The ADH
Trustee Board
The Association of Dress Historians (ADH) is governed by The Trustee Board, whoare voted in by ADH members.
Our Trustees are legally responsible and accountable for ADH governance, management, and administration. They ensure that our organisation is carrying out its charitable objectives.
The Trustee Board
The Association of Dress Historians (ADH) is governed by The Trustee Board, which is voted in by ADH members.
The Trustee Board is legally responsible and accountable for ADH governance, management, and administration.
The principles and objectives of ADH are set out in the following:
ADH Constitution
ADH Code of Conduct
ADH Code of Ethics
ADH Diversity and Inclusion Policy
The ADH acknowledges and appreciates the contribution of former Trustees:
Dr Emily Taylor (2022-2025)
Professor Joseph Hancock (2022-2024)
Lisa Bartup (2020-2022)
Jane Shepard (2016-2019)
Tara Tierney (2015-2021)
Janet Mayo (2015-2021)
Jennifer Daley (2015-2021)
Helen Margaret Walter (2011-2016)
Jane Bridgeman (2011-2015)
Chair of Trustees
Kelly L. Reddy-Best is Professor and Chair of Family and Consumer Sciences at Illinois State University. Her research investigates how fashion products, media, and management are produced, distributed, consumed, regulated, and represented, guided by a justice-centered philosophical perspective. Her work spans diverse contexts, including 20th- and 21st-century American fashion with an emphasis on queer and trans studies; Puerto Rican bomba fashion from the 17th century to the present; Czech folk costumes among second-generation immigrants in the United States; and U.S.-based Muslim women fashion entrepreneurs, among others. She has taught a broad range of courses across the fashion curriculum, with a particular emphasis on culture- and history-focused courses.
Treasurer and Trustee
Sue Bennett is a chartered accountant with many years’ experience, much of which has been gained in the public sector in the UK. Although currently taking a career break whilst living in Austria, Sue has experience of working with Boards and Audit Committees in various roles and has held voluntary posts as a school governor. Sue has a keen lifelong interest in textiles and clothing, which is reflected in the exhibitions she seeks out and hobbies she pursues. She was taught to sew by her mother and makes some clothes as well as quilts, and she is an amateur weaver.
Trustee
Hilary is an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to dress history. Her interest is mainly driven by a passion for embroidery – Hilary runs her own business making modern embroidery kits and patterns. Until October 2020, Hilary was Chief Executive of the National Hair & Beauty Federation, the UK trade body for independent hair salons, barbershops and beauty salons providing membership services such as employment law advice, business information, COVID advice, campaigning and representing the industry in the media, including TV and radio. Hilary managed a team of 13 people and turnover of about £1.5 million per year. Hilary was previously Director of Membership at the Institute of Leadership & Management and has served as a Board member for several organisations, including charities. Hilary’s Masters degrees are in Education and in Events Management, both with distinction, and she has completed training courses in leadership, strategy, finance, governance and marketing.
Trustee
Dr. Vicki Karaminas is Professor of Fashion and Director of Doctoral Studies for the School of Design at Massey University, New Zealand. Her book publications (with Adam Geczy) include; Gastrofashion from Haute Cuisine to Haute Couture (2022), Fashionable Masculinities. Queer, Pimp Daddies and Lumbersexuals (2022), Libertine Fashion. Freedom, Sexual Rebellion and Style (2021), Gaga Aesthetics. Fashion, Art, Popular Culture and the Upending of Tradition (2021), Fashion Installation: Body, Space and Performance (2018), The End of Fashion: Clothing and Dress in the Age of Globalisation (2018), Critical Fashion Practice from Westwood to Van Beirendonck (2017), Fashion and Masculinities in Popular Culture (2017), Fashion’s Double: Representations of Fashion in Painting, Photography and Film (2015), Queer Style (2013) and Fashion and Art (2012). She is the editor (with Adam Geczy) of the book series Anthem Studies in Fashion and Visual Cultures and Style Discourses. Fashion, Art and Culture (Rutgers, US) and founding editor of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture and the Journal of Asia–Pacific Pop Culture. Professor Karaminas is a member of the advisory and editorial boards of a number of associations and international journals, including The Journal of Dress History, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress and the Body; Film, Fashion and Consumption; the International Journal of Fashion Studies; and Zone Moda Journal. Vicki can be reached at email vicki.karaminas@dresshistorians.org
Chair and Trustee
