- Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media
About me
Professor Andrew Groves is Professor of Menswear Systems at the University of Westminster and Director of the Westminster Menswear Archive, the UK’s leading research collection dedicated to the material, industrial, and cultural history of menswear.
His work examines menswear not as a sequence of styles, but as a set of systems: the clothing, standards, institutions, materials, and behaviours through which bodies are organised, classified, and made legible.
He founded the Westminster Menswear Archive in 2016 as a national research infrastructure for the study of menswear, spanning fashion-led menswear, workwear, uniforms, sportswear, technical clothing, and everyday dress. The Archive now holds over 3,000 garments and supports academic research, museum exhibitions, postgraduate teaching, and industry collaboration.
Groves’ research reframes menswear as infrastructure. His work examines how clothing organises labour, masculinity, surveillance, authority, and everyday life through standardisation, material technologies, institutional control, and systems of recognition. This approach underpins his writing, curatorial projects, teaching, consultancy, and the development of the Westminster Menswear Archive.
Teaching
Professor Groves uses the Westminster Menswear Archive as a working teaching and research resource, embedding object-based analysis into studio teaching and postgraduate supervision. His students work directly with garments, using construction, materials, provenance, and wear as evidence, and translate that knowledge into contemporary design and scholarly outputs.
He has mentored designers who have gone on to establish influential labels, including Steven Stokey-Daley, Robyn Lynch, Priya Ahluwalia, and Paolo Carzana. Former students work across leading fashion houses, including Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, Burberry, and Maison Margiela. He also supervises doctoral researchers working on menswear history, archives, and material culture.
Research
Professor Groves’ research focuses on menswear as an infrastructural system that shapes bodies, labour, identity, and social organisation. His work combines material culture, archival research, and cultural theory to examine how garments such as uniforms, workwear, sportswear, technical clothing, and institutional dress regulate behaviour, visibility, and belonging.
His principal research platform is the Westminster Menswear Archive. The Archive supports research on masculinity, subculture, military and industrial clothing, sportswear, technical textiles, and fashion systems, and provides the evidential basis for publications, exhibitions, consultancy, and funded projects.
Groves has led and contributed to major research initiatives, including the AHRC-funded Locating the Absent Shadow network, which examined the historical and contemporary relationship between British and Italian menswear, linking London, Manchester, Liverpool, and Milan as connected cultural and industrial systems.
His publications include peer-reviewed articles and the co-authored volume Inside the Westminster Menswear Archive (2024).
Publications
For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.