a great means of conveying those tales. It is also a lens through which to discover whole communities - textiles in Lancashire were at the heart of Anne’s life and her family’s success and it is this connection with wider stories that I love.

In your view, what can fashion teach us about society and the individuals within it?

Fashion is often written off as superficial and yet it is central to so much. It is a lens through which we can learn about social customs, economics, relationships. We all dress differently and even if somebody is not especially interested in fashion, they still put on clothes each day which requires some kind of sartorial decision. Clothes really matter.