Historical Dress Collection

An inventory of these garments was originally made by Louise Chapman, Senior Lecturer in Fashion and Textiles, who found them in a cupboard back in 2011 when the School of Fashion was still based at the University’s Gosta Green campus. 

The garments may have been kept in the library at one time, but were then offered to the School of Fashion when they were re-organising their stock.  They were temporarily housed in a teaching room following the move to Parkside in 2013, and were acquired by the Arts, Design and Media Archives in 2019.   

The collection includes fans, hats, capes, shoes, dresses, petticoats, samples of lace, reproduction theatrical garments, blouses, jackets, knitwear and, most spectacularly, a black floral-printed Japanese kimono, padded with fleece and embroidered with gold metal thread and silk. The earliest item is a pair of shoes with buckles that date from 1775; the most recent is a dress from the 1980s.

At least part of it was bequeathed to Birmingham School of Art by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Kate Bunce upon her death in 1927.  Kate studied there in the 1880s and her family is closely connected with Birmingham’s cultural heritage and, more specifically, Birmingham School of Art.