Professor Amy De La Haye

Biography

Professor Amy de la Haye is a curator, writer and tutor. She is Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Dress History & Curatorship and Joint Director of the Research Centre for Fashion Curation at London College (LCF) UAL. Much of her work is united by an emphasis upon interpreting items of fashion and dress, often imprinted with wear and occasionally completely perished, to tell stories about lives lived. She is fascinated by the craft of haute couture and the ancillary trades, particularly flower making. And, has a major interest in popular and folk cultures.
Amy worked at Hove Museum (1987-1991) where she learned the full range of museum and curatorial skills and as Curator of 20th Century Dress at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A)1991-99. In 1994 she co-curated the seminal Streetstyle exhibition at the V&A. She has also worked as a curator at venues including The Museum at the Fashion Institute of New York (MFIT, Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion, 2021); Palazzo Morando (Milan, Coco Chanel: A New Portrait by Marion Pike,2014 following show at LCF 2013); Brighton Museums(Fashion & Fancy Dress: The Messel Family Dress Collection, Cinderellas of the Soil; the uniforms worn by Britain’s women’s Land Army and Gluck: Art & Identity, the latter with NHLF funding); Fashion Textile Museum (Oh Boy: Dressing Boys 1760-1930); The Garden Museum (Wild & Cultivated: Fashioning the Rose) and Compton Verney (& LCF Stratford, Making/More Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain with the Museum of British Folklore, with major NHLF funding). Amy has published extensively in a variety of contexts (full bibliography available elsewhere). She has written fashion history text books (WOA, Thames & Hudson); portraits of V&A archives (Worth and Lucile, V&A); monographs (Chanel: Couture & Industry, V&A); children’s books (Clara Button, V&A), Exhibiting Fashion: Before & After 1971, Gluck: Art & Identity (Yale); special issues of Fashion Theory (she is on the editorial board) on collecting fashion and Vogue, plus authored texts and reviews; on fashion and the natural world Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion (Yale) and Wild & Cultivated: Fashioning the Rose (Garden Museum).
She regularly works with Nick Knight at SHOWstudio. During lockdown she initiated and authored the ongoing ‘Fashion in a Time of Crisis’ video essays; she is associate Fashion Exhibitions Review Editor and author/presenter of SKINS, five short films on gaming costumes released April 2024.
Amy regularly works with Simon Costin and Mellany Robinson from the Museum of British Folklore and the trio are currently curating Un/Common People: Folk Culture in Wessex, a series of four exhibitions for Wessex Museums (2024-2026). She works in a professional consultancy capacity (Collections Review, Brighton Museum.) She is currently writing essays for forthcoming exhibition catalogues on Chanel (Monaco, 2025) and Worth (Palais Galliera, 2025). From Autumn 2025 is Resident Curator at the Fashion Textile Museum.




Amy has also worked in the fashion industry as creative consultant to Shirin Guild 2000-2010, where she helped develop new fabrics, commissioned accessories, styled photoshoots and write marketing materials.

Amy studied for her degree in design history at Brighton University, specialising in dress with Professor Lou Taylor and then went on to the Royal College of Art where she was awarded an MA in Cultural History (by thesis).