A Passion for Fashion: a Liverpool lady's wardrobe
29 April 2006 - 30 July 2006
The first major exhibition devoted to costume held at the Walker, A Passion for Fashion highlighted an important but previously unseen collection.
All of the 130 items displayed in the exhibition were selected from an enormous collection of 700 items formerly belonging to Mrs Emily Margaret Tinne. Donated to National Museums Liverpool by her daughter, this is now probably the largest surviving collection of period clothes from one person's wardrobe in Britain.
Clothing, shoes and accessories worn by Emily Tinne and her children between about 1910 and 1940 were showcased in the exhibition, giving an insight into a long-vanished part of Liverpool's past.
Emily's wardrobe provides us with a snapshot of changing fashions, as worn by a middle-class woman and her family in one of Britain's greatest provincial cities in the period between the two World Wars. It also tells us something about how people shopped for clothes in Liverpool during that time.
Click on the thumbnails below to see a selection of the highlights from each of the areas of the collection. Some of the highlights from 'A Passion for Fashion' are also available to send as e-cards here.
A catalogue published to accompany the exhibition, 'Mrs Tinne’s Wardrobe: A Liverpool Lady’s Clothes, 1900-1940', is still available. Priced £15.99, the catalogue features nearly 300 items in full colour, together with a full inventory of the collection.
Copies are available from the Walker Art Gallery shop, or by mail order from Publications at NMGM Enterprises. Please note that postage and package costs for the catalogue are as follows:
Are you a budding fashion designer? Do you think you could create clothes worthy of Mrs Tinne's wardrobe? Then get to work on these fun print-off fashion templates.