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)of Fashion, 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 also constructs narratives around archives (including Lucile and Worth); provides professional consultancy (fashion collection review, Brighton Museum) and has worked as a creative consultant in the fashion industry (Shirin Guild, Catherine Walker). Most of her lectures have the title ‘Objects of a Passion.’ More recently, her work has embraced an exploration of the natural world and notably fashion, dressed appearances and roses.

She has worked as a curator in international museums (Museum at FIT, New York and Palazzo Morando, Milan), national museums (full-time fashion curator at the V&A 1991-1999), regional museums (Brighton Museum, freelance 2000 - 2017), university LCF Fashion Space Gallery) and commercial contexts (Selfridges, Jaeger, Carnaby Street). She is author of the ‘Fashion in a Time of Crisis’ series on SHOWstudio.com and regularly contributes to panel discussions.
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). She is a qualified PhD supervisor (in 2021 she had seven completions, had examined 5 PhDs and has eight PhD students, most of whom are practice-based or led) and teaches extensively on the MA Fashion Curation course at LCF.


Exhibitions

Current work:
‘Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion’, with Colleen Hill, Museum at the FIT, New York (August – November 2021)
‘Wild & Cultivated: Fashioning the Rose’, with Simon Costin, Garden Museum, London (March-June 2022)
Folk Dress in Britain (working title) with Simon Costin, Compton Verney, Spring 2023.