My Space: Oriole Cullen

The curator behind the major ongoing Dior retrospective at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum sits down with Aimee Farrell to discuss her work, personal style, and the endless inspiration to be found in the museum’s corridors

As an academic working for a world-renowned historic institution, it’s no surprise that Oriole Cullen’s office is packed floor to ceiling with books. “They’re an addiction,” says the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum’s curator of fashion and textiles. There are volumes on the history of dress and biographies of British designers and their muses, many authored by Cullen herself. It’s here, in this cosy space jutting off the museum’s cavernous Furniture, Fashion and Textiles department, that she spends most of her time. “It’s practically the size of a postage stamp,” she says of the room, which feels part library, part extraordinary auction house, and has a quiet, academic atmosphere. She also spent a considerable amount of time at Dior Heritage, the luxury house’s archive space in Paris, ahead of the V&A’s current major retrospective curated by Cullen, Christian Dior: Designer Of Dreams, which runs till July 14, 2019.

It’s a monumental moment in her career; her largest show to date. Yet as she shuffles papers on her desk, finessing the final pages of the show catalogue, you wouldn’t guess it. She wears the responsibility lightly, cracking jokes as she shows me around.