the interview
Making a splash
Claire Waring chats to Amber Butchart about life as BBC Sewing Bee’s fashion historian, curating Splash! at the Design Museum and the joys of a good car boot sale
Opposite page: Subversive Sirens.
PHOTO BY ACKERMAN + GRUBER
■ ‘I GREW UP AT THE SEASIDE and I can see the sea right now,’ says Amber Butchart, from the study of her Margate home. The sea continues to exert an influence on both her working and personal life, with the fashion historian’s most recent project, to devise and guest curate Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style at the Design Museum in London, exploring our enduring love of water.
The 200 objects on display include Pamela Anderson’s red Baywatch bathing suit, the banned ‘technical doping’ competition swimsuit, one of the earliest surviving examples of a bikini and items from the viral Mermaid-core trend of the 2020s. Ephemera features too, like the 1950s Butlin’s postcards Amber picked up at a car boot – ‘treasure hunting’ at such rummage-fests being one of her favourite activities. Besides curating, Amber’s career extends into TV, radio and podcast presenting, writing books and lecturing – and all while studying for a PhD. Amber will be well-known to viewers of BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee for her fashion history segments. She notes: ‘I really enjoy working on Sewing Bee; it’s a fantastic show. I think it’s so popular because we don’t often see people making things any more. ‘We’ve seen the rise in fast fashion, and the way people shop for clothes has changed drastically within about two generations, so there’s very little “material literacy”. Whereas if we look back into history, cloth-making and clothes-making would have been all around us, whether it was being done at home, or you knew someone who was working in a factory or raising the sheep to create wool.