The very important documentary 'The Devil Wears Prada'

Mum, we made it to the V&A!

Meg and Sara embark on an epic adventure to the Big Smoke this episode, and end up in the Fashioning Masculinities exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Where they spent a lot of time studying Harry Styles' footwear.

Curator - and ex Leeds Museums and Gallleries alumni - Rosalind McKever talks us through the exhibition, what it's like working at the V&A, and her list of art history boyfriends.

The Fashioning Masculinities exhibition is open until 6 November, and you can buy tickets here.

If you enjoy the episode, subscribe on all the usual podcast platforms and give us a review on  Apple Podcasts and you'll be simply the best. Better than all the rest.

Transcript

Moderator 2: (Moderators introduce the podcast and chat amongst themselves). Hello, Rosalind. Firstly, thank you so much for coming on. So, the first question that we ask all of our guests is who the flip are you? 

Rosalind McKever: Well, how do I define myself? I mean, I'm curator of paintings and drawings at the V&A. I'm co-curator of the exhibition Fashioning Masculinities. I'm an art historian and a curator and I just like talking about pictures. 

Moderator 2: Could you give us a little bit of background to you and how you got into museums and how you got into your role? 

Moderator 1: Because there's an interesting link that we're hoping that you're going to bring up with Leeds. 

Rosalind McKever: Well, yes, absolutely. The place that I got into what I do, I would say is Leeds City Art Gallery. So, I did a BA in History of Art with Italian at the University of Leeds, and during that I remember maybe in my 2nd year I had to do something about Rembrandt in prints and I don't know how knew this, but I knew that there were some Rembrandt prints in the Art Gallery and so I came down to look at them. When I say down, I mean down Woodhouse Lane. 

Moderator 2: It is down a hill, to be fair. 

Rosalind McKever: Yes, very much. Yes, most of my memories of Leeds are hill-based. There's a reason I live in a flatter town now. So, I went and looked at those prints, 'This is pretty exciting, to be able to, you know, go backstage, look at the things.' And that I owe to the enthusiasm for the, 'Oh my Goodness, I'm allowed to touch a Rembrandt.' 

Moderator 2: I've never seen anyone so sensual about a Rembrandt before. 

Rosalind McKever: So, when I finished my degree, I asked about volunteering at Leeds at the Art Gallery and the curator remembered that I was someone who'd come in to look at the pictures and she was like, 'You're the kind of person whose sensual about a Rembrandt', and let me volunteer there. And then I worked for the museum for a bit. I was a picture researcher for the museum. And then, I got a wild idea of doing a PhD and moved down to London to do that and I've been working in museums every since. 

Moderator 2: [Moderator correct?] Do you feel like you regret leaving the greatest city in the world? 

Rosalind McKever: I think of it often. 

Moderator 1: Well, you're welcome back anytime. 

Rosalind McKever: Yes, I do visit. 

Moderator 1: So, as curator of paintings and drawing, what does that mean, what is that collection like, who are the paintings of? 

Rosalind McKever: That collection covers about 25,000 objects and we have beautiful, sort of, Renaissance portraiture, we have a gorgeous Botticelli through to an incredible collection of 19th century British art. We have the national collection of Constable. We have a real variety of the kinds of paintings and drawing that we hold. So, we're(ph 08.29) also the national collection of portrait miniatures, of watercolours, and so, we have this real richness. We also have a really interesting focus on 19th century genre paintings for the fact that when the V&A was founded in the 19th century, we were given these huge bequests of 19th century British paintings, which are maybe not the kind of painting that would receive great attention, but really thinking about them on mass allows us to think about shifting ideas of taste. I haven't been in the role very long, so (mw 08.58) thinking about what we can do with paintings and drawings here at the V&A, is really thinking about how they interact with other departments of the museum. So, what's the relationship between painting and photography, painting and fashion, painting and architecture, all these different ways that the collections of the V&A interconnect, which I think are often the places where everything gets more exciting. 

