British fashion icon opens fashion gallery at Salisbury Museum
The collection opens today (Saturday 7 August)
British fashion icon Dame Zandra Rhodes is opening a new Fashion Gallery at The Salisbury Museum.
She will be in the area as the face of the new collection which includes items such as a girl’s pretty red coat made from her father’s military tunic, worn during the Boer War.
The collection includes varied items such as a gentlemen’s silk waistcoats worn at court, to a skirt and bodice from Christian Dior’s 1950 Ligne Long collection.
It is the result of three years’ work by local young people working alongside the museum team, volunteers and experts, all sharing their skills and enthusiasm to produce this dynamic new show which explores our changing relationship with clothes.
The new collection is being opened by the fashion icon today (Saturday 8 August) and will have various items, as well as stories to tell.
For example, just over 140 years ago, Jane ‘Jinny’ Hussey Townsend travelled from her Salisbury home to Paris to buy her wedding dress – where she chose a stunningly vibrant yellow gown and matching shoes.
That dress is now part of a historic collection in the new Fashion Gallery at The Salisbury Museum, only a few hundred yards from where she was brought up.
She lived much of her life at Mompesson House which is just along the road from the museum in Salisbury Cathedral Close.
She wed Willie Hammick on 17 June 1879 but sadly died just three years later aged 38 after giving birth to three children.
The provenance of many of the items have been carefully researched and give a fascinating insight into the lives of their owners.
The project to redisplay the fashion collection, called Look Again: Discovering Centuries of Fashion started in March 2018.
Young people attended an afterschool club at the museum, and groups including those from St Joseph’s Catholic School and the Arts University Bournemouth worked alongside the museum team and heritage volunteers from the Arts Society.
Katy England, the Look Again Project Coordinator said, “It has been an amazing experience for the museum team to work alongside the young people and heritage volunteers on this project.
“We are working really hard now on preparations for the opening of the gallery and looking forward to seeing the doors open to visitors.
“Dame Zandra Rhodes represents everything that incapsulates creativity, passion, energy, success and determination.
“We are very excited to be working with Dame Zara Rhodes and it’s a great privilege. We have an amazing collection of clothes and accessories, and this new gallery is a great opportunity to showcase them.
“We have a beautiful and diverse varity of items on display. Things ranging from a high heeled silk shoe discovered underneath the floor boards in a cottage in upper Woodford – which dates to the 1730s. Right up until a vibrant oranges and lemons themed dress from the 1950s.
“The gallery explores how we interact with clothes and tells some of the amazing stories of the items from The Salisbury Museum collection.”
The Look Again project has been made possible by a grant of £115,360 from the Museums Association Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund which funds projects that develop collections to achieve social impact.
The Arts Society Sarum also supported the new gallery with funding for the young people’s wider interior design ideas which included a new colour scheme and updated flooring.