The HoodieThe Hoodie

"In 2015, when I was working as Editor of SHOWstudio, a pioneering fashion platform founded by the British image-maker Nick Knight, I decided to launch a project investigating sportswear. It was a moment of change in fashion - sportswear, or "streetwear" or "casualwear", whatever you want to call it, was having a huge influence on high fashion."

"Classic products and styles, like the adidas Stan Smith trainer, were being widely copied by luxury labels, who would apply their branding and hike up the price point. Everywhere, there were hoodies, tracksuits, puffa jackets, trainers. Yet, it often felt like fashion journalists and critics didn't have the same knowledge of the cultural heritage and histories of these garments as they did the history of high fashion - it felt like references and nuances were getting lost. Similarly, these items weren't sizeably represented in museums or collections, unlike gowns, tailoring and couture. With all this in mind, I decided to commission a series of great sportswear experts - from trainer doyen Gary Aspden to photographer and Patagonia fan Jason Evans - to talk through the history of key items; caps, tracksuits, hoodies, logos etc. The way we filmed it nodded to the language of museum displays - very stark, quite formal, very clean. It was slightly tongue-in-cheek. I interviewed each person about their object of choice, and most supplied a selection of reference garments to look at. We edited the audio so it sounds like they are just giving a long speech - a wonderful, researched lecture. The late, great Gary Warnett kindly provided the history of the hoodie, referencing various styles, from the Champion grey hoodie to the classic Nike black sweatshirt, and citing various films (Juice, Rocky, ET) and cultural movements such as jock culture, Bboy, hip hop, to contextualise the garment. The research for this exhibition can certainly be dated back to this project - it's when the ideas for this display started to formulate more clearly. An exhibition around the hoodie always felt like a fruitful area to explore, but the different layers I could consider became more apparent to me while researching this series. Certainly the exhibition will owe a great debt to Gary, and will share the ethos of the SHOWstudio Sportswear project, which was, overall, about investigating the many layers and nuances behind what we wear, and the broader cultural and sociological stories that are told through clothing. You can watch all the Sportswear-videos on SHOWstudio.com"

Lou Stoppard, curator, The Hoodie.