Moderator 2: Yes, I agree. I mean, I think that-, spoiler alert, we've just been to see the brand new exhibition that you co-curated, Fashioning Masculinities. Excellent, well done. 

Moderator 1: Me and Sara were walking around and been like, 'Looks alright, isn't it? 

Moderator 2: But, I knew that we were coming to speak to you, so I, kind of, went in with the mindset of knowing we were going to see paintings and drawings, but I'd never probably taken it in context of that matching it with what I like to call in my layman's terms 3D objects from museums, and for me one makes the other sing, it can really lift the story and that is really exciting. 

Rosalind McKever: That's exactly what we wanted to do in the exhibition, is bring those kinds of objects (TC 00:10:00) together to see what happens when you start that conversation. It was a really interesting curatorial process of working with a fashion curator and she would, kind of, show me a look from the runway and I'd be like 'Oh, I know just the painting for that.' And it was really exciting to, kind of, think in that really creative way of how we could talk about something quite serious by bringing together objects that really talk to each other. 

Moderator 2: We had an exhibition at Lotherton Hall a few years ago with paintings and objects and the visitor feedback was great. 

Moderator 1: Can you give us a little summary of the exhibition and what a visitor would experience and would expect to see if they came? 

Rosalind McKever: Sure. So, the exhibition Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear is our response to this really creative and exciting moment, particularly in he men's wear industry. But, we wanted to do with the exhibition is, rather than, kind of, trace a chronological history of men's wear, we wanted to really think about how in 2022 when we're thinking not only about this creativity, but also a series of questions about gender, how fashion teaches us about masculinity and how masculinity has been fashioned through clothes and through image-making and through this, kind of, visual culture. So, it has 3 main sections which are called Undressed, Overdressed, and Redressed. 

In Undressed, we start with the masculine body and underwear and we're really thinking about how the masculine body itself is fashionable in that it can be formed in different ways and it is subject to certain fashions. So, we go back to, sort of, classical ideals of how the masculine body has been expected to follow that of Hercules, that of Antinous, that of the Apollo, all of these classical models. So, we even have plaster casts of these famous classical sculptures there, and really look at how those ideas of the masculine body have been perpetuated by art history. So, as well as these cultures, we have photography and a lot of prints, we even have a prototype action man from the Museum of Childhood which is really exciting, and he's, kind of, exploded in this way. We put him next to a print of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man because that felt fun. So, we have all of these, kind of, ideal masculine bodies and we're putting those together with underwear and clothing which really exposes that body or puts it on display. So, whether that'd be the way that it's draping cloth over it or whether it's the use of transparent fabrics. So, for example, in that section, we have a trio of contemporary looks that are all transparent fabrics and we've put them on a mannequin which evokes a sculpture in art collection by Antonio Canova called the The Three Graces, which is a sculpture of 3 women which we've reimagined with male mannequins. So, it was those, kind of, conceits where we were playing with what happens when you put sculpture and fashion on mannequins on the same pedestal, what's going to happen there. 

I realise I've talk to some time. I'll move onto the next section. I just get carried away. Then, in Overdress, we're really looking at the, kind of, dressing up box(ph 14.18) of masculine style, so all of those outrageous silhouettes, lavish textiles, symbolic patterns, exciting colours, that men have used to wear power on their sleeves. So, in there, we're particularly looking at oil painting and portraiture as, kind of, symbolic of power. And what we've done there is often hang the pictures quite low so it feel like the people are in the room with you which particularly with the large scale pictures we found really fun. We basically hung them at the same height so that their feet would be near the feet of the mannequins, so you just get this impression of being immersed in a party, and at that party you find yourself next to Alessandro Farnese, a 15-year-old prince who's wearing this incredible cape and next to him you see a contemporary Dolce & Gabbana cape which is so richly embroidered and bringing exactly same kind of swagger. It was those kind of connections where we wanted to show that things that we see in historical portraiture and what we see in the contemporary catwalk are very much related, that kind of peacockery comes through. So, that the 2nd section. 

