Lunchtime Lecture: Fashion and the Floating World

The colourful woodblock prints of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century played a vital role in Japan’s vibrant fashion culture. Drawing on the V&A’s important collection, curators Anna Jackson and Masami Yamada reveal how these ukiyo-e, ‘pictures of the floating world’, provided powerful advertising for kimono retailers, fabric workshops, make-up brands, theatre managers and brothel keepers and offered inspiration for those eager to emulate the famous actors, courtesans, geisha and other stylish men and women they depict. 

Anna Jackson is Keeper of the Asia Department at the V&A. She is a specialist in Japanese textiles and dress and was the curator of the 2020 exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk. 

Masami Yamada is Curator of Japanese Art in the Asia Department at the V&A and has responsibility for the museum’s collections of woodblock prints, netsuke, lacquerware and contemporary crafts. Most recently, she was one of the curators for the exhibition Japan: Myths to Manga at Young V&A.