Lace in Fashion – exhibition review

The 1580s smock in the first case

On Friday night I was lucky enough to go to a reception for the Bath Fashion Museum’s new exhibition Lace in Fashion. The exhibition will be open from 4^th February 2017 to 1^st January 2018, and on the first day of the exhibition I heard a fascinating talk by its curator, Elly Summers, about how the exhibition came about and the thinking behind it.

In April 2014 the Museum was given a grant by Arts Council England, to help catalogue its large lace collection. Fifty trays of lace, some with very little information, were sorted with the help of several people from the Lace Guild. Around 4000 items were examined. The majority received a very basic catalogue entry, but 400 exceptional pieces were catalogued in depth and photographed. These photographs will be made available via the Bridgman Art Library . While it was possible to photograph some lace flat, others were photographed over mannequins that were mocked up in black to the basic period outline.

The 1860s wedding veil

The exhibition itself takes up the large central area of the museum. The earliest item on display is a 1580s smock with plaited lace insertion down the sides of the sleeves.  Please note that my photographs were taken in low light in a very crowded exhibition, you really need to go to see the items for yourself. The most recent item in the exhibition is a 2016 laser printed dress,  which was bought online for £1.

The 1805 bobbin lace dress

Among the highlights for me were, the stunning 1660s silver tissue dress with parchment lace, the 1860s cream silk wedding veil that is a mixed of bobbin and needle lace applied to a machine net, the 1805 bobbin lace dress that may once have belonged to Queen Charlotte, there was an article about this in the Guardian, and I suppose if I have to chose something modern the red lace dress worn by Dame Helen Mirren.

A History of Fashion in 100 Objects– New exhibition

This recently opened exhibition at the Fashion Museum Bath is on until the 1^st January 2018, and includes considerably more than one hundred objects. This is because the cases of accessories are not included in the total, so for example the first case contains several 16^th and 17^th century gloves from the Spence Collection. As can been seen from the photograph the light levels are very low because of the fragility of the fabric displayed. 

The first case of large garments contains the wonderful late 16^th/early 17^th century embroidered jacket, which appears in the centre of the advertising for the exhibition. It is followed by a rare 1690s crewel embroidered petticoat, which shows how English embroiderers were copying the designs of the painted calicoes that were coming into the country in even increasing numbers at that time. The next garment is a lady’s sleeveless waistcoat, worn underneath for warmth; it is embroidered with a stunning design of crane-like birds. It can be seen in greater detail in the image gallery on the museum’s website, which has images of 36 items in the exhibition. The c1700 man’s sleeved waistcoat, which is displayed behind these two garments, is rather too far way to be seen in detail. 

 

The exhibition is well worth seeing, though if your interest is early modern it is, unsurprisingly, very heavy on the 19^th and 20^th centuries, with only about 25 garments that are pre 1800. You can take photographs, but the glass is very reflective, as you can see from mine here, and the lighting levels are very low.

Georgians: Dress for Polite Society at the Fashion Museum Bath

1720s - man's coat is woollen broadcloth

The Fashion Museum has redisplayed the first section of their collection. Entitled Georgians: Dress for polite society the display runs from 25 January 2014 to 1 January 2015. The downside, for those interested in the seventeenth century and earlier, is that apart from examples from the Glovers Company collection in a different section of the museum, no early material is shown. The wonderful silver tissue dress from the 1660s and other early garments have gone back into store. Some of them had been on display for many years and are very fragile, so this is understandable.

1750s cinnamon brown gown, the silk is 1720s

                         The Georgians is a clean looking, well lit display of some 30 or so original ladies’ gowns and gentlemen’s suits dating from the 1720s to the 1820s. Someone I spoke to said that it seemed too stark. This is because the suits and gowns are displayed on headless mannequins, without any accoutrements. The only non period additions are plain white silks used to indicate where the petticoat or stomacher would have been.  On the other hand this does means that neckline and sleeve ends can be seen without being disguised by fichus, and detachable cuffs. It would have been nice to have accompanied the display with some separate cases with the missing fichus, not to mention, caps and hats, stockings and shoes, etc.

The red silk damask is c.1750

The labels are low down, but quite large print, so they can be seen without too much bending over. What surprised me were the number of examples where the silk used for a gown was twenty or thirty years older than the gown itself, so for example the cinnamon brown brocaded silk dates from the 1720s, while the style of the gown is some thirty years later.

The section ends with a case of modern designers work influence by the 18^th century, including a Vivienne Westwood ball gown.

1760s court gowns

It is quite interesting to go back and see how displays have changed over the years. I purchased from the museum shop a copy of Fashion Museum Treasures (£4.50, published 2009, ISBN 978 1 857 59553 6) and compared the photographs of the 1760s court mantuas with extremely wide panniers, with the pictures I have in the c.1994 authorised guide. In the 1990s guide the mannequins have hands and heads with dressed hair, and the garment is displayed with a stomacher and fan in hand. An even earlier guide, probably from the late 1970s, has no photographs and dates from a time when entry to the museum was 30p (today it is £8).  Finally I have a very earlier guide to the Museum of Costume (it changed its name to Fashion

1820 - end of the Georgians

Museum in 2007), from the days, 1955 and just after, when it was at Eridge Castle, and examples of 19^th century clothing in the collection are pictured being worn by well known ladies of the time, for example Vivien Leigh, Margot Fonteyn, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, something that would not be done today.