And then, in the 3rd section, we're really thinking about the suit. So, what we're looking to do there is, by the grouping together all the really colourful over-the-top stuff and then grouping together all of the black suits, we wanted to give people an opportunity to really see the difference between those suits. So, for example, we have a lineup of frock coats including 5 19th century frock coats, which to a casual observer, I admit, might initially all look the same, but, when you put them all together and you don't have the distraction of something lavish from the 19th century with them, you really can see how the lapels, the cuffs, the shapes of the sleeves, they're all really different. And so, you can really, kind of, tune into the way that all of the variety and splendour and skill and richness that you get in the 2nd gallery, as I said, in this really overt way, gets subsumed into the obsessional idea of how men's tailoring can create this idea of perfection, that I think is so important in our idea of formal men's wear. And that is something that designers have been looking to play with and deconstruct in the(ph 17.04) people have been appropriating. So, we look at the tuxedo as both a, kind of, beautiful piece of craftwork and then how the tuxedo has been appropriated by everyone from Marlene Dietrich to (inaudible 17.17) and we have a beautiful tuxedo worn by Sam Smith. So, really thinking about how people have appropriated men's wear as symbolic of power and then how designers have really started to pick it apart at the seams ant that with many of our examples is quite literal and that's where we have the incredible Timothée Chalamet suit made by Haider Ackermann which is entire covered in sequins in a way that you really have to look it to understand how many million sequins are on there to produce something which is so simple in its cut. So, it's a suit, it's very simple, but it's so ostentatious at the same time. 

Moderator 2: It's a good Timmy's got such a tiny waist because otherwise it would have been a lot more sequins. 

Moderator 1: Gosh, he is tiny, isn't he? 

Rosalind McKever: When that came out at the box it was a very exciting day, 'Oh, this is how big Timothée Chalamet is.' 

Moderator 1: Do you get that a lot? When you get collections out, are you like, 'Oh God, that's how big that person was.' 

Rosalind McKever: Yes, it's often quite surprising and it's really interesting with the historical material because usually the historical things in the collection are smaller, and that's because historically people were smaller, but then, also, the smaller things tended to be kept because you couldn't cut them up and reuse them for someone else whereas if it's a bigger thing you could always reshape it. So, most of the things that we in that collection in terms of fashion tend to be smaller because historically people were smaller. But, then, it's also those things that can't be cut up and reused and hand-me-downs. So, you tend to get smaller things, but then, when you find something larger, it feels really special. So, we have what we would call a large green waistcoat in the exhibition where you can see that additional panels have been added to expand it. So, you really see the way that fashion has been reused and that's displayed close to another really wonderful example of a dressing gown which is made out of the fabric of a woman's dress. So, these clothes just get recycled and re-gendered all at once. 

Moderator 2: The bit you were talking about a second ago with the black clothing that's all together and (TC 00:20:00) I think the label says 'Men in Black'. 

Moderator 1: Sara was losing her mind because you've got a piece from Gary Oldman and Sara really fancies Gary Oldman. You love him, don't you? 

Moderator 2: Yes, thank so much. Yes, I just like the accessories. But, I just found it really interesting, like you said, when you put all these black items together, that is the best way to show them off because there is nothing to distinguish them otherwise. So, you really start to pay attention to detail and the cut and you just think, 'God, it's just incredible, the attention to detail that has to go into something like that.' And I really like the black section-, it was funny, wasn't it? Because I love colour and I love the really flamboyant pieces and everyone's taking photographs of them. I also love watching visitors. You got people-, they've stopped partly because it's nigh on impossible to take photographs of black things very well when they're behind a glass case, but they stopped and they looked and you think, 'That's what I want you to do in here anyway.' 

Rosalind McKever: That's really good to know. When I go down, people start talking to me about things and I'm like, 'No, I want to see what people really think and really do in here.' 

Moderator 2: That room at the end as well with Mini(ph 21.10) and Billy Porter and Harry Styles, (inaudible 21.14) that's the selfie zone. 

