Spotlight on Alumni | Oriole Cullen
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Oriole Cullen is Head of Modern Textiles and Fashion at The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) and joined us for our annual Alumni lecture on the 3rd of December 2020. Her fascinating talk, 'Displaying Dior: exhibiting contemporary fashion within the Museum' was based on the Christian Dior exhibition she had recently curated at the V&A. Dior served as a case study for exploring the history of exhibiting fashion within the Museum and the issues around the recent boom in ‘blockbuster’ fashion exhibitions. |
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| Oriole is an alumna of the School, having studied here for her BA Art History & English and then at the Courtauld Institute of Art where she completed a Masters degree in the History of Dress. She is also a member of the inaugural group of UCD Creative Fellows, a new group of 19 alumni from the College of Arts and Humanities recognised as leaders in their fields with whom our college will work to develop new approaches to artist-led creativity. Professor Lynda Mulvin caught up with her for a chat afterwards. |
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| Lynda: What sparked your interests in fashion history? Oriole: I was always interested in textiles and fashion. When I was studying Art History at UCD, Nicky Figgis brought my attention to how a painting could be dated through the dress depicted in the image and I was fascinated. This led me to the History of Dress MA at the Courtauld Institute in London. |
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| Lynda: How did you become the costume curator of fashion at the V&A? Oriole: When I finished my MA I went to work experience at the Museum of London and a few months later a post for a curatorial assistant opened so I applied and began to work my way up. I stayed for 7 years at the Museum in various roles and then applied to join the V&A in 2006. |
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| Lynda: What is a day in your busy life at the V&A like, especially under Covid? Oriole: As with most people Covid has really changed our working practices and the day seems to be taken up with lots of online meetings. However, because we work with objects there are times where it’s not possible to work remotely, so we do occasionally have to go into the Museum. I’ve recently been filming for a documentary series on the Museum so that has involved quite a bit of onsite work and some studio visits. So it entails lots of Covid tests, masks, temperature checks, social distancing etc. all of this just highlights how incredibly lucky we are to still be working but also to be shielded from the realities and strain of work facing those in Health and frontline services positions. We are thankful to be able to still operate and hopefully we’ll be able to reopen the doors to the public soon. |
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| Lynda: How did you obtain the Dior show? Oriole: We’ve always had a great working relationship with the Dior Heritage archives as we have a significant collection of Dior items in the V&A. When we saw the exhibition at the Musee Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 2017 we realised that it would be a great thing to bring to the V&A. So the Museum approached Dior and they were equally happy to be able to bring a version of the show to London. We spent about 9 months buried between the V&A archives and the Dior archives in Paris working very closely with the Dior team, it was intense but very enjoyable. |
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