Invoking Venus - Animal Magnetism: attraction through fashion - Ivan Sayers
Fashion historian Ivan Sayers talks about the use of animal products in the role of attraction in historical western fashion. Featuring items from the collections of Ivan Sayers and Claus Jahnke.
Ivan Sayers
Ivan Sayers was born in Cornwall, Ontario and moved to British Columbia at the age of two. He graduated in 1969 from the University of British Columbia with a degree in Classical Studies and in 1970 began his museum career as a volunteer at the Museum of Vancouver where he eventually served as Curator of History from 1976 to 1990. Mr. Sayers has collected costume since he was a teenager and now has one of the finest privately owned collections of period clothing in Canada with men's, women's, and children's clothing and accessories dating from c.1690 to the present. He has been producing lectures, exhibitions, and fashion shows on historic fashion and social history for over forty years and is a regular lecturer at most of the local universities and colleges. He has received awards from the British Columbia Fashion Designers Association and was given a distinguished service award by the British Columbia Museum Association in October, 2010.
Claus Jahnke
Claus Jahnke was born in Edmonton, Alberta and brought up in the Okanagan Valley of BC. He studied fashion merchandizing in Vancouver, graduating in 1982. He has collected historic clothing since he was a very young man, specializing in fashionable, occupational and recreational costume made in Germany and Austria from 1732 to the 1960's. Items from his collection have been shown at various museums, including the Museum of Vancouver, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. His most important exhibition to date, hosted by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, was called "Broken Threads" and illustrated the destruction of the Jewish garment industry in Germany and Austria under fascism. Mr. Jahnke and his work were recently the subject of a photograph by the well known Canadian artist, Jeff Wall.