Horrockses Fashions: A Celebration of Pattern, Style and Colour with Dr Christine Boydell

This talk will focus on the life-cycle of the Horrockses Fashions’ frock, from design, through production and finally focusing on the women who wore them.

Horrockses Fashions was one of the most well-respected ready-to-wear labels of the late 1940 and 1950s. It was eighty years ago in 1946 that it was established as a subsidiary of Horrockses Crewdson& Company Limited (the Preston-based cotton manufacturing business founded in 1791).

The focus was on the production of quality women’s day and evening wear, beach clothes and housecoats, adding children’s wear to the list in 1949/50. Although produced in considerable quantities from the start, the company maintained an air of exclusivity for the brand, with their emphasis on good quality fabrics, especially cotton, custom-designed patterns, excellent fashion styling and effective marketing and promotion.

These qualities attracted women from lots of different backgrounds to wear these dresses, even Queen Elizabeth II was a fan. We will examine these consumers and examine why Horrockses Fashions became such an important part of British fashion culture.