Staging the Future with Dr Veronica Isaac at Wimbledon College of Arts
Picture this: you’re standing before an intricate gown that once graced the stages of London’s greatest theatres. As you watch, digital projections dance across the silk, recreating the stagelight that first illuminated its folds. The sound of a bustling theatre fills the air. Suddenly, you’re not just looking at a costume — you’re wearing it, reliving its debut moment. The audience rises to their feet, chanting encore, encore!...
From 18–20 September, Wimbledon College of Arts throws open its doors to unveil the inaugural showcase of their MA Costume programme. This isn’t your typical graduate exhibition. Think of it as part museum, part laboratory, part time machine — all wrapped in the magic of London Textile Month.
Kaiqi Zhang, BA Costume for Theatre and Screen
Guiding this revolutionary course is Dr Veronica Isaac, the programme’s visionary Subject Leader. A historian, curator, and costume devotee, she has orchestrated an exhibition where Glyndebourne Opera House commissions hang beside experimental works that blur the line between costume and sculpture. Research portfolios sit alongside each display, revealing the obsessive detail behind every stitch, fabric choice, and design decision that transforms cloth into character. This isn’t about choosing between hand-stitching and 3D printing — it’s about weaving them together. One moment students are reviving 500-year-old techniques, the next they are experimenting with digital embroidery and 3D printing. Sustainability and ethics aren’t add-ons; they’re stitched into every assignment, every conversation, and every creation.
Satin silk shoes, early 20 th century, from the Teaching Collection, Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL . Photograph: Amy Hare
On the opening day, visitors can slip “behind the seams” with guided tours through the college’s costume studios and buzzing 3D labs, where handcraft traditions meet cutting-edge innovation. The Teaching Collection — normally locked away like theatrical treasure — will be opened, revealing centuries of dress and textile history. Specialist workshops invite visitors to get hands-on: to feel silk respond under their fingertips, to watch laser-cut details emerge like magic, and to experience the alchemy that turns raw materials into living, breathing costume.
The National Gallery x Costume at Wimbledon College of Arts
At the heart of it all is course leader Dr Veronica Isaac. Her decade at the V&A’s Theatre and Performance collection taught her to read garments like manuscripts, each thread carrying stories of identity, memory, and artistry. Through her Arts and Humanities Research Council project, Constructing Costume Histories, she is shining a spotlight on Britain’s overlooked costume makers — the invisible hands whose artistry has shaped our stages for centuries. Just as she reclaims their legacy, her MA programme nurtures the next generation, training practitioners to honour costume as archive, art form, and act of storytelling.
Costume design for The national Gallery/Lorenzo Lotto Project
The result? Graduates who understand that costume is archaeology you can wear, storytelling you can touch, and history that still breathes. For London Textile Month, the MA Costume Showcase offers an encounter: a chance to glimpse a new future of costume craft.
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Further Information:
MA Costume Showcase, 18–20 September, 10.30am–4.30pm, Wimbledon College of Arts, Merton Hall Rd, London SW19 3QA
Entry to the Showcase is FREE.
Tickets for the tours and workshops will also be free, but numbers will be capped.
For further information about the Showcase and related events please contact the MA Costume Subject Leader:
Dr Veronica Isaac, Subject Leader, MA Costume, v.isaac@arts.ac.uk
MA Costume Design Course at Wimbledon College of Arts
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Image Credits:
Lead: Imogen Pike. BA (Hons) Costume for Theatre and Screen.
All other images as credited in photo captions.