Patch Work
- Author Claire Wilcox
- Narrator Antonia Beamish
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Run Time 4 hours and 8 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Autobiography: arts and entertainment, Autobiography: writers, Biography and non-fiction prose, Biography: arts and entertainment, Cultural studies: fashion and society, Family and health, Fashion and textile design, History, History of art, Memoirs, Relationships and families: advice and issues, Social and cultural history, Society and Social Sciences, The Arts.
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Price p/Title
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
'I am overwhelmed by this book. It is an absolute masterpiece. A book of such beauty and profundity, of such poetry in its emotion and observation ... I found my sense of life transformed by her writing as I often find it transformed after the exhibition of a great artist' LAURA CUMMING
Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she steps into the archive of memory, deftly stitching together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in spare, luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear.
In a series of intimate and compelling close-ups, Wilcox tugs on the threads that make up the fabric of our lives: a cardigan worn by a child, a mother’s button box, the draping of a curtain, a pair of cycling shorts, a roll of lace, a pin hidden in a seam. Through the eye of a curator, we see how the stories and the secrets of clothes measure out the passage of time, our gains and losses, and the way we use them to unravel and write our histories.
Critics Review
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An uncommon delight
Observer -
Evokes the sensual and spiritual meaning in the fabrics we weave, wear and leave behind … Wilcox writes piercingly
New Yorker -
Effervescent, poetic, puzzle-like … Wilcox picks at the heartstrings
Financial Times -
Into this tapestry of memories Wilcox weaves a melancholy thread … The clothes are Proust’s madeleines, cocooned
Mail on Sunday
in hatboxes and airing cupboards … Gripping -
In this remarkable self-portrait, fashion curator Claire Wilcox has set out mementoes of her life like objects in an exhibition. Short chapters, some only half a page, are displayed like treasures in a cabinet of curiosities … The result is magical … Her spellbinding memoir is like a cherished book of poetry, one to be dipped into over and again
Wall Street Journal -
Filled with dreamlike memories, this autobiography is both surprising and delightful … A strange and mesmerising piece of work, one that tears apart the usual fabric of an autobiography
Sunday Times
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