In 2016 Kate Strasdin was given an unusual volume produced in the mid-19th century.
It contained over 2000 swatches of fabric pasted into a marbled album but it had no provenance and no known background. Kate spent the next six years uncovering its secrets, discovering its author and the life that she led.
Dr Kate Strasdin is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Falmouth University. She has worked with historic dress collections for almost thirty years and has written and consulted on dress history themes in China, Australia, North America and Canada.
Her first book with Bloomsbury Academic, titled Inside the Royal Wardrobe was a dress history of Queen Alexandra and her latest book published with Penguin Random House is called The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes: Secrets of a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe.