>Rebecca Arnold

Fashion Historian

Rebecca Arnold is a Research Fellow in the Design History research centre of the Royal College of Art, London. She has lectured internationally on fashion history and theory and in 2001 she set up the first undergraduate course in Fashion History and Theory, based at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. In 2006 she was Guest Professor at the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. She is currently working on a project about British and American ready-to-wear since the 1920s.

Arnold has published widely on 20th century fashion, her first book was Fashion, Desire and Anxiety: Image and Morality in the 20th Century. Her next book, American Looks: Sportswear, Fashion and the Image of Women in New York, 1929-47, will be published in spring 2008 and she is currently working on a Very Short Introduction to Fashion for Oxford University Press. In 2001 she co-curated an exhibition at Judith Clark’s Costume Gallery in London, on a collection of 15 Madeleine Vionnet dresses from the 1920s and 1930s.