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Adrienne Rich describes revision as “the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes”, in a way which then influences the present. This is exactly what Stitches in Time, a new exhibition at the National Museum, has set as its aim. The exhibition is comprised of the work of 12 Fashion Design students from the Limerick School of Art & Design. They took as inspiration the museum’s award-winning exhibition, Soldiers and Chiefs, which traces Ireland’s military history from 1550.
The idea of modern fashion taking inspiration from historical designs is, of course, nothing new, but the specificity of this project ensures its success. The result is a stunning mix of contemporary designs, all inspired by different aspects of Ireland’s military history. Whereas some pieces are quite explicit in their reference to the past, one dress using lines of bullets as adornment, others take inspiration from shapes, colours, and materials. One of the most successful examples of this is a dress by Megan Harley-Peters. Its tailoring — with details like cuffed sleeves — are reminiscent of military dress jackets, but its shoulders are pointed, a shape in fact taken from an 18th century helmet. Kate Spillane too completely transforms her source material of a soldier’s webbing into the intricately looped and woven adornment for her parachute-inspired dress. One of the most unusual pieces was Aoife Eustace-Doyle’s gas mask dress. Its clear plastic front and sides and bulbous shape feel intensely modern yet hark back to one of the most iconic pieces of equipment from the second world war.

Each piece is accompanied by a sketch book illustrating the initial ideas and the gradual changes which led to the finished pieces on display, and the work is all the more interesting for this detail. This exhibition manages to simultaneously provide a look to the future and a nod to the past, an excellent reason to revisit the National Museum and its story of our own national history.

Stitches in Time: Fashion inspired by Soldiers and Chiefs, runs until October 26, The National Museum, Collins Barracks. Admission Free. Photos courtesy Ann Daly and the National Museum of Ireland.