Christine Checinska in Conversation with Althea McNish and John Weiss

Abstract

Artist Althea McNish’s contribution both to the field of textile design in Britain and to British culture itself is unmatched. Amongst the first, if not the first, designer of African-Caribbean descent to achieve international recognition, McNish injected much-needed color and life into the post-war fashion and textiles industry from the 1950s onwards. As her partner and husband John Weiss writes, “She brought to London a tropical framework of reference.”

Presented here in this special issue of Textile are highlights from a conversation with Althea McNish and John Weiss that took place in the Stuart Hall Library, London, on April 25, 2015 as part of the “Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group” series of events.

Keywords:

• Althea McNish
• textile design
• Caribbean
• Liberty of London
• print
• post-war British fashion
• Trinidad carnival
• printed textiles
• British Pop Art
• Caribbean Art Movement

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank Sanjida Alam for transcribing this conversation, the Stuart Hall Library, in particular Nick Brown and Susan Skingle, for hosting the “Clothes, Cloth and Culture Group” and Althea McNish and John Weiss for generously giving their time.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christine Checinska

CHRISTINE CHECINSKA

Dr Christine Checinska’s creative practice as an artist/writer/curator examines the relationship between cloth, culture, and race. The cultural exchanges that occur as a result of movement and migration, creating creolized cultural forms, are her recurring themes. She is currently an Associate Researcher at VIAD (Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre), University of Johannesburg. 

In 2016, she delivered the TEDxTalk Disobedient Dress: Fashion as Everyday Activism and installed her solo exhibition The Arrivants at the FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg. Her publications include Crafting Difference: Art, Cloth and the African Diasporas in Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today, Jessica Hemmings (ed) Bloomsbury Publications, 2015, and At Home with Vanley Burke, Image & Text, No. 29, 2017.

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