BATH, England—One of the best collections of historical and contemporary dresses can be found here, a city declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1987.
Thanks to my cousin Rhoda and her husband Douglas, who graciously drove 156 kilometer west of London to the largest city in the county of Somerset so we could visit the Fashion Museum Bath (www.fashionmuseum.co.uk) and marvel at its sartorial treasures.
The museum’s headline exhibition, A History of Fashion in 100 Objects, gives a glimpse of the more than 100,000 pieces in its archives. Five thousand dresses were donated by the collector and writer Doris Langley Moore in 1963, when it was then known as the Museum of Costume.
The earliest pieces date back to the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. The oldest piece would have been worn by a Tudor man of fashion in the 1600s: an undershirt with hand-embroidered flowers and insects.
A long-sleeved garment from the 1610s, called a waistcoat, looks ornate but is said to be an informal attire to receive guests at one’s home. The piece is attributed to Lady Alice L’Estrange, who lived during the reign of James I.
Menswear in the 1700s was every bit as dazzling as womens wear. An example is a red velvet sculptural coat with big, turned-back cuffs paired with breeches.
By the 1760s, French fashion was at its peak, with Madame de Pompadour, the official mistress of Louis XV,
as style arbiter. She favored the sack-back, or robe à la française. On display is an opulent saffron yellow silk gown woven with metal thread.
The 1810s was when Jane Austen, a resident at Bath, introduced her headstrong heroines in her novels. They usually wore white cotton frocks, the rage at the time. By 1846, the sewing machine was patented by Elias Howe, so the production of dresses got ramped up and women adapted to trends just as quickly. A prime example is a dress in striped wool with blue silk pompoms on the front.
Also at about this time, the royal influence in fashion became even more evident when Queen Victoria chose to wear a white Spitalfields dress with Honiton lace to her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840.
Fashion advanced in the 1900s with the use of technology and the rise of the star designers.
“The late Monsieur Christian Dior helped to launch the venture [Fashion Museum] by allowing the first collection he ever brought to England to be shown for our benefit [at the Savoy Hotel in 1950], and it is fitting that he is represented
by a large number of his creations,” Moore said in 1965.
A black wool jacket and skirt from Dior’s 1947 New Look collection, a gift from Dame Margot Fonteyn, is supposed to be part of the exhibit but is currently on display at The Museum at FIT in New York. In its place is a Renarde town suit from Dior’s Haute Couture Autumn-Winter 1952 collection.
By the mid-20th century, Hollywood and its glamorous goddesses dictated—as they still do—what is deemed fashionable. In 1948, Vivien Leigh wore a black and red wool crepe appliqué jacket with black sequins designed by Lucien Lelong. In 1958, Elizabeth Taylor wore a short evening dress by London couturier Norman Hartnell, made of synthetic silk fabric and applied “crystal” beads.
The Youthquake in the 1960s is represented by the trouser suit by Mary Quant, who sold her wares at her Bazaar boutique in Chelsea, in 1966. Beside it on the display window is a 1965 Mondrian wool shift dress by Yves Saint Laurent, another gift from Dame Fonteyn, described as “the dress of tomorrow…assertive abstraction.” The flamboyant Coward donated an ostentatious purple jacket, made in 1968 by Michael Fish.
David and Elizabeth Emanuel, the designing couple behind Princess Diana’s wedding gown, has a red and black spotted silk ball-gown, with bows and puffed sleeves, from 1982. It represents the era of Eighties Excess.
Each year, the museum invites a top fashion insider to select an outfit they think “encapsulates the prevailing mood of fashion” chosen from that year’s collections for its “Dress of the Year” collection. Some of the outstanding pieces are also among the “100 Objects.”
In 2011, Vogue Editor at Large Hamish Bowles picked a white dress with feathery embroidery and sculptural pleats by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen. Vanessa Friedman, then the Financial Times fashion editor, chose a dress from Raf Simons’s debut collection for Dior in 2012: a 1950s-style dress cut to tunic length and paired with sharp trousers.
Top stylist Katie Grand chose an iridescent layered plastic ensemble, worn with tied kimono-style belt and twisted calico boot trousers, by Gareth Pugh as the Dress of the Year 2014.
Alexander Fury, fashion features director of AnOther Magazine and men’s critic of the Financial Times, chose two outfits as Dress of the Year 2018: a womens wear look by Nicolas Ghesquière for Louis Vuitton (a “silk embroidered redingote style coat worn with white silk cropped long
sleeve blouse with ruffles, light blue jersey shorts and ‘Archlight’ sneakers”) and a menswear look by Kim Jones from his debut collection for Dior Men (a “light pink cashmere twill double-breasted ‘Tailleur Oblique’ jacket and high waist wide trousers, ‘B24’ light pink calfskin and mesh sneakers, and a chunky metal necklace with pink rhodonite detail and ‘CD’ closure”).
Image credits: Miss Charlize