Rosalind McKever: That's good because in there we want people thinking about their own part in all of this, and that's something that we tried to, kind of, sow in throughout, as with bringing the pictures to a level that you feel like you're on the same level as them, that you feel very present throughout the exhibition, the feeling that every visitor is part of the story. 

Moderator 2: You said that about the way that some of upper class stuff was portrait because you mentioned that it's higher up, right? 

Moderator 1: Yes, on taller (mw 21.51), so you were essentially being looked down upon by people of the high classes. It was specific to do with a coronation suit and I just thought that was quite clever. I saw someone looking up at it and I was, like, 'That is perfect, just the position of how that would have happened in real life. And also, it gives you a different viewpoint of that piece of clothing and in a way, as much as it's them looking down on you, it also felt quite vulnerable and I quite liked that because I just thought it's essentially me looking up at that men's crotch and it's just having that balance. So, yes, it's clever. 

Getting back to the overall theme of the exhibition, I read that this is the first exhibition in 100 years at the V&A that is solely about men's wear. Is that right? 

Rosalind McKever: Yes. So, well, we had an exhibition about 10 years ago, maybe over 10 years ago, called Men In Skirts, which is self-explanatory, what that was about. And there have been smaller displays around, kind of, specific tailors and there's always been an inclusion of some men's wear in fashion exhibitions in the fashion gallery. So, it's always had this presence and the collection has been steadily growing, particularly in recent years. So, we've been growing, but think, it felt like a really important moment for the reasons I said earlier around the, kind of, what's happening in the men's wear industry and also what's happening in wider society to really get all the men's wear out and it's really nice that we have a lot of things on show that have never been on display before. 

Moderator 1: We had a chat with one of our dress and textile curators, that we have a lot more women's wear, generally across the board. And I think that is representative of how men's wear has bee treated in the past as well. Not having as much of a presence just in culture, in identity, until someone makes a real show of it, which is what's happened. And I think that's really interesting, but it's, kind of, bonkers because it was conceived before COVID all happened, but then we noticed that, similar to 1 of our exhibitions that have just opened, that a lot of the past couple of years have really changed and swayed what's going in there, and a lot of the pieces that are in there now are from 2020-2021. Because that must have been a bit bonkers, you have this idea in your head and this massive, worldwide thing has happened and that has huge impact across the board. But, I feel like it's way more present in the past few years than ever before in mainstream media for masculinity and femininity conversation to keep coming up 

Moderator 1: When I think of feminine clothing, I always think of female clothing being influenced by masculine clothing. I don't tend to think of it as being the other way round. I think that's something that I really learnt in the exhibition, that idea of gender fluidity and the influence being both ways. I feel like, in the last few years, with things that have happened, like the Harry Styles Vogue cover, it seems like that's coming to the foreground a little bit more and it's becoming a little bit more accepted that menswear can be a bit more influenced by what we would traditionally think of as feminine clothing. 

Rosalind McKever: Yes, absolutely, and what's interesting is that many of the menswear designers that we interviewed and spoke to when we were planning this said, 'I don't really want to use the word menswear,' or, 'I don't really see what I'm doing as menswear. I'm not really sure that menswear exists.' Part of what we were doing in curating the exhibition was trying to work out where the boundaries of menswear were. Certainly, I would say that the show is not trying to define menswear, if anything, the opposite, it's trying to push at those borders of where we find those gaps. I've been working on this exhibition since 2018, in that period, we've seen this enormous change and it was really wonderful to be able to be responsive to that but also offer up and think about how historical collections can contribute to that story. It became obvious that the Billy Porter, Harry Styles and Bimini Bon-Boulash were 3 dresses that really summed up what's been happening in the past few years, and as you say, particularly that shift from it's not just happening in the fashion industry. Those 3 looks, the Billy, the Bimini and the Harry, happened and it felt like we wanted to honour that but then wanted to say, 'Okay, this gender nonconforming through dress has this incredible visibility at the moment but what is the history of that? How has that been happening?' 

