This is a review of the excellent exhibition History off the Hanger, at Killerton House, Devon. Congratulations to Shelly Tobin and all her team. The Killerton collection of historic dress is the largest that the National Trust holds, with over 22,000 items.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/devon/killerton/killerton-fashion-exhibtion
The earliest item in the exhibition is a slipper said to have been worn by King James II, and the exhibition goes through time, via a mourning outfit belonging to Queen Victoria, to the wardrobe of one woman, given to Killerton in 2005, and covering the last decades of the twentieth century. The exhibition is well laid out and, as well as the clothes themselves, includes books, magazines, photographs and films.
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| The James II slipper |
The exhibition takes what is very much a historiographical view of clothing history. There were film clips from the 1950s of Doris Langley Moore’s collection, which went on to form the basis of the Fashion Museum Bath’s collection, and a 1931 film, probably narrated by C. Willett Cunnington himself, of items from the Cunnington collection. In both these films the clothing was being worn by real people, something no museum professional would do now. In another room a modern film shows how clothing conservators are working to stabilize textiles.
On a personal note, I wandered around looking at the mentions of old books on the history of clothing muttering I’ve got a copy of that:- Planche (1834 – though my copy is the 3rd edition), Mrs. Ashdown (1909), Kohler (1928 in English), Doris Langley Moore (1949). Then they started mentioning people whose works I purchased when they were first published: Nancy Bradfield, Norah Waugh, and Janet Arnold, who I had the privilege of knowing – she introduced me to the delights of elderflower presse in the 1980s.
The picture below is from my copy of Doris Langley Moore’s A Woman in Fashion (1949), with a very young Vanessa Redgrave on the frontispiece.
