Museum seeks Bowie dress for show highlighting Jewish designer | Fashion industry

Wanted: David Bowie dress, Greta Garbo hat, and the shirt Sean Connery wore in his first role as James Bond.

They are an iconic item of 20th century clothing but their whereabouts are unknown. Now the London Docklands Museum has make a request for public assistance Find these outfits and more before a big show scheduled for later this year.

The missing clothes are significant because of their similarities: they were all created by Jewish designers working in London’s fashion scene, a legacy the museum believes has been neglected.

Jews worked at all levels of London’s fashion industry throughout the 20th century, but their contribution has not been widely recognized, said Dr Lucie Whitmore, fashion curator at the museum.

While the tailors and shoemakers of the East End may be familiar, he believes few recognize the influence that Jewish designers and makers exert at all levels of the fashion trade, from establishing the ready-to-wear industry to dominating fashion meccas like Carnaby Street in the 1960s. .

New research has allowed us to bring out some very rich personal stories that demonstrate the contribution these men have made to the London fashion industry.

Among others are Mister Fishborn Michael Fish in Wood Green, north London in 1940. He rose from cleaning counters in a London department store to work for some of the capital’s leading tailors, before opening his own shop, which quickly became a destination for the fashionable set.

He dressed Connery, Princess Margaret and Jimi Hendrix, made him robe worn by Muhammad Ali in Rumble in the Jungle, invented the kipper tie and famously designed menswear, for example worn by Mick Jagger at Hyde Park in 1969and by Bowie on the cover The man who sold the worldwhich Whitmore called an absolute dream piece to find.

She was a pretty radical thinker in terms of how she approached gender dynamics in her designs, and we want to celebrate the contribution she made, she says. I think he deserves to be a household name.

Also sought are hats made by Otto Lucasa German-born Jew who owns the eponymous Bond Street label huge global success in the postwar years and his clients included Garbo and Wallis Simpson, and more elusive names like Rahvisthe couture label worn by the aristocracy and movie stars, and Mrs Isobelcalled London’s foremost clothing designer in the 1930s, but his surviving pieces are rare.

Not all of these diverse characters will relate to their Jewishness in the same way, Whitmore concedes, but with an estimated 60-70% of Jewish immigrants to London in the early 20th century working in the fashion or textile trades, for many, this is the story of very personal, he said.

We won’t talk about one shared experience, but we do use Judaism as a lens through which to view London fashion. When you do, you realize that the contribution of the Jewish people is immense and very important, and we celebrate that.

Fashion City: How London’s Jews are shaping global style open October 13th at the London Docklands Museum. Anyone with information on the item in question is asked to contact the museum before March 1