‘Filled with dreamlike memories, this autobiography is both surprising and delightful ... A strange and mesmerising piece of work, one that tears apart the usual fabric of an autobiography’ Sunday Times

WINNER OF THE 2021 PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE ‘A strange and mesmerising piece of work’ Sunday Times ‘An absolute masterpiece’ Laura Cumming ‘An uncommon delight’ Observer Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she turns her curator’s eye to the fabric of life itself, tugging at the threads of memory: a cardigan worn by a child, a tin button box, the draping of a curtain, a pair of cycling shorts, a roll of lace, a pin hidden in a seam. Through these intimate and compelling close-ups, we see how the stories and the secrets of clothes measure out the passage of time, our gains and losses, and the way we use them to unravel and write our histories. ‘Effervescent, poetic, puzzle-like ... Wilcox picks at the heartstrings’ Financial Times

"Into this tapestry of memories Wilcox weaves a melancholy thread ... The clothes are Proust’s madeleines, cocooned in hatboxes and airing cupboards ... Gripping" - Mail on Sunday

"In this remarkable self-portrait, fashion curator Claire Wilcox has set out mementoes of her life like objects in an exhibition, like treasures in a cabinet of curiosities ... The result is magical ... Her spellbinding memoir is like a cherished book of poetry" - Wall Street Journal

"Wilcox writes about clothing with an intoxicating specificity ... she uses her encounters with objects to explore themes of love and loss, birth and bereavement, family and tribe ... As skilful and oblique in its structure as the precious gowns she describes, is stitched together with loving care from narrative scraps and images, ultimately revealing how materiality and memory operate on one another again" - New Yorker, Books of the Year

"An uncommon delight" - Observer

"Effervescent, poetic, puzzle-like ... Wilcox picks at the heartstrings" - Financial Times

"Filled with dreamlike memories, this autobiography is both surprising and delightful ... A strange and mesmerising piece of work, one that tears apart the usual fabric of an autobiography" - Sunday Times

"In her beautifully written memoir Wilcox takes readers behind the scenes of life at the museum – while recounting the many ways that clothes have shaped her personal development in a series of lyrical vignettes" - Vogue, 12 Of The Best Autumn Reads To Curl Up With Now

"An extraordinary mixture of museum work interleaved with memoir … beautifully written, her book is a love story, with clothes as much as people as its heroes" - Spectator

"A series of exquisite meditations" - Harper's Bazaar

"In elegant, evocative prose, Victoria & Albert Museum fashion curator Claire tells her life story, from formative family life to love and loss, through the prism of a life-long obsession with clothes and the beautiful garments that inspired her intriguing career" - Sunday Express

"Among the books that most surprised and most moved me this year was Patch Work ... The book, which is as skillful and oblique in its structure as the precious gowns she describes, is stitched together with loving care from narrative scraps and images, ultimately revealing how materiality and memory operate on one another" - New Yorker, Best Books We Read in 2021