BRIEF ENCOUNTERS 37
This image The Design Museum’s Tiya Dahyabhai and fashion historian Amber Butchart curated the show
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
Veronica Simpson dives into the Design Museum’s celebration of swimwear and pool culture, and finds herself in need of a sugary snack…
I CAME TO this Design Museum show as a lifetime enthusiast of the art and sport of swimming. From the age of two, when I toddled into an outdoor pool after my older brother, and had to be rapidly fished out, to the point in my early 20s when I discovered that regular swimming was a joyous antidote to the static nature of desk-bound, office work, I have relished my frequent immersions and continued, uninterrupted, through subsequent decades, including through two pregnancies. I even find myself now one of the millions of increasingly enthusiastic wild swimmers, and users of the proliferating Community Sauna Baths. So I tick almost every box that’s referenced in this show – apart from not being old enough to have worn the kind of hideous, knitted swimming one-pieces devised in the 1930s, as swimming morphed from something you did to avoid drowning into a popular leisure pursuit. Luckily, neither am I old
enough to have suffered the silliness (and scratchiness) of 1950s and 1960s synthetic swimwear, fashioned as waist-cinching corsetry (shown here with some hilarious catwalk footage from Pathé newsreels). But I do possess pictures of earlier generations in all those incarnations. So I came primed to enjoy this show, which examines the evolution of swimming through the lens of sport, changing social
I came primed to enjoy this show, which examines the evolution of swimming through the lens of sport, changing social mores and fashion
mores and fashion. But, after spending an hour in the basement galleries of the Design Museum, mooching around the displays, I came out feeling strangely underwhelmed. Curated by the Design Museum’s Tiya Dahyabhai plus guest curator, fashion historian, TV presenter (Te Great British Sewing Bee) and vintage clothing advocate, Amber Butchart, it’s not surprising that the approach favours swimwear fashions and material evolutions. And these are interesting up to a point. But more fascinating are the transformations that have happened in society as holidays by the sea/pool morphed from being the preserve of the rich and famous, to a mainstream obsession and then (thanks to social media) crucial lifestyle accessory and selfie backdrop – all in the past 80 years, since the launch of the Holidays with Pay Act of 1938. Context is everything, and we don’t get quite enough context here – or if we do, it feels
PHOTO: LUKE HAYES
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