Claire Wilcox is senior curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum and former child actress, acting in the 1962 movie, 40 Pounds of Trouble as Penelope "Penny" Piper. She received an honorary doctorate in art and design from Middlesex University in July 2017. She sits on the editorial board of the journal Fashion Theory. She is professor of fashion curation at the London College of Fashion. She won the 2021 PEN/Ackerley Prize for Patch Work.