Consider the word ‘elegant’ and try to conjure up a figure more refined than the 19th century English dandy...

How you present yourself always matters, and no one understands this better than Jessica Worrall, a decoder of fashion language...

Tall conical hats have been fashionably worn as symbols of power and magic. Elsewhere and at a different time, these hats have been used as a method of humiliation for disgraced criminals. How and why have so many different cultures attributed different meanings to the same shape?

We all know what lies at the end of a rainbow — that proverbial pot of gold, that something much sought after but impossible to attain. But how do rainbows come about, and what lies at their origins?

Cornelia James, a young Austrian Jewish girl newly graduated from the Vienna Arts Academy, flees the country. She comes to England as a refugee with no clothes and no money. What she does have, is a little case of coloured calfskins…

Dr Hugh Welch Diamond was a Victorian psychiatrist and a passionate amateur photographer, who believed that photography could offer new ways to examine the mind of the mentally ill…

In his In Search of Lost Time, the French writer Marcel Proust makes a comparison between writing a book and making a dress. His narrator, who is just...

The way in which we remember those we’re close to seems to evolve with every generation, but the need for it remains the same. Portrait miniatures were once...

In 1926, both Dody and Madge were unceremoniously fired. Their lesbian relationship made for an easy scapegoat. However, much was suspicious...

Could antique Persian carpets now be valued in the same league as a Picasso? We interviewed leading Persian carpet dealer, Essie Sakhai to get an insight...

Jess Collett’s charming atelier is alive with her extraordinary textile confections. There are feathers, sprayings of beads and constructions with flowers.