The London 2012 Games may be over, but the cultural Olympiad continues until the autumn, with something of interest for just about everyone – comedy, dance, films, museums and heritage, music, outdoor and carnival events, poetry, theatre and performance – and vintage fashion! Yes, even you old fashionistas are catered for.
You can’t get much more vintage than 5,000 years, and that’s what’s on show in the exhibition Dress the World: Living in Silk. This international loan exhibition from the National Silk Museum of Hangzou, China, narrates the story of thousands of years of silk manufacture and design, and explores the Chinese influence on fashion through one Nottingham gallery’s collection of Far Eastern garments. The exhibits include some of the earliest surviving fragments of silk fabric in the world, along with fabulously ornate garments and accessories from the Qing and other dynasties, and modern examples of sericulture. The rich colours, symbolism and exquisite craftsmanship of Chinese silk are highlighted, and the process of producing the luxurious yarn over several millennia is explained.
Dress the World: Living in Silk
Until 16 September; 10am – 5pm, Tuesday – Sunday
Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery
Castle Place
Nottingham
NG1 6EL
Admission £5.50 / concessions £4
Telephone 0115 915 3700
Email: nottingham.castle@nottinghamcity.gov.uk
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Shoes have played an important part in fashion over the centuries, and Northampton has long been at the centre of Britain’s shoe-making trade. So it’s fitting that the exhibition Dress the World: The World at Your Feet is taking place in the town.
Shoes express cultural identity, background and status. Imagine a cowboy in flip-flops. You can’t, can you? He’s nothing without his boots. And when a shoe restricts movement (say, when it has a very high, narrow wedge heel) it creates a dependency on servants to help the wearer to get around, as was necessary for wealthy fashionable women in the 18th century) – thereby indicating affluence and public… er… standing.
More than 1,000 pairs of shoes from around the world are on show to illustrate the part that footwear plays in many cultures. In some, shoes are associated with luck and fertility. One Greek tradition requires the names of the bride’s friends to be written on the soles of her shoes, and those that remain at the end of the night’s dancing are believed to be the next who will marry. In some parts of the world, special shoes are worn in death to protect the deceased and support the spirit on its way to the next world. Elsewhere, it is mourners who symbolically wear special footwear.
The World at Your Feet exhibition includes items loaned from the Royal Palaces as well as museums and the community.
Dress the World: The World at Your Feet
Until 23 September 2012; 10am–5pm, Tuesday–Saturday, 2–5pm, Sunday
Northampton Museum and Art Gallery
4-6 Guildhall Road
Northampton
NN1 1DP
Admission free
Telephone 01604 838111
Email museums@northampton.gov.uk
Twitter @NorthamptonShoe
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Dress the World: Suits and saris is a major exhibition exploring the fusion of British, South Asian and East African fashion and the interaction of the fashion trade between Leicester, India and East Africa.
A series of narratives, The Stories of the World, examines such issues as how British and South Asian clothing influences are translated on the high street, how wearing certain items makes us feel and how clothes help us express ourselves, the museum’s Gujarati textile collection collected in response to community concerns in the late 1980s, street style, the historic fusion of British and South Asian textiles in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how the South Asian and East African Asian community helped turn the city’s Belgrave Road into a centre for British Asian fashion.
Dress the World: Suits and saris
Until 7 October 2012; 10am – 5pm, Monday – Saturday; 11am–5pm, Sunday
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery
53 New Walk
Leicester
LE1 5EA
Admission free
Telephone 0116 225 4900
Email museums@leicester.gov.uk
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