Amber Butchart

Fashion Historian

Amber Butchart is a fashion historian, author and broadcaster. She is an Associate Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion, where she lectures across a number of areas concerning fashion, the body and contemporary culture, from the impact of blogging on fashion media to fashion and the grotesque. A former Research Fellow at the University of the Arts London, Butchart has spoken at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, British Museum, Royal Academy, British Library, Wellcome Collection and British Film Institute. She has written books for the British Library, Thames & Hudson, and the Octopus Publishing Group.

Butchart’s expertise spans a number of areas regarding the historical and cultural context of clothing. She is a National Crime Agency External Advisor as a Consultant Forensic Garment Analyst, working with Alecto Forensics on cases that require investigation of clothing and textiles and conducting training sessions on forensic garment recording.

Butchart began her career as Head Buyer and Trend Analyst for international vintage clothing company Beyond Retro. She established the Beyond Retro Design Archive which sells vintage inspiration pieces to global fashion houses, and she was a contributor to leading trend forecasting company WGSN. She has also worked as a design consultant for fashion brands.

In 2018 Butchart presented A Stitch in Time, a six-part series on BBC Four that fused biography, art and the history of fashion to explore the lives of historical figures through the clothes they wore. This was followed by Civilisations Stories: The First Refugees for BBC One and BBC Four, about the Huguenot silk weavers of Spitalfields for the landmark BBC Civilisations season. Her two-part documentary for BBC Radio 4 tracked the rise of vintage clothing and the global ramifications of secondhand style. As well as her own presenting, she was the resident historian throughout series five of Great British Sewing Bee.

Butchart is one half of creative collaboration the Broken Hearts. Their weekly primetime radio show on Jazz FM ran for over 3 years, earning them a Radio Academy Award nomination.

Amber Butchart is a fashion historian, author and broadcaster. She is an Associate Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion, where she lectures across a number of areas concerning fashion, the body and contemporary culture, from the impact of blogging on fashion media to fashion and the grotesque. A former Research Fellow at the University of the Arts London, Butchart has spoken at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, British Museum, Royal Academy, British Library, Wellcome Collection and British Film Institute. She has written books for the British Library, Thames & Hudson, and the Octopus Publishing Group.

Butchart’s expertise spans a number of areas regarding the historical and cultural context of clothing. She is a National Crime Agency External Advisor as a Consultant Forensic Garment Analyst, working with Alecto Forensics on cases that require investigation of clothing and textiles and conducting training sessions on forensic garment recording.

Butchart began her career as Head Buyer and Trend Analyst for international vintage clothing company Beyond Retro. She established the Beyond Retro Design Archive which sells vintage inspiration pieces to global fashion houses, and she was a contributor to leading trend forecasting company WGSN. She has also worked as a design consultant for fashion brands.

In 2018 Butchart presented A Stitch in Time, a six-part series on BBC Four that fused biography, art and the history of fashion to explore the lives of historical figures through the clothes they wore. This was followed by Civilisations Stories: The First Refugees for BBC One and BBC Four, about the Huguenot silk weavers of Spitalfields for the landmark BBC Civilisations season. Her two-part documentary for BBC Radio 4 tracked the rise of vintage clothing and the global ramifications of secondhand style. As well as her own presenting, she was the resident historian throughout series five of Great British Sewing Bee.

Butchart is one half of creative collaboration the Broken Hearts. Their weekly primetime radio show on Jazz FM ran for over 3 years, earning them a Radio Academy Award nomination.

Related content
Type
Back to top