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Hedda Maartens
Hedda Maartens — MA in fashion design, then eleven years in the industry designing for people who had no say in what they wore. Now writes about prescribed dress: how a garment was made to work, and what it was made to make a person into.

Collection: Faith and Ritual

Every type of faith and ritual in one place — 4 chapters, Clergy and ministerial, Monastic and religious orders, Lay religious dress and the rest, with the plates and an inventory to download.
Plates from the Nametape archive of faith and ritual

Pit Clothes

Almost nothing survives. Working clothes worn to destruction are not collected, and what we have of them is mostly photographs of men standing at the top of a shaft.
Three photographs of miners: a portrait at Brookside, a close view of a uranium miner's hands, and an individual miner near Dawson

The Railwayman’s Coat

Heavy wool, high collar, company buttons. Built for standing on an open platform in February by companies that were, briefly, the largest employers on earth.
Three photographs of railway staff in uniform, Hungary, early twentieth century

Collection: Sport and Performance

Every type of sport and performance in one place — 5 chapters, Team sport kit, Officiating, Motorsport and protective sport and the rest, with the plates and an inventory to download.
Plates from the Nametape archive of sport and performance

Academic Dress and the Hood

A vestigial garment that stopped being clothing and became a code. The hood carries faculty, degree and institution in a system almost nobody inside it can fully read.
Two portraits in academic dress and a doctoral robe held in a museum collection

The Coat Was Black First

Medicine spent most of the nineteenth century in black frock coats and changed to white in about a generation. The switch was not about hygiene. It was a claim to be a science.
A seventeenth-century physician in black, a rail of white lab coats, and a surgeon in modern scrubs

Collection: Extreme Environment

Every type of extreme environment in one place — 3 chapters, Space and pressure suits, Diving and hyperbaric, Polar and high-altitude and the rest, with the plates and an inventory to download.
Plates from the Nametape archive of extreme environment

The Nurse’s Cape

Lined in a colour that identified the school, worn outdoors over a uniform designed for indoors. The cape is the only part of Victorian nursing dress that survived into living memory.
A nurse's outdoor uniform in watercolour, an American Red Cross nurse photographed in 1918, and a 1944 uniform dress

Collection: Issued to the Confined

Every type of issued to the confined in one place — 4 chapters, Prison inmate, Hospital patient, Institutional and asylum and the rest, with the plates and an inventory to download.
Plates from the Nametape archive of issued to the confined

Livery, and Who It Belonged To

A servant in livery wore their employer’s colours, cut from the employer’s cloth, on the employer’s account. The garment said whose you were before it said what you did.
A household staff photographed together, a Pullman porter's coat, and a maid's dress with cap

Collection: Uniform with No Issuer

Every type of uniform with no issuer in one place — 3 chapters, Occupational convention, Subcultural uniform, Personal uniform and the rest, with the plates and an inventory to download.
Plates from the Nametape archive of uniform with no issuer