Shows / The Fashion Memoir
The Fashion Memoir
Every designer who changed the world left a story most people never heard. The Fashion Memoir gives full biographical portraits to the style icons who shaped culture and rarely got credit. Each episode follows one designer or icon through their life and the mark they left on how the world dresses. Made for anyone who loves fashion and history. New episodes every Monday and Thursday.
Episodes
The Fashion MemoirAnnette Kellerman: The Swimmer Who Popularised the One-Piece
Annette Kellerman was an Australian champion swimmer who swam the Thames for a newspaper, tried to swim the English Channel at least three times, performed…
The Fashion MemoirAnna May Wong, Part Two: The Dragon Dress
"I'm afraid that I'm a woman without a country." Anna May Wong, 1938, on taking her American clothes to China and finding she was foreign there too. Part Two…
The Fashion MemoirAnna May Wong, Part 1: The Certificate of Identity
Anna May Wong was born in Los Angeles in 1905 and spent her life carrying a card that certified she had been admitted to her own country as a native, on a…
The Fashion MemoirPatrick Kelly: The First American in Paris Ready-to-Wear
Patrick Kelly was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi on 24 September 1954 and died in Paris on New Year's Day 1990, aged 35. In between he sold hand-sewn dresses…
The Fashion MemoirBob Mackie: The Costume Designer Who Dressed Cher and Carol Burnett
Bob Mackie died on 14 September 2026, aged 87. At 23 he drew the sketch for the most famous dress of the twentieth century, the one Marilyn Monroe wore to sing…
The Fashion MemoirElizabeth Keckley: The Dressmaker Who Bought Her Own Freedom
Elizabeth Keckley was born into slavery in Virginia in 1818 and taught to sew by her mother. In November 1855 she paid twelve hundred dollars for her own…
The Fashion MemoirBeau Brummell: The Regency Dandy Who Changed Menswear
George "Beau" Brummell had no title, no business and no trade. He never designed or made a single garment. For about sixteen years in Regency London he was…
The Fashion MemoirParis in Wartime, Part Two: The Ledger
Last week covered how Paris couture survived four years of Nazi occupation. This week covers what it cost: Coco Chanel's wartime relationship with a German…
The Fashion MemoirParis in Wartime, Part One: The Industry That Stayed Open
French couture industry to Berlin and Vienna. It didn't happen, because one middle-aged couturier spent four years talking them out of it, meeting by meeting…
The Fashion MemoirVirginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione: The Most Photographed Woman of the 19th Century
Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, was sent to Paris in 1855 by her cousin, the future architect of Italian unification, with one unofficial job: win…
The Fashion MemoirHardy Amies: The Queen’s Dressmaker Who Ran a Spy Network
Hardy Amies spent the Second World War running covert sabotage operations behind enemy lines in occupied Belgium for Britain’s Special Operations Executive…
The Fashion MemoirHerminie Cadolle: The Corsetmaker Who Invented the Bra
Herminie Cadolle spent her twenties on the barricades of the Paris Commune and did time in a Versailles prison for it. Sixteen years later, working out of a…
The Fashion MemoirEmpress Dowager Cixi: China's Most Misunderstood Ruler
Empress Dowager Cixi ruled China for almost fifty years from behind a literal curtain, without ever officially being allowed to rule anything. She staged a…
The Fashion MemoirAnn Lowe: Society's Best Kept Secret
Ann Lowe spent nearly forty years dressing America's oldest, richest families, the Auchinclosses, the du Ponts, the Rockefellers, including designing…
The Fashion MemoirRose Bertin: The Minister of Fashion Nobody Elected
Rose Bertin was a milliner's daughter from a cloth town in northern France who ended up dressing Marie Antoinette twice a week in private, and built what might…
The Fashion MemoirMary Quant: The Woman Who Dressed the Sixties
Mary Quant taught herself to cut patterns at night so she could stock a King's Road boutique that opened with almost no money in 1955, and built an empire that…
The Fashion MemoirWho Was Paul Poiret and How Did He Revolutionise Fashion? Part 2
In this episode of The Fashion Memoir, we pick up where Part One left off . Paul Poiret at the height of his powers. We explore the empire he built beyond…
The Fashion MemoirWho Was Paul Poiret and How Did He Revolutionise Fashion? - Part 1
In this episode of The Fashion Memoir, we explore the life of Paul Poiret, the pioneering French fashion designer. We covers his humble beginnings in Paris…