We very consciously made sure that there are skirted garments in every room. There are people gender nonconforming in every room, so that when you get to that finale, you're enjoying this very glamorous moment but also set up that, 'Okay, Gladys Bentley, a lesbian blues singer in the Harlem renaissance, what was she doing with this 100 years ago? What was Frances Stuart, a woman at the court of Charles II, doing with this hundreds of years ago?' to really bring out those stories. I think that that's what's really important when people are thinking about visibility in the present moment, to understand the history that that's building on. 

Moderator 1: If there was 1 person throughout history that you think has been the most pivotal in pushing those boundaries of masculine clothing, who do you think that would be, in terms of personal style rather than a designer? 

Moderator 2: Do you have an answer for this, Meg? 

Moderator 1: I deeply fancy Harry Styles, he would always be mine. I think of quite obvious ones, I think of Prince, I think of David Bowie. 

Rosalind McKever: You see, what's happening in my brain is that I'm trying to choose someone from the 16th century because of this point that it's been happening for so long. Here's a side answer, coming in from a different direction, I wrote about this history of gender nonconformity just for the exhibition catalogue but I did it through a particular lens, and this sounds desperately pretentious, but I did it by thinking Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando and how the character, Orlando, travels through time and through gender. They keep waking up in a different century and halfway through the novel, the gender changes. What I wanted to do was think about the people in the history of fashion that interconnect with this. 1 of my favourites, who I have to give a shout out to at really any opportunity, is Christina of Sweden. She was technically a King of Sweden in the 17th century and had this opportunity. It's interested because she gets raised not as a boy but because she was raised to be King of Sweden, the education she got was more masculine than most women in Sweden. If you're doing things like horse (TC 00:30:00) riding, it makes sense to be wearing something that's going to be comfortable to do that in, so she starts dressing in a certain way but then becomes famous as this woman who dresses in a masculine way and who ends up abdicating because she doesn't want to get married. She goes off and lives a fabulous life in Rome. She's a fascinating character, I recommend, but I think it's interesting, who the people are in history whose stories like that come down to us. 

Whatever Christina of Sweden would have done as a monarch of a major European country, we'd have known their story. The fact that it happens to be this story just makes it more interesting. There's a film where Christina was played by Greta Garbo that we show a bit of in the show. We include it in the exhibition to show a 1930s version, the film was from the '30s, a 1930s version of that visibility of gender nonconforming to trace it back. I think I was talking Virginia Woolf's Orlando at some point before I got onto Christina of Sweden. These are all of my favourite topics. I think that Orlando has become a byword for the history of this but also the contemporary excitement. It's been really interesting that a number of contemporary fashion designers have created collections inspired by Virginia Woolf's novel. That book gives people the way in to talking about something. The idea that we don't wear clothes, the clothes wear us. 

Moderator 2: I always think of Oscar Wilde and I think that's my artistic reference. I just always thought he didn't care and that was what I loved about it. He just thought, 'I'm buggered anyway, so I'll just do what I want.' For me, that was my first idea of masculinity as being something different to what that preconceived notion was. 

Moderator 1: Just on Oscar Wilde, quite a lot of the prints in the exhibition are to do with the idea of the dandy. There's a bit on botany and Oscar Wilde's reference is he wore a blue carnation to represent his homosexuality. Next to it, there's a display on the idea of florals and the pattern of florals coming in through colonialism. 

Rosalind McKever: Yes, in that section of the show, we take florals as a few different ways of looking at menswear and histories of power. We have 1 display where we're thinking about colonialism to the extent that most of the flowers that we see on 18th century menswear, meaning court suits in the European courts here, were often decorated with flowers but they were not flowers indigenous to Europe. What does that tell us all about what it meant to signify power? We found that really fascinating and wanted to think on how we could reflect on that by inviting young designers, particularly young designers of colour, to really look at what they're doing with it. For example, there we have people like Rahemur Rahman, who has his textiles made in Bangladesh. What's great is that Rahemur used to come into the V&A to see the Asian collections here, to look at the patterns that we have to get inspiration for what he wanted to ask the artisans in Bangladesh to make, which is a really nice cyclical idea of the work going on display there. 

