Fashion and Fancy Dress: The Messel Family Dress Collection 1865-2005

A collection of dress worn by six generations of women from one creative British family was identified (royalty aside, this is unique) and brought together for the first time. Material culture analysis permitted identification of the women’s shared tastes and preoccupations and provided the ‘hook’ into their socio-cultural circumstances and biographies. Garments were also scrutinised as holders of deeply personal memory - a theme explored within fine art, but not previously within fashion studies.

Primary research of letters, diaries, photographs, paintings, visits to family homes and testimony from surviving family members provided insights into designers, prices paid, spaces and occasions worn and relationships with garments - as both items of wear and preserved objects. This also provided original evidence into the consumption, design and business of early London couture.

I interpreted and displayed clothes worn by Anne Rosse (neé Messel) and highlighted her role as collector-guardian. I developed the concept of ‘imprints’ on worn clothes, endorsing the retention of lipstick traces and stains, routinely conserved, as evidence of lives lived. As Anne also preserved perished clothes, a shattered silk dress from the 1930s was (unusually) also exhibited. Anne penned and packed away with her clothes, notes written for ‘other’ eyes: these evidenced her strategy to add further layers of meaning to preserved clothes.

This project raised awareness of the cultural significance of worn clothing the value of material culture research processes and developed existing scholarship within fashion and social history and museology. Dissemination and significance are further evidenced in material itemised below.

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