The Fashion Museum is home to an outstanding collection of historical fashionable dress. Within this collection are hundreds of fascinating individual fashion stories, a number of which are highlighted in the collection stories gallery at the Fashion Museum.
1610s undress, it was made for “informal” wear. Aristocratic women wore informal dress at home, as the home was also a public space, for receiving visitors.
This woman’s waistcoat has been embroidered with a design of fanciful birds. The influence of India and China was very important in the 1600s and early 1700s, and the style of embroidery and design motifs show an Eastern sensibility.
Its design may have been influenced by the flamboyant fashions of the Macaronis in the 1770s. Macaronis favoured tight-fitting suits and towering wigs. They were figures of fun, often just returned from the Grand Tour of Italy. Apparently, the name came because they loved everything Italian, including macaroni pasta.
1760s French fashion, with its loose pleats flowing from the shoulders, this style was known as a sack-back or robe a la francaise. Although it grew out of informal wear, by the 1760s the sack-back was the style of choice for formal occasions. This extravagant example, in saffron yellow silk woven with metal thread, is French fashion at its most opulent.
In the past, when I saw historical clothing, I kept saying how beautiful it was. Now NAOMI suggests that we observe where the seams of each garment are cut from, and how they differ from the division of modern clothing. Vintage clothes will have several more patterns than modern versions because they will be more form-fitting.