Polly Putnam is Executive Committee Chair and Trustee of The Association of Dress Historians. Polly is a collections curator at Historic Royal Palaces. She specialises in the material culture of the long 18th century. She has published on the furnishing of Queen Charlotte’s Cottage in Kew, curating decorative arts and authenticity on museum presentation. She lectures at Kings College and Queen Mary. She began her career in museums and heritage at Temple Newsam House, Leeds Museums and Galleries where she oversaw the Ginsburg Bequest of nearly 2000 items of historic textiles, from the personal collection of Cora Ginsburg via her son Henry. Over the course of her career she has curated six costume exhibitions, most recently Crown to Couture at Kensington Palace which compared the dress and culture of the Georgian royal court with the contemporary Red Carpet. Polly can be reached at email chair@dresshistorians.org
Trustee
Sarah Jane Stevens is a Trustee of The Association of Dress Historians and Independent Researcher. She’s been intrigued by textile and fashion since childhood and her mother worked for Courtaulds, often making her clothes to wear as a young girl. She studied textiles and fashion at school and college, then went on to study BA (Hons) Textiles at Goldsmiths College specialising in contemporary felt-making inspired by historical corsets. During her MA in Museums & Galleries; History of Textiles & Dress at Winchester School of Art, her dissertation research focused on the relationship between fashion and theatre through a case study of 1920-1930s dress trimmings belonging to an actress Marion Bishop, based in the South West – who made her own clothing. Throughout her career in heritage, she has predominantly worked with textile and dress collections from the nationally important collection of technical clothing to historical and everyday synthetic garments at MoDiP, to the largest collection of Leek Embroidery at Sunnycroft, furthermore; she was the first professional Curator at Dents responsible for a privately-owned outstanding collection of historical gloves. She specialises in the material culture of gloves, its social etiquette, gender juxtaposition and cultural context, along with the value of object-based learning – the meaning, identity and symbolism found in telling stories through dress and how they silently speak for the absence of the wearer. She published a paper, The Value of Object-based Learning: a Collaboration with Museums for Creative Pedagogies Imprint / AUB in 2019 whilst working at MoDiP. She became an Associate of the Museums Association in 2012 and is passionate about sharing knowledge and expertise. Appointed an Arts Council England, Accreditation Mentor in 2024, she now supports The Lace Guild Museum, in Stourbridge, as well as being the Wales and West Representative for The Dress and Textile Specialists (DATS).
Trustee
Dr. Sarah Scaturro is the Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Previously, she was the head of the fashion conservation laboratory in the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the textile conservator and assistant curator of fashion at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Sarah has curated eight exhibitions on fashion and textile history at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Most recently she curated the exhibition “American Printed Silks: 1927-1947” at the Cleveland Museum of Art. She has an MA from the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice program and PhD from Bard Graduate Center in design history and material culture studies. Sarah is an elected Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation, associate editor for the Journal of the American Institute of Conservation, and serves as an affiliated professor in Case Western Reserve University’s Art History graduate program.
Trustee
Martina D’Amato is Managing Director at Cora Ginsburg LLC, preeminent dealers and specialists in textiles and fashion. She has given talks at institutions including the Ashmolean Museum; The Frick Collection; The Met; Politecnico di Milano; and The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. She is also completing a PhD at the Bard Graduate Center (M.Phil., 2017). Her research focuses on early modern decorative arts, with a focus on textiles, in the contexts of 19th-century revivalism, nationalism, and collecting and museum history. Recent publications include “Cultural counterplay between Lyon and Florence : Louis Carrand, Renaissance Arts and the Bargello Bequest,” in Anne Lepoittevin, Emmanuel Lurin and Alain Mérot, eds., Florence, ville d’art, et les Français : la création d’un mythe, Centre André Chastel (Rome: Campisano Editore, 2022); “Europe: A Tale of Clouded Silk,” in Rosemary Crill, ed., Global Ikat: Roots and Routes of a Textile Technique (London: Hali Publications, 2023); and a forthcoming chapter in a book as part of the University of Toronto’s research project Textiles in Ethiopian Manuscripts (2026).
