The exhibition 'Transformation - the Changing Shape of Women’s Fashion', which opens on Friday 15 June at Moyses Hall Museum, provides a historic perspective on today’s fashion industry’s obsession with ‘size zero’. The exhibition focuses on how women have changed their shape to suit the fashion of the day and draws on the museum’s extensive costume collections. The display includes Ian Fleming’s (James Bond author) wife’s Christian Dior going away outfit and features women’s clothes right up to today including some best selling items this year.
Women have gone to amazing lengths (and breadths) over the centuries to emphasise and exaggerate the shape of various parts of their bodies. The exhibition follows the twists and turns, the ins and outs through which the female shape has passed during the last 200 years, from the neo-classic look of Jane Austen’s heroines to the latest on the High Street. Changing shapes also reflect the changing roles of women in society and the exhibition provides an opportunity to ask whether these shapes are the ones which women actually want to be or whether it is the shape which society or 'fashion' has prescribed for them.
The exhibition runs until the end of December 2007.
ENDS
ISSUED BY: MAGGIE GOODGER, VISITOR MANAGER, ST EDMUNDSBURY BOROUGH COUNCIL. TEL: 01284 706183. maggie.goodger@stedsbc.gov.uk
