Professor Lesley Miller
- Professor of Dress and Textile History (History of Art)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1957-7411Biography
Lesley Miller has been a part-time Professor at the University of Glasgow since 2013. Until 2021, she was also Senior Curator of Textiles and Dress (before 1800), in the Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Between 2010 and 2015, she led the curatorial team on the refurbishment and reinterpretation of the galleries devoted to Europe 1600-1815, subsequently acted as curatorial consultant for the exhibition Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion (2016-7), and project leader and co-editor for the recently published Silk. Fibre, Fabric and Fashion (2018-21). Before joining the V&A in 2005, Lesley taught dress and textile history in Higher Education and was latterly Head of Division in History of Art & Design at the University of Southampton in Winchester.
Lesley took her first degree in Hispanic Studies at the University of Glasgow, then studied for a Masters in History of Dress at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Having discovered the relatively new field of academic dress and textile history, she moved swiftly into research for a PhD at Brighton Polytechnic (now University). Subsequently, she taught Design History at several British universities, and has lectured in Europe and the Americas. A specialist in early modern textiles and fashion, Lesley focuses in particular on aspects of design and commerce in the 18th-century French silk industry, and is currently preparing a book on an 18th-century Lyonnais designer manufacturer.
Research interests
Lesley contributes to the MLitt Dress and Textile Histories at the University of Glasgow and supervises doctoral research on European 18th-century dress and textile topics that unite the investigation of objects with archival research. She also has a particular interest in mid-20th-century French and Spanish fashion and textiles, and the collecting and curating of fashion and textiles.
Grants
Between 2010 and 2013 Lesley was a Principal Investigator on the major HERA Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe 1500-1800, collaborating with the project Director Professor Evelyn Welch and partners in universities and museums in Denmark, Finland and Sweden.
Supervision
Teaching
MLitt Dress and Textile Histories: contributions to
- Framing Dress and Textile Histories
- The Birth of Modern Fashion, 1660-1815
- Applying Dress and Textile Histories
- Dissertation supervision
- Placement supervision
Additional information
AFFILIATION
• Governor of the Pasold Research Fund
• Vice-President of the CIETA (Centre International pour l’Etude des Textiles Anciens) until November 2023.
• Member of the Editorial Board of Textile History
• Member of scientific committee for the Renaissance of the Musée des Tissus and Musée des Arts decoratifs, Lyon (2018-)
BOOK REVIEWS
Concha Herrero Carretero, Alvaro Molina and Jesusa Vega, La decoración ideada por François Grognard para los apartamentos de la Duquesa de Alba en el Palacio de Buenavista, Madrid, La Casa de Velázquez, 2020), Textile History, Vol. 52:1 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1080/00404969.2021.1948194 [Book review]
Clare Backhouse, Fashion and Popular Print in Early Modern England. Depicting Dress in Black-Letter Ballads. (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017), Costume, Vol.53:1 (March 2019), pp. 127-8 [Book review]
Ludovic Frobert, ed., Archives de Soie. Fabrique et Insurrections à Lyon au Début des Années 1830. Journées d’étude des Musées Gadagne (Silvana Editoriale, Milan, 2014) and Ludovic Frobert and George Sheridan, Le Solitaire du Ravin. Pierre Charnier (1795-1857), Canut Lyonnais et Prud’homme Tisseur (ENS Éditions, Lyon, 2014), Textile History (November 2017), 48:2, pp.283-5. DOI :10.1080/00404969.2017.1379760 [Book review]
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
Miller, L.E., ‘Utility Revealed : The École gratuite de dessin and Textile Production in Eighteenth-century Lyon’, West 86th. A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture, forthcoming Fall/Winter, 2023.
Miller, L.E., ‘Utility Reassessed: The École gratuite de dessin and Textile Production in 18th-century Lyon’, in Les réseaux des académies d’art au siècle des Lumières, eds Anne Perrin Khelissa, Émilie Roffidal, with Markus Castor (Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art / Université d’Heidelberg / Université de Toulouse, forthcoming 2022)
