Hole In My Pocket’s Allistair creates little black dress exhibition souvenir range
Turning the little black dress into a bright and colourful greeting card and gift range has been a labour of love for Hole In My Pocket’s Allistair Burt, as his latest museum collaboration comes to fruition.
Allistair has been working with Edinburgh’s National Museum Of Scotland to create a souvenir collection to go with its summer Beyond The Little Black Dress exhibition, comig up with a range of 12 greeting cards along with mugs, coasters, notebooks and other gift items.
“It was a lovely collection to work on,” he told PG Buzz. “More and more I’m being invited to develop bespoke ranges for museums and galleries.
“The team at the National Museum are great to work with and always have really interesting ideas and fun projects. A few years ago, just before the pandemic, we created a dinosaur range together which was a huge seller.”
The exhibition, a glimpse of which can be seen in the video below, is in the museum’s Special Exhibition Gallery, and runs through to 29 October, covering design classics through to cutting-edge catwalk creations, with the aim of deconstructing the iconic LBD and examining the radical power of the colour black in fashion.
It features over 60 garments, charting a century of fashion since the wardrobe staple was invented by Coco Chanel in 1926. There are early 20th century pieces by Chanel, Dior and Jean Muir alongside contemporary looks by designers such as Gareth Pugh, Simone Rocha, Comme des Garçons and ground-breaking Black British designers like Joe Casely-Hayford and Maximilian.
Taking inspiration from names such as designers Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Mary Quant, along with American businesswoman Iris Apfel, still wowing with her dress sense at the age of 101, Allistair added: “I really enjoyed trying to capture the fun characters of the various fashion icons into bright colourful illustrations across a wide collection.”
