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Andrew Groves is Professor of Fashion Design at the University of Westminster, UK, and the Director of the Westminster Menswear Archive which he established in 2016. It houses over 2500 examples of some of the most significant menswear garments and is used daily by industry and students to inform their design practice. Danielle Sprecher is the curator of the Westminster Menswear Archive at the University of Westminster, UK. She is a historian with a focus on men’s clothing and fashion and has worked as a curator of historic dress and textile collections for museums in the United Kingdom.
When I met Andrew for the first time in 2017, he told me he wanted to set up the archive, and it was the first time I had heard about a fashion school taking that approach to design education, offering their students the chance to work the same as my father did. It’s a game-changing way to form and shape new designers and develop an alternative way of working. I’m very humbled that Andrew was inspired by my father’s archive, and I’m grateful that he is offering this unprecedented opportunity to a new generation of designers. -- Lorenzo Osti, from the Foreword Far more than acting as a dormant academic study resource, the archive and this book both play an active role in shaping how students and fashion designers are thinking about the social definitions of masculinity today, and in the future. -- Sarah Mower MBE, fashion critic, Vogue Andrew Groves and Danielle Sprecher open the door on a tantalising glimpse of the significant collection of the Westminster Menswear Archive. Focussed essays and lavish illustrations make this book a truly valuable insight into a wide range of historic and contemporary, designer and utilitarian menswear garments. -- Dr Shaun Cole, Associate Professor in Fashion, Winchester School of Art, UK This rich visual guide makes the diverse, dynamic and important menswear collection of the Westminster Menswear Archive accessible to new audiences. Focusing on construction, design, and the materials of manufacture, it demonstrates how creativity, care and consideration have long characterized the production of men’s dress. -- Dr Benjamin Wild, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Cultures, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK The Westminster Menswear Archive is one of the most important clothing archives ever created; it captures the undervalued, the ordinary, the mass produced and the everyday, with a rigor observed through archival garments. This extraordinary collection has been compiled into a book with writing as unique as the objects themselves. -- Professor Shelley Fox, Donna Karan Professor of Fashion, Parsons School of Design, New York The Westminster Menswear Archive allows us a unique, non-hierarchical insight into menswear, a space where it is possible to examine anonymous everyday clothing alongside the work of celebrated designers and retailers and to contrast clothing constructed for utilitarian purposes with clothing made for leisure. Most significantly it collapses the distance between the past and the present, the unique and the commonplace allowing us to understand the history of menswear as a process that is continually evolving. -- Professor Jonathan Faiers, Professor of Fashion Thinking, Winchester School of Art, from the Foreword
