The museum that vanished
How the Bath Fashion Museum vanished and plans to bring it back. We look at the history, the exciting new plans for it and ask how much reviving the museum will cost council tax payers.
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Let’s start with a quick question. What do a glove factory, a post office and a 1920’s author of tongue-in-cheek literature have in common?
The answer?
The Bath Fashion Museum.
The story of the museum starts with Doris Langley Moore, the Liverpool born daughter of a South African newspaper editor. Educated in Johannesburg she studied classics and proved herself an able translator of ancient Greek.
In the 1920s she started writing books and penned a number of works with titles such as "The Technique of the Love Affair” and “Pandora's Letter-Box”.
She married in 1926 and settled in London. As she ambled around London acquainting herself with the place, she chanced on the V&A Museum and its costume collection. She was hooked and several return visits confirmed her passion for fashion.
She started collecting colour plates of fashion but quickly moved on to collecting period costume. By the end of the Second World War she had amassed a considerable collection which she kept in her sizeable London home. As she became known as a collector so she started to receive gifts of fashion items from others.
After the Second World War Doris started to look for a home for her collection but without much success.
Throughout the 1950s she found temporary homes for her collection at Eridge Castle, Brighton Pavilion and Bath’s Octagon Chapel.