THE MUSEUM of COSTUME
Bath, Somerset, England
The Fashion Museum collection was started by Doris Langley Moore, a collector, costume designer and author. She gave her collection to the city of Bath in 1963, and Bath City Council used it to found the Museum of Costume. The collection is now three times its original size and the museum changed its name to the Fashion Museum in 2007.
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DRESSES from HISTORY
from February 2008
Fourteen historic ensembles from the Fashion Museum’s world class collection of original dress are on display in the museum galleries from 16 February 2008.
Specialist textile conservators Julie Travis and Lindsay Shephard have prepared the dresses, which have been carefully selected for display. Different dresses require different conservation treatments. For example, a white muslin dress with pale blue embroidery which dates from 1815, was laid out full length on a washing table and gently cleaned to remove nearly 200 years of dust and grime.
The fashions in the new display date from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian periods. An extra feature of the display is the inclusion of one or two pieces associated with Royalty at the time, for example, the ceremonial ensemble worn by the Duke of St Albans as Hereditary Grand Falconer at the Coronation of George IV (he was previously the Prince Regent) in 1821.
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17th Century Gloves
22 September 2007 - 31 December 2008
Pair of cream leather man’s ceremonial gloves with
silk gauntlet cuffs embroidered in silk and gold
metal thread and seed pearls.
Early 17th century. ©The Gloves' Collections Trust
The Fashion Museum is delighted to announce that some of the oldest, rarest and most precious objects in their care will be shown in a new display at the end of September 2007.
All of the gloves are on loan to the Fashion Museum from The Gloves' Collections Trust, a special body set up by the Worshipful Company of Glovers of London to care for what is possibly the finest collection of historic gloves in the world.
The display at the Fashion Museum includes twenty pairs of gloves from this outstanding collection, all intricately embroidered in a variety of materials from tiny seed pearls to sparkling metal thread.
Some of the gloves are patterned, some show figures and animals (such as the mythological motif of the'pelican in her piety'); all are highly decorative, and all have to be seen to be believed.
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1977
Until December 31 2008
Fashion is not just about couture, ready-to-wear and big name designers. It’s also about putting a look together, about style, about making a point, about belonging.
For a museum, it’s difficult to capture this phenomenon because by it is nature it is fleeting; it is here today and gone tomorrow. But one way to capture this is through photography.
Not just photographs taken for glossy fashion magazines but images produced for all sorts of other purposes, to be published in the music press, for example, in skate magazines, and even family snapshots.
So in the re-vamped Fashion Museum we have set aside an area to display fashion through images. '1977' is the first of these displays.
Thirty years ago this year, punk and new wave bands played music and wore clothes that expressed their identity and demanded attention.
The images in this exhibition were taken by young, talented photographers all making their names by capturing the energetic and edgy cultural explosion known as punk.
Their photographs were printed in the music press of the day - NME, Melody Maker and Sounds - and helped both to record what was happening musically and to disseminate new ideas about dressing and behaving.
The display features photographs of the following punk and new wave bands:
The Clash, Johnny Rotten, Ari Up, The Jam, Debbie Harry, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, The Only Ones, Buzzcocks, The Ramones, The Rezillos, X-Ray Spex, Tom Robinson Band, Ian Dury, Hugh Cornwell, Elvis Costello, Gaye Advert, Don Letts, Siouxie and the Banshees, Paul Weller
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A place to reflect on one's own life in clothing?
French silk brocade dress, remade in 1789 from a 1730 wedding dress imported from Paris
The exhibition will treat the visitor to a visual survey of street garments for evening and day wear worn by the fashionable—both adults and children—of Europe and America. Of particular importance to the history of fashion are a magnificent evening coat and cape by Charles Frederick Worth of Paris, perhaps the most famous of France’s late nineteenth century haute couturiers. 
