Wardrobe Department 2015

Wardrobe Department 2015 line-up: Gwendoline Christie, Gemma Jackson, Michele Clapton, Sarah Mower, Alexander Fury, Jenny Dyson’s Pencil Atelier, Barbara Hulanicki, Sandy Powell, Giles Deacon, Marques’Almeida, Molly Goddard, Beth Postle & Luke Brooks, Piers Atkinson, Susie Bubble, Katie Jones, The Warren Sisters, Tim Blanks, Damien Cuypers, Joseph Lakrowsky, Flora Starkey Michael Howells, The Garden Gate Flower Company, The Flower Appreciation Society, MAC, Bumble and bumble, Seasalt, The Braid Bar

Summer at Port Eliot Festival in south east Cornwall sees a mass-migration of fashion talent to the ancient walled garden on the estate. There they set up The Wardrobe Department, where festivalgoers of all ages will find themselves getting creative with the most inventive brains in British fashion and being transformed with wild hair and makeup, courtesy of Bumble and bumble and MAC.

Sarah Mower, the British Fashion Council’s Ambassador for Emerging Talent, describes the heady treats she and her band of co-conspirators are whipping up:

The garden of delights which is The Wardrobe Department at Port Eliot - and all the fashion events which spin around it - is growing fantastic new dimensions in 2015. We’ve added another garden, The Theatre of Fashion, and the treats we’re plotting are designed to take ideas, creativity and participation to unheralded highs. 

The entertainments begin with our obsession with the epic fantasy-mediaevalist Game of Thrones, HBO’s gripping depiction of dynastic struggles, dread fears and human foibles. Three great women will be journeying to Port Eliot to speak to us of life in Westeros. Actress Gwendoline Christie will talk about how she brilliantly inhabits Brienne of Tarth, loyal knight and feminist heroine. Thrones’ original production designer, Gemma Jackson, will reveal how she visualised and built all Seven Kingdoms. Costume designer, Michele Clapton, will discuss how she clothes everyone, from the courts of incestuous Queens, the denizens of brothels and religious fanatics, to the armour, furs and rags of warring armies.

Game of Thrones makes us want to ask cultural questions about our peculiar times. Why, in 2015, when thousands flocked to see the reburial of Richard III, are people suddenly riveted by the middle ages again? Fashion illuminates all kinds of answers.

Alexander Fury, Fashion Editor of the Independent will slice and parry his way through the psychologies of past mediaevalist revival crazes, from Queen Victoria’s costume balls to the pre-Raphaelites, all the way up to the Sixties and to present day designers. The talk will be extravagantly illustrated with a repertoire of vintage and current designer clothes from Thea Porter, Rick Owens, Loewe, Giles Deacon, Mary Katrantzou and many others. They are to be worn by the lovely Warren sisters and likely squires and damsels we’ll be finding at the festival (casting alert!).

The Theatre of Fashion is the site of many dramas and surprises. Michael Howells, Port Eliot's Creative Director and staging-imaginator extraordinaire, Game of Thrones' production designer Gemma Jackson and set designer Derek Brown are building Dark Age tableaux for playing and posing on. MAC and Bumble & Bumble will be dispensing middle-ages hair and makeup and other fantasias and from their mediaeval tent encampment.

The new Theatre of Fashion stage will host beauty demonstrations and a talk series, including a presentation from Marques'Almeida, London's newest shooting star designers, and a live lesson in crocheting and sustainability with Susie Bubble and Katie Jones. For any student who wants to know about the huge panorama of jobs which exist behind the scenery in the movies, Andrew McAlpine (The Piano, Made in Dagenham, An Education) will lift the curtain.

Many more pleasures await in The Wardrobe Department, our fashion free-for-all domain for playing, making and dressing up. Jenny Dyson is here with her immensely popular Pencil Atelier sewing tent for children to make their own clothes and star in the famous Haybale Fashion Show on Saturday.

The Fashion Illustration Tent is the centre for The Tweenie Fashionista University, drawing classes run by Barbara Hulanicki and Sandy Powell; and young designer Molly Goddard will re-enact her London fashion week life-drawing session with girls wearing her tulle prom dresses for tomboys.

Giles Deacon will explain and demonstrate his boyhood obsession with nature drawing, with insects and flora and fauna foraged from Port Eliot’s grounds. Damien Cuypers will explore the art of live fashion illustration and young illustrator Joseph Lakrowsky will be sharing his technique of using flowers in fashion drawings.

The Ministry of Fashion tent is the dispensary for exuberant floral experiments - all manner of head-dressing provided by milliner Piers Atkinson and The Garden Gate Flower Company and the Flower Appreciation Society. Central Saint Martins MA graduates Luke Brooks and Beth Postle are bringing their wildly painterly travelling pop-up art-fashion store.

Lorraine Candy will be talking to Louise Carpenter about her Cornish beginnings and the career which took her from Liskeard schoolgirl to Editor of Elle.

With a host of 'Make & Take' workshops in its fishermen’s yard setting, Cornish label Seasalt is offering crafts inspired by the creative and maritime heritage of Cornwall, from fabric fish sewing, lobster pot making, Breton top embellishment, notebook making and origami boat-making, to a ‘Design a Seasalt Jute bag’ competition.

Apart from the mediaeval hair workshops mentioned above, Bumble and bumble stylists will work with children to decorate braided headbands with ribbons, flowers and jewels and offer individual sessions with hat-making royalty, in the form of Stephen Jones.