I Spent a Year in a Fashion Archive: Part 1-The Highlights

I spent a year volunteering at the fashion store/archive of the Southend Museum, logging and digitising their collection. If you know me, I love fashion and going to fashion exhibitions. So when I got the opportunity last year and the beginning of this year to work in the Southend museum's fashion store, I jumped at the chance. I got to have a close-up look of fashion, accessories and artefacts from as early as the 1700s up to the 2000s. All connected to the local history of Southend and Essex.

I am going to do a couple more posts about my time, with two posts dedicated to the jewellery specifically. But to start, I thought I would do a post about some of my personal highlights of pieces I got to see close up.

Swimwear:

Southend Museum has one of the largest collections of swimwear.

These were some of my favourites from the collection, I believe if I remember correctly, from the 50s and 60s.

1920s Beading

Some of my ultimate favourite pieces were the highly beaded and sequined pieces from the 20s. The bags were amazing and the dresses stunning. Lots of pieces across the collection are homemade or altered by hand, and this is clearly seen in the beaded fabric, which you can see is the dress outline but has never been finished.

1700s Needlework

The needlework pieces from the 1700s fascinated me a lot. There were many; these are just a few. Sewing and embroidery practice by young girls. They have held up well over time, and the talent that went into it was amazing. There often featured Bible verses or verses from hymns, the alphabet in caps and lowercase as well as motifs.

Wedding Dresses and Dresses

There were a lot of wedding dresses in the store. It's interesting because you can see they have often been adapted so they can be worn again. There are other evening dresses, which are beautiful. A piece that caught my eye was a nightdress from St Michael's, which we now know is M&S. St Michael's was used from 1928 to the 2000s. This dress, I believe it is from the 40s or 50s (see the pink and cream dress in the photos) could be sold and worn as a summer dress now, but the layers and the beauty of this nightdress isn't something you would see in the high street nightwear department now.

A part of the job was to read what was originally logged in the books from 1970 to early 2000s. During the 70s a volunteer drew some amazing illustrations of some of the pieces. which are shown here.

1700s-1800s

There are fewer of the really early pieces in the store, but these caught my eye as being interesting parts of fashion history.

Court waistcoats for men with amazing embroidery and details.

A crinaline from the 1800s, I didn't remove it from the box, but the rusted circles it was made up of were a stunning display of engineering and how hard it must have been to put on and wear.

Finally, something I had to research to understand fully what it was, but it was a piece for corsets or as they were originally called, stays. It is called a stay busk. It goes down the front of a stay or corset between the breasts after it's been put on. They are made from either wood, ivory or whalebone. There were two in the collection, one was plain, and the other was carved. They had a function to help with posture. But they were also given as love tokens; this is why they had carvings on them, and this often included the initials of the couple. This can be seen in the one in the store, lots of carved details and the initials.

So those were some of my highlights and interesting pieces I got to see up close. It was an amazing experience, and I am so glad I got the opportunity to do it!