What is it about?
This article is based on a paper given at a conference to celebrate 50 years of the opening of The Gallery of English Costume at Platt Hall, Manchester. It questions the attitude to collecting costume held by many people and discussed the use that can be made of original garments in a museum context to discuss wider issues. It looks at ways museums have tried to make their collections more easily available to the public through publication and dispay and how this has changed over time. It ends with a plea that the study of the 'real thing', original garments, should have a place in the research and teaching of clothing history, something that is often lacking.
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Perspectives
This sums up a curator's exasperaration with the then current trend to try and force clothing studies to suit a preconceived theory and therefore to neglect what the garments themselves can tell, and how they can be used to illustrate much wider issues.
Ms Naomi E A Tarrant
Retired
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Real Thing: The Study of Original Garments in Britain since 1947, Costume, January 1999, Edinburgh University Press,
DOI: 10.1179/cos.1999.33.1.12.
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