We have the queer language of flowers that we wanted to explore as well, whether that be Oscar Wilde with his green carnation, and we include that in a case with a wonderful coat worn by Cecil Beaton at 1 of his famous garden parties in the 1930s, which is covered with these incredible roses and also broken eggshells. It's 1 of my favourite things in the V&A because it's just bizarre but also it gives us, for me certainly, such a way into thinking about the difference or the lack of difference between fashion and dressing up. Certainly, when you're someone like Cecil Beaton, at what point are you dressing up and at what point are you expressing yourself? What might be the difference between those 2 things, I think is really interesting. 

Moderator 1: 1 thing that I wanted to ask was how the things represented in the exhibition found their way into everyday wear and what that relationship is between a celebrity wearing something on the red carpet and being quite game-changing with the outfits that they've chose, then how that feeds into how the rest of society develops in terms of fashion? 

Rosalind McKever: Whenever I think about this, I always think about the very important documentary, The Devil Wears Prada. 

Moderator 1: I imagine everyone at the V&A just watching that film all the time. 

Rosalind McKever: It's a documentary about our life. In that, Miranda Priestley explains it, that there's this trickle down effect, of Oscar De La Renta producing cerulean gowns leads to Anne Hathaway's character finding a cerulean jumper. I think what's really interesting and that we notice with menswear is that things trickle in both directions, that it's not just about that, and I think, certainly in recent years, it's as much about street-wear and you see so much influence from Instagram of the different modes of creativity and shifting ideas. I think that certainly 1 thing we wanted to pay tribute to, particularly with the finale, was taking these 3 moments, in a way, they're very fashion, 1 of them is a Vogue cover, which is as fashion as fashion can be, but it felt like they happened in the real world. The backlash and then Harry having his photo taken eating a banana, wearing a powder-blue suit, in a post where he was combatting what people had said, it felt like it was happening in the real world, rather than just being something that's happening at a Fashion Week that 99.9% of the population would never have the opportunity to see. 

Moderator 1: What was it like, as a woman, curating and exhibition about menswear? 

Rosalind McKever: It was really interesting, and as a team, we were quite self-conscious about it but we were also thinking that, let's just say, there have been some exhibitions of women's wear that weren't curated by women. We took that to heart, that maybe we might have the power to do that, that it might just be okay. We consulted widely. We asked a lot of men about the show, particularly men who are specialists in menswear. It also felt quite fun. 

Moderator 2: What is your favourite thing? 

Rosalind McKever: I have so many favourites and I keep chopping and changing. Can I have 1 per room? 

Moderator 2: Yes. 

Rosalind McKever: My favourite thing in the first room is a late 18th century statue of Hercules, which is all of about 7cm tall. There was a time when, on my object list, was a plaster cast of the actual Farnese Hercules, which is 3m tall, and I was not able to achieve having that in the show. I thought, 'If I can't have something ridiculously large, why don't I have something ridiculously small?' 

Moderator 2: He's the ultimate masculinity. 

Rosalind McKever: Exactly, he's Hunter from Gladiators. That I could just hold, me, as a lady curator, holding him in my hand. It just felt such good fun. My favourite in the second gallery is the portrait of The Tailor by Moroni because he is my art history boyfriend. 

Moderator 2: What about Rembrandt? 

