BATH FASHION MUSEUM & ASSEMBLY ROOMS
Period Fashionable Costume and Georgian Society
The Bath Fashion Museum is an extensive ever changing exhibit of contemporary and historic costume and fashion through the ages, mostly from the 1600’s to the present day presented in the basements of the Assembly Rooms of Bath. The Fashion Museum (originally called the Museum of Costume) began as a private collection of Doris Langley Moore a fashion historian who first began collecting fashion illustration plates in the 1920s. Her collecting of plates grew to gathering examples of period dress and current fashion. As her home filled up she began looking for a suitable museum to present the collection. She eventually donated the collection to the City of Bath in 1963 and continued to advise and curate. Moore once stated her collecting philosophy "A good specimen is one which is not only in sound condition and of nice quality, but which embodies the features of its period in an entirely representative way.“
Moore’s connection to fashion and literary culture was eclectic. She was an author of biographies, principally on Lord Byron (see Byron's Newstead Abbey), a bit of a fashion plate himself, and she wrote the scenario for a ballet “The Quest” based on the epic romantic poem The Faerie Queen, by Edmund Spencer conceived in the gardens of Ireland’s Lismore castle as an ode to Queen Elizabeth (see Lismore Castle Gardens). The ballet was premiered in London at the New Theater, introducing a new ballet star Moira Shearer who went on to fame as the star of the iconic clothing related ballet movie “The Red Shoes”. She also created the costume for Katherine Hepburn in “The African Queen”.
The clothing on display is rotated in changing themes selected from over 30,000 objects in the collection organized in order of eras behind glass. The exhibits are focused on fashionable dress for women, men and for children with the earliest pieces of gloves and embroidery from the Elizabethan 16th Century to the annually selected Dress of the Year, nominated from current fashion designers from Alexander McQueen to Donatella Versace and Ralph Lauren. Themes can range for costumes of the Georgian era and the Roaring 20’s, to Daywear of the 20th Century. There is also a chance to play Dress Up in the dressing room, with an opportunity to try on replica Victorian period fashion.
Bath Assembly Rooms
Aside from fashion, you can also visit the Georgian period 18th Century historic Assembly Rooms of Bath. There are four historic rooms, the Ball Room, the Tea Room, The Octagon Room and the Card Room. The rooms were used for a society form of entertainment called an 'assembly', a public forum for weekly events and balls where citizens could gather to dance or play cards, have tea and hear music to while away the time and provide a proper public setting where unattached young men and women could meet to stroll and flirt. These assemblies are rather much mentioned in the works of Bath resident Jane Austen (see Jane Austen in Bath), with a reference in “Pride and Prejudice” to a preference for private balls over the public ones.
The Assembly Rooms first opened in 1771, designed by architect John Wood the Younger who also designed the Roman Baths (see Bath's Roman Baths), and called the New Rooms to distinguish them from the older assembly in the lower part of town. The building was heavily damaged by a German bombing raid in 1942, reconstructed in 1963 when the Fashion Museum collection came to find a home. The Assembly Rooms were illuminated by a set of nine magnificent crystal chandeliers considered one of finist surviving examples of the perions and the Octagon Room is dominated by a Gainsborough portrait of the first Master of Ceremonies at the Upper Rooms, Captain William Wade.
Visiting Bath Fashion Museum & Assembly Rooms
The Assembly Rooms are located on Bennett Street off the Circus, two blocks from the Royal Crescent (see No 1 Royal Crescent). The Fashion Museum is open every day except the 24th and 25th of December. Seasonal hours are 10:30am to 5pm March to October and 10:30am to 4pm January-February, and November-December. Admission is £8.00 for adults, (or £2.50 just for the Assembly Rooms). Seniors and Students are £7.25 and Children 6-16 are £6. A family ticket and combined saver ticket for the Fashion Museum & Assembly Rooms and the Roman Baths is available. The Assembly Rooms can sometimes be closed for private functions as a popular event rental facility. © Bargain
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Bath Fashion Museum
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SEE ALSO:
STONEHENGE - NEOLITHIC MYSTERY OF WILTSHIRE
GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL - EDWARD II & HARRY POTTER
