SHIPPING LATE JULY 2025
Liberty is one of London’s most iconic department stores, and this year celebrates its 150th anniversary. The Liberty story began when founder Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened his first store on Regent Street, May 15th 1875. To mark this special anniversary year Liberty has embarked on a non-conventional programme of cultural activities, including the exhibition I Am. We Are. Liberty. within the landmark Tudor-style building on Regent Street, curated by independent consultant and art historian Ester Coen. After London the I Am. We Are. Liberty. exhibition will travel to the UK Pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka 2025 opening in August.
I Am. We Are. Liberty. is designed to invite visitors into a journey through the often unseen aspects of the Liberty Archive and Design Studio, presenting new historical and cultural perspectives alongside the well-known and much-loved prints and fabrics, with a story that reveals Liberty to be more than an enterprise, more than a store, and more than a design company.
Celebrating its global creative community, Liberty also partners with esteemed cultural institutions, museums, and artists on a series of initiatives throughout the year, including collaborations with the Design Council, Imperial War Museums, Sir John Soane’s Museum, the Wallace Collection and William Morris Gallery.
The publication I Am. We Are. Liberty. curated and edited by Ester Coen and published by Trolley is designed to weave together for the first time, in a very original style and methodology, the various strands of Liberty’s cultural offering, with contributions from The Liberty group ( Adil M-Khan, Group CEO; Andrea Petochi, Managing Director; William Le Clerc, Chief People Officer; Silvia Spagnol, co-curator of the exhibition I Am. We Are. Liberty.) and renowned writers and critics Alice Rawsthorn, Barry Miles, Emma Dabiri, Louis Wise, Owen Hatherley and Thomas Heatherwick. There are individual publications representing the Liberty cultural partners and exhibition lenders: Caro Howell MBE and Rebecca Newell (Imperial War Museums), Hadrian Garrard (William Morris Gallery), Minnie Moll (Design Council), Dr Nicholas Cullinan OBE (British Museum), Will Gompertz (Sir John Soane’s Museum) and Xavier Bray (the Wallace Collection). There are also texts from additional Liberty collaborators including the renowned artist Grayson Perry, Harry Pearce of Pentagram and Jessica Reynolds of vPPR architects.
Unconventional in its approach, the publication is not a book, but is showcased as an ‘exhibition in a box’ that follows in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp’s La Boîte-en-valise, Andy Warhol’s Index and Photoworks’s Festival in a Box, designed so that Liberty followers all over the world can share in the scope of the landmark celebration without even visiting the London store. A beautiful cloth-covered box, covered in trademark Liberty prints, echoes the layered experience of the exhibition, whilst inside it is filled with individual publications and objects that relate to the various histories, collaborations and rich Liberty archive materials involved. These include a photo album of Arthur Lasenby Liberty and his wife Emma’s trip to Japan in 1889 (where she took the photographs and he wrote the travel diary), postcards, temporary tattoos of Liberty designs, stickers of the Pentagram-designed font and a cut out 3D model of the exhibition designed by the vPPR group.
On the occasion of Liberty’s 150th anniversary, the travelling exhibition and publication highlights new historical, social and cultural perspectives, presenting Liberty’s past as a way to invite people to engage with its future.
