Unfortunately after the first chapter, I felt somewhat let down. The book is a miscellany of stories but the stories about the authors life were not actually very interesting, they were very superficial, there was little detail, they weren’t presented chronologically and any attempt at thematic grouping didn’t really flow. As so much is made of the fact that she works at the V&A, I expected so much more. I just loved being able to read about how they did the audit at the V&A. Coming across items labelled '99 for the year 1899, with no thought for future years bearing the date '99!. Reading about the thought process behind organising an exhibition, and that you may pass curators in the corridors transporting precious items, as there are no private tunnels. The day they were sent home while a specialist in a white boiler suit and mask had to be called in to isolate a box of medieval leather shoes, in case they were from a plague pit. Just fascinating. Disclosure: I received a copy of this book free via @ThePigeonHoleHQ. Whilst thanks go to the publisher for the opportunity to read it, all opinions are my own. The “blurb” about this book grabbed my attention – I enjoy memoirs, personal histories, “hidden stories” & the like so I was intrigued by the promise of stories told through a box of buttons, a forgotten pin in a hem, a mark on leather … the fact that it was written by a curator in Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum surely meant this would be a glimpse behind the scenes, some stories of clothes within the collection – very exciting!

Wilcox began thinking about Patch Work at a difficult time in her life. “My parents had died within six months of each other and I was about to start working on the McQueen show,” she says. “So I was being buffeted by grief just as I was about to embark on the most challenging exhibition of my life, one that would deal with anger and loss as expressed through clothing – something that hadn’t really been explored in an exhibition before [Alexander McQueen, having long suffered from depression, killed himself in 2010; the V&A’s show was staged five years later]. This triggered an opening up of memory for me and it turned out to be an incredible liberation.” She has appeared in films such as 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), Wives and Lovers (1963), and Horatio Alger Jones (TV-1966). She has also appeared in the television series Harris Against the World (1964-1965). Then he cheated on me, with the waitress who worked in our favorite restaurant, Elizabeth. I used to call her "his other girlfriend" when John and I were alone, teasing him, because she blushed when he spoke. One evening, she pulled me aside, and confessed that she actually was. Patch Work - A Life Amongst Clothes by Claire Wilcox is a memoir told in very short chapters threaded through with the tools of the author's trade as a senior curator. Listening to the audiobook, the content felt personal and very much a private project for her friends and family rather than a resource for readers interested in her work, the work of the V&A Museum, or those motivated to pursue a career in her field. Details about her love life are still under review. We will let you know when she gets in a relationship or when we discover helpful information about her love life. How much is Claire Wilcox worth?

About the contributors

Patch Work by Claire Wilcox is an unusual memoir. The title is perfect, the book is made up of a series of vignettes stitched together to make a beautiful whole, much like the pieces that make up a patch work quilt, and since the author has worked as a curator in the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life, dealing with everything from top hats to medieval felt caps , fragile silks and yellowing linens, it seems wonderfully suited as a way to tell her story. We learn about how she grew up surrounded by the trappings of a seamstress, and how her mother made most of the family's clothes, from her own wedding suit to Claire's girlhood dresses , we follow her on her travels along the hippy trail to India , and even into her own journey into motherhood. These stories are woven into descriptions of her work as a curator and what that involves. I am based in the V&A’s Research Department, working on a major exhibition of one of the most significant British designers of the 20th century and editing the accompanying publication. I am developing a programme of college-based events and projects associated with this exhibition, in collaboration with LCF colleagues.” Claire Wilcox Books

