The bright pink museum which houses the somewhat small exhibition is a bit of a hassle to find but worth it. The exhibition looks at the textiles designers who designed the prints
As well as the designers who designed the dresses. I found part where they talked about the 3 key dress designers very interesting. One made 'bread and butter' designs (a phrase that will always stick out to me because once, years ago, we were given a talk by a textiles designer and he mentioned in passing bread and butter designs, and later a girl put up her hand and asked what a sandwich design was) another made complicated designs and a third who followed the Paris couture fashions.
The exhibition also talks about the ladies who wore the dresses. They were designed for the newly booming market of traveling abroad and someone once commented that you could tell a British lady by her Horrockses dress.
they were popular for newly-wed ladies to wear on their honeymoon, and whist the prices were expensive (£80- £120 in today's prices) meaning they were mostly for well-to-do fans, many regular girls would save their wages specifically.
Princess Margret and the duchess of Kent were fans as well as the Queen. They also made house coats which were acceptable to receive guests in the evening in.
and beautiful evening wear. I really liked the evening wear especially the red dress.
It also said that advertising in vogue added an extra 2 shilling to the cost of each dress.
I love floral print dresses so i really enjoyed this, and at £3.50 for students and £6 for everyone else, it's not bad value.
I also liked that in the guide you get 2 recipes, which i may scan in and put up.
Nadia xx

























