Simon Costin
MOBF
Simon Costin is an internationally respected art director and set designer renowned for the conceptually ambitious nature of his editorial and catwalk designs. He is also a museum curator and the director of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic and the founder and director of the Museum of British Folklore. Born in London, he completed a BA in Theatre Design at Wimbledon School of the Art. From Hermes to Lanvin, Costin has deep and diverse ties within the fashion industry, including an early seven year collaboration with Alexander McQueen. He’s also designed sets for photo shoots, collaborating with photographers like Tim Walker, Paolo Roversi, and Nick Knight and fashion houses such as Charles Jeffrey, Maison Margiela, Tiffany and Hermes. Costin has both exhibited his own work within and curated shows at leading cultural centres such as the ICA, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Whitechapel Gallery, London – and places off the grid, like a forest in Argyll. In 2015 he received an honorary award as a Fellow of the Arts for his outstanding contribution to the creative industries. He lives in Cornwall.
Amy de la Haye
LCF
Amy de la Haye is Curatorial Consultant for The Museum of British Foklore. She is Professor of Dress History & Curatorship and joint Director of the Centre for Fashion Curation (CfFC) at London College of Fashion (LCF). She studied at the Royal College of Art. For over 30 years she has written and curated exhibitions that foreground British fashion, dress and popular culture. In 1994, as Curator for 20th Century Dress at the Victoria & Albert Museum, she co-curated Streetstyle: from sidewalk to catwalk, which included forming a major collection of head-to-toe outfits worn by members of around 50 subcultures. More recently, she created Wild & Cultivated: Fashioning the Rose with Simon Costin (Garden Museum 2022). Since 2021, with CfFC, she has worked with Simon and Mellany on Making Mischief: Folk Costume in Britain (Compton Verney 2022, LCF, 2024). She is about to embark on a new project with MoBF on folk art for Wessex Museums called Our Lives (2024-2026).
Mellany Robinson
MoBF
Mellany Robinson is projects manager at the Museum of British Folklore. With Simon Costin, she has co-created exhibitions at a series of partner venues. Mellany is particularly interested in the social purpose of museums and the activation of archives.
Mellany has an MA in History of Design (Royal College of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum) and a Diploma in Arts Management (Birkbeck).