RGU researcher revives legacy of fashion visionary Bill Gibb for new audience

Josie Steed, Research Coordinator for Art & Design at Gray’s School of Art, has worked alongside the University of Aberdeen’s Dr Shane Strachan on Refashioning Bill Gibb for the 21st Century.

Gibb grew up on a farm near Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire and went onto become a major figure in the world of fashion in the 1970s and he worked with the likes of Bianca Jagger and Twiggy.

The new publication features more than 100 colour illustrations including previously unpublished fashion drawings, patterns, and garments and highlights how the designers of today can learn from his wide range body of work.

Josie Steed from Gray’s School of Art, said: "This new book redefines one of the most innovative Scottish born designers of twentieth-century British fashion, Bill Gibb (1943-1988) who due to his short career and life, his contribution and legacy to contemporary culture, fashion and design history is largely unknown to younger generations of artists and designers.

“It’s been an exciting project working on this ground-breaking new book with Bloomsbury Publishing on an edited book that includes original works, and the first of its kind on Bill Gibb since 2008. This edited book in collaboration with Aberdeen Archives, Art Gallery & Museums includes many new images from their extensive Gibb archive, a collection of essays by renowned international scholars, interviews with renowned designers, including his long-time collaborator Kaffe Fassett, fashion designer Giles Deacon as well as with his sisters and a foreword by Dame Zandra Rhodes.”

Born and raised in New Pitsligo, Aberdeenshire, Gibb captured the folkloric essence of the 1970s, and ‘sense of place’ through his Scottish heritage that brought a new vibrancy and excitement onto the British design scene through his eclectic use of a variety of textiles and silhouettes. He created garments, often in collaboration, that demonstrated a postmodern collaging of lines, patterns and embellishments where it could be argued to have been ahead of his time.

His love of design, attention to detail and material selection means there is a lot we can learn today from his approach. As Gibb himself said - ‘Clothes have to go on living for a very long time; clothes must be worth keeping’.

The book will be launched at an event being held at the Cowdray Hall in Aberdeen on Saturday 17 January at 2pm. The event will feature with insightful talks and discussion from a selection of contributors alongside the book’s editors followed by an audience Q&A.

Talks at the launch will focus on Gibb’s drawing and design process, his fashion shows, his digital legacy, folklore-inspired fashions, and sustainability and climate change, with poetry performances inspired by Gibb throughout. Speakers include renowned fashion journalist Iain R Webb, former AAGM manager Christine Rew, circular fashion researcher and consultant Dr Lynn Wilson, and leading academics from RGU, Professor Peter Reid and Dr Karen Cross.

Main image: L-R: Kirsty Hassard with the book's editors Professor Shane Strachan from University of Aberdeen and Josie Steed from RGU. Credit: Emily Macinnes