The Fashion Museum Bath is pleased to announce that the selector of Dress of the Year 2018 is Alexander Fury, Fashion Features Director of AnOther magazine and Men’s Critic at the Financial Times, respected fashion journalist, author and critic.

Each year, the Fashion Museum invites a top name from the fashion industry to select an outfit that encapsulates the prevailing mood of fashion, represents the past year and captures the imagination.

The chosen design will become part of the museum’s world-class collection and will go on display in their headline exhibition: ‘A History of Fashion in 100 Objects’ from Saturday, 1st December.

Previous selectors have included some of the leading lights in fashion over the decades – from senior fashion editors to ground-breaking stylists, to those that have changed the face of fashion retail: Sarah Bailey (Red Magazine), Alexandra Shulman (Vogue), Isabella Blow, Mrs Burstein (Browns), Stephen Jones and Katie Grand (LOVE) have all previously been selected by the Fashion Museum Bath to choose the Dress of the Year.

Alexander Fury said: “Great fashion, I feel, has a duty to be a testament to its time. I’m both honoured and privileged to have been chosen to select the Dress of the Year 2018 for the Fashion Museum Bath – since 1963, an annual curatorial exercise in capturing shifts of aesthetics and attitudes through cloth without comparison.

“These selections are important touchstones in the evolutions of both fashion specifically, and culture generally: they place clothing in a wider context, not as textile objects but as ideologically-weighted markers that add meaning to the moment in which they were created. In its 55th year, I hope I can do the tradition justice.”

Rosemary Harden, Fashion Museum Curator, said: “We are thrilled that Alexander Fury has agreed to select the Dress of the Year 2018 for the Fashion Museum. Just as the list of designers chosen as Dress of the Year for the museum reads like a roll call of the great names of fashion in the last fifty years, so too the list of selectors charts the major names in fashion journalism, retail and styling in our times.

“Wonderful news, therefore, that Fury, with his brilliant eye and fabulous reportage, has agreed to be part of the Dress of the Year campaign here in Bath. I can’t wait to see what Alexander’s 2018 choice will be!”

Councillor Paul Myers, Cabinet Member for Economic and Community Regeneration at Bath & North East Somerset Council, which runs the Fashion Museum, said: “We are delighted that Alexander Fury has agreed to select the Dress of the Year 2018 for the Fashion Museum, and look forward to finding out what he has chosen.

“Local Discovery Card holders will be able to see the Dress of the Year for free from 1st December, when it will be unveiled as the final object in the ‘History of Fashion in 100 Objects’ exhibition.”

Before his current roles at AnOther magazine and the Financial Times, Fury was the first Chief Fashion Correspondent at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, fashion editor of The Independent, i and The Independent on Sunday newspapers and the inaugural Men’s Critic for American Vogue.com. Prior to this, he was Editor of LOVE magazine and fashion director of SHOWstudio.com, the award-winning website of fashion photographer Nick Knight.

His first book, Dior: Catwalk, was published by Thames and Hudson in June 2017; a second, Catwalking, charting the career of catwalk photographer Chris Moore, was released in November 2017. Fury has recently completed a book charting the work of Gianfranco Ferré for Christian Dior, due for release in Autumn 2018. He is an avid collector of contemporary fashion.

For more information, visit: www.fashionmuseum.co.uk