Battledress

Professor David Forrest, School of English, has collaborated with writer Rachel Genn,  Debbie Ballin and Human to create Battledress. This immersive gallery piece explores working class women’s fashion and the rituals of getting ready and going out. It encourages participants to reflect on their own coming of age experiences through music, fashion and rebellion and asks ‘what outfit makes you feel most powerful?’

In 1980’s Sheffield, we dressed in jockey silks, danced like we meant it and fought because we had to…

R Genn, 2021

Battledress is a new two screen immersive using archive and oral history material by Genn, Ballin and Human, commissioned by Festival of the Mind, that explores working class women’s histories of fashion, fighting and allegiance.

You could get into Turn Ups nightclub in 1980s Sheffield if you were 15, but only if the bouncers fancied you. If they did, you could be wearing whatever you liked: jodhpurs, Prince of Wales check suits; you could even be carrying a walking cane. We weren’t fully out of the shadow of A Clockwork Orange, and so found ourselves getting away with a tasteless mix of aristo and militaria. It would be nearly ten years until Bikini Kill released ‘Rebel Girl’ but we already lived by the lines, “That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighbourhood, I got news for you, she is!”

R Genn, 2021

Want to take part?
Share your Battledress. Tell us what outfit made you feel invincible. Did you ever have a fight? What for?
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