Rosalind McKever: Well, there's a list. Moroni is my art history boyfriend, he's just ridiculously handsome but what I really love about that picture is a tailor in the 16th century was a relatively humble member of society. They're a skilled artisan, on the same level as a painter. He's not an aristocrat. He's not rich. He's not from a storied family. The idea of a tailor using their skills to dress themselves like someone who'd get their portrait painted, to have their portrait painted, and then hanging of the walls of the National Gallery, I just think is super fun and speaks to this transformative power of fashion, of that thing of, coming back to Virginia Woolf, the clothes wear us, how the clothes transform us. The third gallery, oh that's hard because there are beauties (TC 00:40:00) there. I think the work I'm currently most obsessed with, and this is maybe 1 of the subtlest pieces, is a work by an Italian artist called Michelangelo Pistoletto. It's a mirror painting. It's a silk-screen of man seen from behind in a suit on a piece of stainless steel with this mirror finish. When you're looking at it, you see your own reflection at the same time as seeing the back of this really anonymous man in a 1960s suit, at a moment when suits were becoming mass-produced, so everyone was wearing suits. This person has such a sense of anonymity, at the same time that you really have a sense of yourself because you're confronted with that, and what I found really magical was installing that work so that you could also see the backs of the mannequins of the clothes from the 1960s around it. 

We brought that picture into a crowd that it's really at home with, in that when that was first made and displayed in the 1960s, it was probably seen by people wearing those kinds of clothes, that's what they would have seen, but now, in 2022, the visitors the exhibition are seeing themselves in this really interesting crowd. I just thought that that was exciting, and as you say, the final room of the show is mirrored, and this is a foreseeing of that and trying to key people into this idea of how these changes in fashion are societal changes as well and that our understanding of fashion and art is linked together in this really important way that I think this show is starting to really get into. 

Moderator 1: Your other favourite piece is the one the Leeds Museums and Galleries have loaned to the exhibition. 

Rosalind McKever: Absolutely, of course. We have a wonderful portrait of the Prince of Wales, as he was, who was then Edward VIII and then the Duke of Windsor. This portrait actually proved this point incredibly well, thanks for raising it. This was a portrait made for the Illustrated London News, which was then distributed by then, and then basically made Fair Isle knits incredibly fashionable. It is the Vogue cover of its day in terms of shifting the needle of what people are interested in in terms fashion. 

Moderator 1: Working at the V&A, do you feel like you have to dress really cool? 

Rosalind McKever: I just always dress really cool at the time, naturally. 

Moderator 1: What has been your favourite day at work? 

Rosalind McKever: Okay, there are very many possibilities here. Most recently, my favourite day at work was last Thursday, that's when we had the opening for the exhibition and it was just so exciting. Obviously, it was exciting to have a party after 2 years of no parties but also, after 4 years of working on the show, to see people in it and going down there and people going, 'Ooh, ah,' I live for that. 

Moderator 1: It was all over Instagram as well. David Hopes, our director, was there, Francis Bourgeois was there. 

Rosalind McKever: I know, I met so many fabulous people. I had such fun. That was really good. The other time where I've really been pinching myself, 'I can't believe this is happening,' this is much nerdier, is when I was doing some filming about Monet. I had to go to a palazzo on the Grand Canal, so I could stand on the balcony from where Monet had painted a view of Venice, so that we could get the same shot. I was just, 'This is ridiculous.' I'm so privileged, with the things that I get to work with every day and the access that I have but what's incredible is when you have those moments of, 'Oh, I can't believe that I'm here. This is incredible.' Oh my God, I'm coming back round so nicely to what I said at the beginning, I just like talking to people about pictures. 

Moderator 1: From everything we've talked about today, what would you say was the main takeaway or a short snippet for listeners to go away from the episode, and what's your actual literal favourite takeaway? 

Rosalind McKever: Okay. I would say a thing to take away from the episode is that art and fashion is a really interesting conversation, and I mean a conversation, not that I'm saying interesting things now especially, but thinking about them together, I find really productive. Next time you're in an art gallery, think about what you're wearing and how that relates to the environment that you're in. My actual favourite takeaway is pizza. 

Moderator 1: Toppings? 

Rosalind McKever: I'm actually incredibly dull. I'm a traditionalist and I want Mozzarella di Bufala and not much more. 

Moderator 1: Do you speak fluent Italian? 

Rosalind McKever: That's 1 of the things that I studied at Leeds. 

Moderator 1: When's the exhibition on until? 

Rosalind McKever: The exhibition is on until 6th November. Tickets are available on the V&A website, and we're very excited for everyone to come and visit. 

