The Red Dress

It's a glorious object, the Red Dress.  Made out of burgundy silk dupion, it has a fitted, boned bodice with a v-neck and long sleeves, and a very full, beautifully draped skirt with a train. It's like an echo of something out of the Tudor era - but really it belongs to the world of myth, and legend, the sort of dress that a queen at the height of her powers might have worn for ceremonial occasions.

The Red Dress

But what's special about it isn't the cut. It's the embroidery which covers it. And it's not even exactly that: it's the symbolic value of that embroidery. This dress is the embodiment of an idea.

It first took shape in the brain of Kirsty Macleod, a remarkable artist from Somerset. She conceived the idea of a dress which would be created not by a small team, but by 380 people, mostly women, from all over the world, many of them vulnerable, victims of poverty, survivors of war, refugees. Of these 141 were commissioned and paid for their work, and continue to receive a share of the profits from exhibitions: the remainder were volunteers, many from audiences at exhibitions and events. For fourteen years, the dress - or often just sections of it - travelled the world, being seen, telling its story, and having embroidery added to it. Now it's finished - and still travelling. I saw it a few weeks ago in Somerton , the ancient capital of Wessex, now a pretty town in Somerset.

The dress itself is stunning, and of course it's the centrepiece. But its story, which is told in a series of short films, is an indivisible part of it. We follow Kirsty and the dress all over the world, and we hear the voices of many of the women who worked on it, creating beautiful work and making themselves heard. 

I keep thinking about the project, and trying to work out what makes it so powerful, so resonant. The world at the moment is a difficult, threatening place, with war, poverty, cruelty and want seeming to spread across the globe like a blight. But something like this shows that there are good things too: that there's kindness, and community, and beauty and creativity. It shows also how small beginnings can give rise to significant results, how an idea can take to its feet and dance across the world. It's a symbol of hope.

This half angel, half bird, is the work of a Russian woman. Not far from it is embroidery by Ukrainian refugees.

Motifs from Africa.

The snowdrops were done by someone local - possibly from Glastonbury. I particularly liked the swirly motif at the bottom, because it's a doodle I have done ever since I was day-dreaming in lessons at school. It's surprisingly hard to make it symmetrical.

For more information about the project, see The Red Dress.