Fashion Museum Bath moves collection to temporary home at Dents

The Fashion Museum Bath is pleased to announce that its world-class collection has found a temporary home at luxury glovemaker Dents Headquarters in Warminster while it works to create a new museum at the Old Post Office in the centre of Bath.

Fashion Museum Manager Rosemary Harden said: “We’re thrilled to have found a temporary home for the Fashion Museum collection at Dents Headquarters. It’s the ideal space for the collection while we wait to move into our new home at the Old Post Office, and a fantastic opportunity to forge closer links between the Museum and one of the UK’s leading heritage fashion brands.”

Deborah Moore, CEO of Dents, said: “Dents is delighted to welcome the Fashion Museum to Warminster. The move of the collection and the curatorial team into our headquarters has felt seamless, and it’s wonderful to build on our long-standing relationship with this world-class collection as it works towards the creation of a brand-new museum in the centre of Bath.”

Kevin Guy, Leader of Bath & North East Somerset Council, said: “We’re pleased to be working with Dents to safely house the Fashion Museum’s collection of more than 100,000 objects, which range from gloves from the time of Shakespeare to fashions by today’s leading designers. When the Fashion Museum reopens in the Old Post Office, it will be more accessible, engage with a wider range of people, and tell a greater range of stories than ever before.”

The Fashion Museum closed its doors at the Assembly Rooms at the end of October last year and the curatorial team have spent the last few months packing up the collection and moving its 100,000 objects into a high spec and secure storage facility at a site owned by Dents on the outskirts of Warminster.

The building provides the Fashion Museum with a large storage area that meets the high environmental and security standards required for preservation of a museum collection as well as space for the curatorial team to work.

The curatorial team is continuing its active programme of loans out to museums around the world and objects from the collection will feature in four major exhibitions opening this spring:

• Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
• Crown to Couture at Historic Royal Palaces, Kensington Palace
• Tartan at V&A Dundee
• India in Fashion: The Impact of Indian Dress and Textiles on the Fashionable Imagination at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, Mumbai 

Established in 1777, Dents is one of the UK’s leading heritage fashion brands with a long tradition of making hand-crafted luxury leather gloves. The firm has supplied handmade gloves to royalty, celebrities and the film industry including the late Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation glove, worn as part of the ceremony in 1953. Dents was awarded a Royal Warrant in 2016 and its gloves have featured in TV series Bridgerton and Mr. Selfridge as well as Bond movies No Time to Die, Spectre and Skyfall.

The Fashion Museum and Dents have a long-standing working relationship as both organisations are involved in the management of the Collection of the Worshipful Company of Glovers of London, which has been on loan to the Fashion Museum since the mid-1980s. The Collection comprises some 2,500 gloves including the Spence collection of historical gloves.

The Fashion Museum will open at its new home in the Old Post Office in four to five years’ time. The Museum is also partnering with Bath Spa University to create a Fashion Collection Archive in Locksbrook, to the west of the city centre. Opening in the next three to five years, this will provide a home for the Museum’s extensive collection and will be accessible to the public through special events and study sessions.

See some of the Fashion Museum collection online at www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/collection. For more information on the Fashion Museum’s future, visit www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/our-future.