Annie Stannard

Annie Stannard, a recent MA graduate from the V&A/RCA History of Design Programme, is a writer and design researcher whose interests include twentieth century fashion, women’s histories, youth culture, and gender histories with particular reference to consumption, visual culture and the media.

Graduating from the University of the Arts London with a First-Class honours degree in Surface Design, specialising in print, Annie pursued further courses in knitting and weaving. This background in textiles has informed her research approach during the course of her MA projects and has led to her undertaking historical reconstructions and engaging in experimental embodied wearing practices, providing additional means to access the unwritten knowledge surrounding dress histories.

She was the recipient of the RCA Gillian Naylor Essay Prize (2021) for outstanding scholarship in an investigation of a twentieth century women's satin gym-set from the V&A Museum's Collections.

Her dissertation has focused on the history of women’s swim caps in Britain during 1920-1970, examining the role that the swim cap played in constructs of gender, changing notions of femininity, and systems of power amongst sporting women. Her research into the design changes in swim caps across this time offers interesting new perspectives into the regulation of women and how the swim cap itself became a vehicle for patriarchal notions that led to the control, constraint, and compliance of the female swimmer.

Image: Lucy Snowe, The Swimmer in a Pond, 2018, © Lucy Snowe

Having developed a particular interest in collections relating to textiles/fashion and an eagerness to uncover the stories of objects and their individual makers/wearers, Annie has been in a position to combine materiality and gender to provide new insight into the often hidden histories of women.

Outlined below are examples of how her research has attempted to engage with the public, sharing her findings via a digital archive, The Natator, documenting the design history of swim caps and the notion of 'governing by design'; and sharing the story about how a women's gym-set negotiated the conflict between control and autonomy, also between wholesomeness and sensuality, at a time when women's exercise challenged society's traditional views of femininity and motherhood.