Poets in Vogue Exhibition Features Sylvia Plath’s Skirt

Poets in Vogue brings together the fashion worlds and poetic work of seven women poets through a series of displays, including an iconic tartan skirt owned and worn by Sylvia Plath. 

The displays will also include a reconstruction of Anne Sexton’s red ‘reading dress’, creative interpretations of Audre Lorde’s, Edith Sitwell’s and Stevie Smith’s signature looks, a fabric-adaptation of a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, and the clothes-performances of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

The exhibition at the National Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre, London, is the work of researchers Sophie Oliver and Sarah Parker from the University of Liverpool and Loughborough University. The installations have been made by expert costume-maker Gesa Werner toevoke the distinct style and presence of these poets. The organisers say their aim has been to rethink assumptions about the superficiality of fashion, offering new perspectives on the close connections between language and dress, and emphasising poetry as an embodied practice that includes live performance.