Archivist Deborah Carnegie has gathered 70 years’ worth of photos of women from the Windrush generation to the present day getting ready for a big evening out – and changing the face of fashion in the UK as they went
B
efore the beat drops, there is first the bedroom. A hot comb sizzling fresh from the stove, the gentle whirring of a sewing machine. A group of women cross-legged on the floor, swapping clothes and gossip: who got turned away at the club door last weekend? Who might show up tonight?
For the London-based archivist Deborah Carnegie, there is something atavistic and sacred about the pre-night out ritual, in particular for Black British women. It is the subject of her latest work, a photography archive spanning 1950 to the present day, chronicling Black British women’s Saturday night fashion across the decades.
Presented for the first time at this summer’s London College of Fashion’s Fashioning Frequencies exhibition, Carnegie’s collection is the result of months spent gathering images from family photo albums, nightclub photographers’ archives and submissions from friends. (The show has now closed; Carnegie is looking for a new venue to show her photos.)
