The Red Dress

What an absolute pleasure to have The Red Dress on show at our monthly meeting, together with a fascinating talk by Kirstie Mcleod. Kirstie talks about ‘The Red Dress and I’, and it is clear that ‘she’ (The Red Dress) has become an entity in herself. Hearing Kirstie describe the stories behind the incredible embroidery, it is easy to see why the dress has a life of her own. Kirstie’s background is in textile installation, and the red dress grew out of a project that started relatively small and then snowballed to world-wide proportions. Just recently it was given recognition in The Guiness book of Records as the largest collaborative embroidery project in the world. There are estimated to be between 1 and 1.5 billion stitches in the dress, which were stitched by 367 women/girls, 11 men/boys and two non-binary artists from 51 countries. The aim behind the dress was to create a work of embroidered art that would bring marginalised people across the world together in a shared project, helping to give a voice to people who were often powerless, disenfranchised and traumatised. For many, it was part of a healing process, and it has certainly raised awareness across the world when people have been drawn in both by the life stories behind it, and the beauty of the embroidery. I particularly liked the fact that the only people to have worn the dress are people who have worked on it, and people whose life stories and positive contributions to making the world a better place deserve to be shared with the world. No amount of money would allow it to be hired for weddings etc (it was even requested for a coronation). It was wonderful to hear how firmly Kirstie keeps the project grounded in respect for the contributors. It’s impossible to do justice to how impressive it is, so I’ll just put a link here to the website, and urge you to visit the dress if you can, and/or hear a talk by Kirstie: https://reddressembroidery.com/