Moderator 1: Thank you so much. 

Rosalind McKever: You're very welcome. 

Moderator 1: I've got wet legs. 

Moderator 2: A car splashed you. 

Moderator 1: Slarted me, my friend Lauren made up this word, you know when you step on a slightly uneven paving stone and then water down the side gets up, it's a slart, slarted by some water, which I think is a really good word. 

Moderator 2: Yes, it's kind of onomatopoeic, I like it. 

Moderator 1: I got slarted today, guys, and actually Wet Leg is a really good band. 

Moderator 2: Yes but the name, I think it's suppose to be visceral and cringy. 

Moderator 1: What was your favourite thing from that episode? By the way, it's really funny that both Gary Oldman and Harry Styles feature in that exhibition. 

Moderator 2: Yes, perfect. 

Moderator 1: My 2 favourite little pieces, my 2 favourite boys. 

Moderator 2: Yes, probably Gary Oldman's my favourite thing about-, no, I'm joking. I think it's a real privilege to be able to talk to a curator that's just opened an exhibition because they know everything about it and they've really hard on getting it to this point, and especially because the exhibition was planned for 5 years or something, before COVID and everything. They've had to react to changing perceptions and changing trends and all the rest of it that goes into it. It's just really lovely to be able to hear someone talk really passionately about something that they love and for it to be such an interesting topic and bold as well. The overall experience, that combined with going to see the exhibition itself, it was just really great. I just feel really privileged to be in that position. How about you? 

Moderator 1: Okay, first things first, is that Rosalind, I feel like she had a really theatrical way of talking and I really enjoyed it. There are some things that she said, that we were just, 'Wasn't expecting that, that was quite funny.' I really liked when she whipped out the Italian accent. That was really good. I like that we've recorded a podcast that, again, has Harry Styles, Timothee Chalomet, Gary Oldman, Devil Wears Prada, Italian, Francis Bourgeois. We talked about it all and it was really good. It was just quite cool, wasn't it, that we had this interview. 

Moderator 2: It was very surreal. 

Moderator 1: Yes, we were, 'Oh okay, this is actually quite cool that they actually want to do it.' It's easy to be, 'Oh, we're just literally talking to each other in a conference room at Leeds Art Gallery right now, no-one's listening.' Actually, it was cool that they were really keen on it, and within a day, we were there. 

Moderator 2: Yes, shout out to Sophie, Sophie in the press office, she's wicked. She's so down to earth. 

Moderator 1: Yes, really like Sophie. 

Moderator 2: This is (inaudible 48.29) but then be able to share it with other people and hopefully other people will have found it as interesting as we did. 

Moderator 1: Yes, I feel like it was quite a, 'Pinch me,' one, wasn't it? 

Moderator 2: Yes, definitely. 

Moderator 1: We were, 'Oh God, we're actually quite good at this.' 

Moderator 2: Well, I don't know about that, but back to you, what we'd like you to do is rate, review, subscribe, or scribe, you can scribe us a letter. 

Moderator 1: Yes, and you can on the Internet @LeedsMuseums on Twitter and @MuseumMeg. 

Moderator 2: Also, you know a real life postcard, I would be absolutely chuffed to bits if someone sent us a postcard, a postcard from places that people listen from. Wouldn't that be great? We'll send you one back. We'll send you one back from Leeds, the greatest city in the world. 

Moderator 1: Yes, we will, the greatest city in the world. 

Moderator 2: I can't believe you didn't say that yet. 

Moderator 1: Yes, that's gone, hasn't it but I do still think it. 

Moderator 2: Anyway, thank you to Alfani who designed our cover artwork for us. Thank you to Tim Bentley for doing the music. Shout out to Rosalind, shout out to Sophie for sorting that out. Shout out to LNER, who consistently say, 'Thank you for travelling with us,' despite the fact that we have no other option. 

Moderator 1: Yes, anything else? 

Moderator 2: No, I think that is everyone and everything. 

Moderator 1: Yes, see you next episode, bye. 

Moderator 2: Bye.