Heritage and Innovation: Charles Frederick Worth, John Redfern, and the Dawn of Modern Fashion

Charles Frederick Worth’s story has been told often and is familiar to fashion scholars. But while Worth has enjoyed a place of significance in fashion history, the story of his contemporary, John Redfern has been ignored, or at best reduced to mere footnote status. Nearly all well-known fashion history survey texts give coverage of Worth, but scant – if any – mention of Redfern. Contini, Payne, Laver, and Tortora and Eubank, all ignore Redfern. Millbank Rennolds, in Couture, the Great Designers omits Redfern while including some markedly less important designers. Boucher includes John Redfern, but distills his career to a brief, mostly accurate, paragraph.