I resign myself to people watching. Thanks to my peripheral vision, I know Jeff's sitting, eating. But I deliberately avoid looking at him - anything to stay anonymous. Lovely and frustrating read. Wilcox is terribly clever and also touching in her careful construction of her life's garments - made up of memories of her seamstress mother, her haberdasher father, her encounters with fabric and artifice that becomes a lifelong obsession. She is good at showing how key encounters and acquisitions of clothing and accessories throughout her childhood, adolescence and young womanhood come to symbolize her development as both human and historian - most touchingly in her relationships with her parents and her children. The synecdoche of baby shoes, homemade dresses, a walking cane, a clutch bag represent not a linear timeline of Wilcox's life but a collection of the moments that took her from a London council flat and made her the woman she is today (and the Senior Curator of Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.) The book is a love letter to the V&A, even as Wilcox is deliberately humble about the enormous influence she wields in both the academic and commercial world of fashion, particularly after Savage Beauty, her groundbreaking show on Alexander McQueen. Wilcox is willing to be opaque about the identities - even the names - of those who figure in her autobiographical sketches, though really her tact seems a bit precious when we might divine she is talking about McQueen or Vivienne Westwood or annoying when she does not identify the curator who gave her the big chance at working for the V&A. What's with the secrecy, especially if Wilcox is not attempting a celebrity-ridden piece? A 47-year-old divorcee attends a New Mexico meditation retreat to try to come to terms with her emotions; by Claire Wilcox. Excuse me," a voice whispers, and I look up to see Andrew, frazzled, a little sweat at his temples, sporting hiking clothes. I feel myself recoil. "I was supposed to have my interview with the teacher at 10:45. Do you know, is she on-time? Or did I miss it?" She is an actress best remembered for her roles in Ben Casey (1961), 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), and The Brady Bunch (1969). She played Paula Harvey / Janet / Connie Farmer in 'My Three Sons,' Susan in 'The Smith Family,' and Stacy in 'Lost in Space.'I deserve a bit of rage. Notice where it manifests in my body, I tell myself again, channeling Kate. I breathe into it. Patch Work by Claire Wilcox is a collection of ultra-short memoir stories which decribe events in her life, from childhood, to motherhood, to being an art student, to working life, to experiencing the death of her parents. Wilcox is also a curator in Fashion in the Victoria & Albert museum and it was this that I was most interested in. There is a benevolent stirring in my center that seems to have come out of nowhere. And next, a sense of wanting to lean towards Andrew. Something like radiance comes from him, but it's subtle. Like a warm-springs... the kind you could sit in all day. Jeff. Our breathing is synced, today. Mine slows when his does, and his does when mine does. We are like a couple who's slept together for years. I wonder if I should just reach my hand out, right now, and touch his with mine, gently. The wanting surges in my chest. And I watch it, the good yogi. Maybe our fingers would intertwine, melt together.

As soon as the meditation session is over, I bundle up and head out into the wintery woods, following a vague path. Fresh snow blankets the ground, but there's less than an inch. I move fast, trying to get away from myself. What’s her dream as a curator? If she could stage an exhibition about anything at all, what would it be? “That’s like offering me a plate of sweets and making me choose just one,” she says, looking completely delighted nonetheless. She thinks for a bit. She has been fantasising for a while about doing a show staged underwater, but the practicalities are extreme, so for now she’ll plump for something else: “I was reading Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise, a novel about a 19th-century department store that’s modelled on Le Bon Marché [a Parisian store now owned by LVMH]. It’s set at a moment when women had more freedom to go out and be consumers, to explore a fashionable world that went beyond clothing, and it’s completely wonderful: the luscious descriptions, the fabrics tumbling over bannisters, the entrance hall hung with carpets from Turkmenistan. It would be incredible to recreate such a store: visitors could even be hit by a blast of perfume as they come in.” Wilcox has published widely and her titles include: Modern Fashion in Detail (V&A, 1998); A Century of Bags (Apple Press, 1998) and The Ambassador Magazine: Promoting Post-War British Textiles and Fashion (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2012). She has also published catalogues to accompany the exhibitions Radical Fashion (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2001), Vivienne Westwood (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2004) and The Golden Age of Couture (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2007). I'm delusional. Who am I to imagine that I'd have a chance with a handsome, mysterious younger man! I admire his soft manly-man flannel and see a little sprig of chest hair peaking up over the worn collar of his undershirt. To put my fingers there, then down, towards his chest...He's oblivious to the clamor he's creating, and it goes on for several seconds, maybe half a minute. When he finally looks up and notices all the stares, and then realizes why everyone is watching him, his eyes broaden in embarrassment, his hands tremble slightly, his face reddens, he spills a few drops of his drink on his open-toed feet, and he flinches (apparently the liquid is hot). I love fashion, sewing and the V&A - so I was delighted to read this book. What I wasn't expecting from the author was the exceptionally beautiful writing. I do hope Claire goes onto write more as she is very talented. She has also given guest appearances in Window on Main Street, Dr. Kildare, The Virginian, Perry Mason, Ben Casey, Gunsmoke, Shane, Laredo, Lost in Space, Family Affair, Daniel Boone, My Three Sons, The High Chaparral, Gentle Ben, The Partridge Family from the year 1961-1971. Claire Wilcox is the senior curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where she is responsible for the 20th century and contemporary dress collections. She received an honorary doctorate in art and design from Middlesex University in July 2017. She is also a professor of fashion curation at London College of Fashion. It is afternoon, and the sun blares through the windows casting a diagonal shadow of a torso with a rounded stomach on it before me. The reality hits: that stomach is mine. I'm a middle-aged Midwestern woman with a bit of a paunch and flat hair.