Dressing modern identity: Victorian style re-imagined in the Angelica Garnett Gift

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses recent finds in the Angelica Garnett Gift of 8000 previously unseen works of art by Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, donated to The Charleston Trust in 2008. The Charleston Trust cares for Charleston House, the Sussex home of Bell and Grant, and the collection of their and their contemporaries’ artworks. The Angelica Garnett Gift has emphasized the overlooked importance of dress to the work and lives of Bell and Grant and calls for more attention on the sartorials of Bloomsbury. This article aims to spark discussion in this understudied field, focusing on two examples found in the Gift, which reinterpret and reclaim the Victorian styles of the top hat and the fan to express possibilities of modern identity. These works interrogate how dress can negotiate experiences of both gender and modernity while also revealing understudied artistic and design processes, for Duncan Grant with the Omega Workshops and Vanessa Bell later in life. The style of the Bloomsbury Group continues to inspire designers today who find their modernist dress equally suitable to express the contemporary moment.