Bethan Bide & Lucie Whitmore

Discover the extraordinary stories of the Jewish people who designed, made and sold fashion in 20th-century London, revealing their vital role in making it an iconic fashion city.

While Jewish involvement in garment making and tailoring is widely known, the contributions that Jewish people made to fashion design, bespoke dressmaking and the democratisation of fashion through the development of ready-to-wear clothes have been widely forgotten. Spanning all sectors of the fashion industry – from homeworking to haute couture – the book is lavishly illustrated with images from across the city and the Museum of London’s collections. Fashion City takes you from arrival in the East End to commercial success and fame in the West End, using iconic places and people of the city to uncover the stories of Jewish fashion makers and trace their immigrant journeys. Discover some of the most intriguing stories of key figures such as Otto Lucas, a gay Jewish German hat maker who became the most financially successful milliner in the world; Mr Fish, the ruledefying tailor who dressed Mick Jagger and Muhammed Ali; and Nettie Spiegel, who escaped the Nazis on the Kindertransport and became a London wedding dress designer of choice under her ‘Neymar’ label.