Bernat Klein: Colour and Contexts

14:00 to 15:30 | Lecture Theatre A, Winchester School of Art, and online on Teams (email us for information)

This research seminar organised jointly by Fashion and Textiles department at WSA, and The Winchester Gallery brings together research that looks at Austrian Jewish Men’s clothing choices and meanings of colour in men’s dress, as a prelude to the forthcoming Bernat Klein exhibition in The Winchester Gallery 20th April – 30th May 2026.

Jews in Suits: Men’s Dress in Vienna, 1890–1938

Jonathan C. Kaplan-Wajselbaum

Clothing and the act of dressing played a central role in the acculturation and urbanisation of Vienna’s Jewish population during the fin de siècle. Dual capital of Austria-Hungary, Vienna was a microcosm of the Habsburg’s linguistically and ethnically diverse empire. As a result of the lack of a defined Austrian ethno-national identity and the burgeoning nationalist movements throughout the Empire by the end of the nineteenth century, many ‘Austrian’ Jews, having identified with the dominating cultural-linguistic group—Germans—found their position in Viennese society growing ever more precarious. Caught between German nationalism, cosmopolitanism and various forms of Jewish national ideologies, Viennese Jews adopted a variety of modes to deal with the fashioning of the modern, European Jewish self.

In light of the Winchester Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition on the work of textile designer and artist Bernat Klein, he himself a product of this Habsburg-Jewish national paradigm and, this talk examines the sartorial habits of Viennese Jewish writers in conjunction with the perceived norms of male sartorial respectability in Vienna at the fin de siècle. As this session seeks to address the question how we can identify recognisably Jewish forms of making art, this paper probes questions around the development of a modern notion of the ‘Jewish’ look or appearance.

Woven Colour, Worn Identity: Beyond Grey, Rethinking Men’s Colour

Bruce Montgomery

For generations, men’s fashion has been dominated by a disciplined, muted restraint with colour treated as risk rather than language. Woven Colour, Worn Identity: Beyond Grey challenges this convention, re-examining the cultural and material narratives embedded in menswear. With a nod to visionary fashion and textile designer Bernat Klein, whose bold use of colour and innovative fabric development reshaped post-war British textiles, this lecture explores how colour in cloth becomes a vehicle for identity, modernity, and emotional expression.

Drawing on textile history, contemporary design practice the talk argues that colour is not decorative excess but structural meaning, woven into fibre, and surface. By moving beyond grey, menswear can reclaim chromatic richness as a site of confidence, individuality, and cultural dialogue.

Speaker biographies

Jonathan C. Kaplan-Wajselbaum is senior educator and manager of research at the Sydney Jewish Museum. He is also a sessional academic at the University of Sydney’s Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, and adjunct fellow at the University of Technology Sydney’s Imagining Fashion Futures Lab, where he received his doctorate in 2019. His monograph, Jews in Suits: Men’s Dress in Vienna, 1890–1938 was published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts (2023). He is currently 2025/26 visiting fellow at the University of Southampton’s Parkes Institute, where he is researching dress and migration in Yiddish sources in Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Bruce Montgomery is Associate Professor in Fashion Leadership at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton UK. He is a Luxury Brand Creative Director /Fashion Consultant with International experience having designed and presented collections for the British luxury brand DAKS on the catwalk at Milan Menswear Fashion Week. He has an extensive knowledge of design, brand identity, luxury brand management, global manufacturing, and the garment supply chain. Prior to DAKS, Bruce has worked for Katherine Hamnett, Soprani, Moschino, and Onward Kashiyama. His work has been featured in the international fashion press in publications such as Drapers, GQ, Men’s Health, Vogue, Dignio, Nile Magazines in Japan, Crash in France, and Textile Weilshaft in Germany. Bruce has been Chairman of the British Menswear Guild committee, and a board member of Skillfast-UK. He was external examiner for Central St Martins College, and London College of Fashion. Bruce has also acted as chairman of a mentoring panel for Graduate Fashion Week. An accomplished speaker, he has spoken at industry events in Florence, Guangzhou, Milan, Paris, Sri Lanka, Seoul, and Tokyo. His published work includes book chapters on fashion sustainability for the Springer book series. His present research looks at how craft can revitalise the luxury fashion industry. He presented at IPOL conference ‘In pursuit of Luxury’ on topic of ‘Why Craft skills are the essential ingredient in the sustainability of Luxury Menswear’ and published by Intellect books.