Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family Suffrage Research Collection

The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom was a momentous event, not just in social history, but in the history of popular design and fashion. From the mid nineteenth century until universal female suffrage was granted in England in 1928, numerous suffrage societies were established to campaign for women’s right to vote using both peaceful and militant tactics. Designers and artists played an important role in popularising and disseminating the suffrage message. They designed and produced jewellery, accessories, ceramics, banners, printed ephemera and other artistic products, using distinct colour schemes and logos to raise awareness of the cause and build their political advantage. Through this manipulation of their image, suffrage campaigners aimed to demonstrate the dignity and ‘womanliness’ of the suffrage campaign. The well-organised, orderly and beautifully outfitted campaigners were a firm riposte to anti-suffragists’ claims that the movement was hysterical, shrieking and crazed.

Mary Lowndes, founder of the Artists’ Suffrage League, declared ‘Who takes the eye takes all.’ Visual images defined the suffrage movement, from the purple, green and white sashes worn by the Women’s Social and Political Union, to the ‘Votes for Women’ posters designed by Hilda Dallas and distributed in their thousands around London and beyond. Capitalising on a young generation of women designers, new technologies in printing and distribution and the rise of daily newspapers and mass-produced merchandise, suffrage organisations developed one of the early twentieth century’s most distinctive visual identities.