Hilary Davidson, associate chair of Fashion Institute of Technology‘s Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice program in the School of Graduate Studies, won the 2025 Betty Kirke Excellence in Research Award from the Costume Society of America. Davidson will be celebrated, along with this year’s other award winners, on June 2, at the CSA’s 51st Annual National Meeting and Symposium in Los Angeles.
Hilary Davidson
Hilary Davidson was recognised for her research titled “Digital Clothing Reconstruction as a Fashion History Methodology.” This approach involves using digital models and software to recreate historical garments, allowing for detailed analysis and understanding of their construction, materials, and cultural significance.
The Betty Kirke Excellence in Research Award recognizes exceptional scholarship. It is given every year to the author(s) of one abstract proposal accepted at the CSA’s annual symposium. The award, which includes an honorarium and travel stipend, was endowed by and named for the late Betty Kirke (1924-2016), who after retiring from her fashion design career, went on to become senior costume conservator at The Museum at FIT in 1979. From 1985 to 1991, Kirke also taught in FIT’s graduate program for museum studies.
Who Is Hilary Davidson?
Hilary Davidson is a dress, textiles and fashion historian and curator, associate professor, and chair of the MA Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice in the School of Graduate Studies at FIT. Her work encompasses making and knowing, things and theory, with an extraordinary understanding of how historic clothing objects come to be and how they function in culture.
Hilary trained as a bespoke shoemaker in her native Australia before completing a Master’s degree in the History of Textiles and Dress at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton in 2004. Since graduating, her practice has concerned the relationship between theoretical and highly material approaches to dress history, especially in the early modern and medieval periods. As a skilled hand-sewer, she has created replica clothing projects for a number of institutions, including a ground-breaking copy of Jane Austen’s pelisse.
In 2007, Hilary became curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London. She contributed to the £20 million permanent gallery redevelopment opening in 2010, and curated an exhibition on pirates, while continuing to publish, teach, and lecture in the UK and internationally. In collaboration with Museum of London Archaeology, Hilary began analyzing archaeological textiles and continues to cross disciplines by consulting for in this area in England and Australia.
She also worked on the AHRC 5-star rated Early Modern Dress and Textiles Network (2007-2009) and from 2011 appeared as an expert on a number of BBC historical television programs. From 2012 Hilary worked between Sydney and London for a decade as a freelance curator, historian, broadcaster, teacher, lecturer, consultant and designer while completing a PhD by publication at La Trobe University, Melbourne, on knowledge making and materiality in pre-modern dress. Her first book was Dress in the Age of Jane Austen, and it will be followed by Jane Austen’s Wardrobe in September 2023. Her academic publications are extensive.
Hilary has taught and lectured on fashion history, theory and culture, on semiotics, and cultural mythologies, especially red and magical shoes, including at the University of Southampton, Central St Martins, the University of Cambridge, the University of Glasgow, New York University London, The American University Paris, Fashion Design Studio TAFE Sydney and the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney. She is an Honorary Associate, School of Arts, Letters and Media, at the University of Sydney, a consultant in historic textiles for the Oxford English Dictionary, and a Freeman of the City of London.
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