Conversational Workshop: Horrockses Fashions, from Drawing to Dress

The Harris is hosting a conversational workshop on Horrockses Fashions on Wednesday 11 November, from 2pm to 3pm in the Special Collection Gallery. It's led by Decorative Art Curator Scott Schiavone, who'll be taking you behind the scenes of the design process that sat at the heart of one of Lancashire's most famous labels.

What makes this one a bit different from a standard gallery talk is what you'll actually be looking at. Schiavone is bringing out rarely displayed design books and sample sheets to show how a dress went from a pencil sketch to a finished garment. It's a look at the working side of the business—the sketches, the fabric trials, and the tweaks—rather than just the polished dresses on the mannequins. The workshop runs alongside the exhibition Horrockses Fashions: Everyday Glamour & the Art of British Ready-to-Wear, which marks the 80th anniversary of the company.

If the name doesn't ring a bell, Horrockses was a Lancashire-based label that made a name for itself by mixing couture sensibilities with high-quality printed cottons. The result was ready-to-wear dresses that were accessible and stylish, and the brand became a shorthand for a certain kind of effortless elegance. It reached women across the social scale, from mill workers to the royal family—Queen Elizabeth II famously packed several Horrockses cotton dresses for her 1953-54 Commonwealth tour. A big part of that success was their approach to textile design: they collaborated with leading contemporary artists to put bold florals, graphic geometrics and modernist motifs onto full-skirted 'New Look' silhouettes.

The Harris holds the world's largest museum collection of Horrockses dresses, more than 100 garments, and the exhibition is supported by a new book edited by Schiavone. The workshop is free and doesn't require a ticket, so you can just turn up on the day. It runs from 2pm to 3pm on Wednesday 11 November in the Special Collection Gallery at The Harris in Preston.