100 Years of Fashion at the Bailiffgate Gallery

Spanning the last hundred years of fashion, the new exhibition at Alnwick’s Bailiffgate Gallery is a glorious celebration of haute couture evening wear together with an exploration of fashion through the decades.  
 

Designer dresses and accessories loaned by Stella Tennant, Super Model, and Alnwick’s own Duchess of Northumberland, will be joined by evening gowns, suits, handbags, shoes, hats and gladrags worn at special occasions by residents of Northumberland over the years.   Showcasing the timeless elegance of Coco Chanel’s Little Black Dress to the iconoclastic designs of Vivienne Westwood, visitors will be up close and personal with high fashion from some of the most influential couturiers of the 20^th and 21^st Century: Balenciaga, McQueen, Prada, Galliano, Gucci, McCartney and more.
 

The exhibition also highlights changing fashions and trends over the last 100 years.  Dresses worn by Flappers, outspoken women of the roaring 20s defying convention after the end of the First World War; traditional men’s suits from the Second World War; 26” wide hipsters with flower power shirts from the 60s; Doc Marten working boots appropriated by skinheads, punks, goths and grunge and the ever seductive stiletto heel.
 

No celebration of fashion would be complete without a red carpet.  The Bailiffgate seamstresses, the backbone of any fashion house, have made replica vintage clothes for visitors to dress up, strike a pose and take their own red carpet fashion photographs.
 

Hilary Waugh, from Bailiffgate, who has led the team curating the exhibition said ‘we are thrilled to have been loaned such fabulous clothes to share with the public.  I know like me, visitors will love being up so close that you can study the designs and see every stitch, bead and detail’.  Jane Mann said ‘fashion provides a fascinating glimpse into our social history from rebellion to convention through austerity and extravagance: exploring our individuality and sexuality from Virginia Woolf to Madonna via David Bowie.  And then I see a vintage outfit and think did I really wear that!’
 

The exhibition runs from 6th April to 8th September. 

Contacts

Jane Mann, Press Enquiries: 07849 107080

Vivien Kay, Museum Coordinator: 01665 605847

ask@bailiffgatemuseum.co.uk 

14 Bailiffgate, Alnwick, Northumberland, NE66 1LX.

Tel 01665 605847

Website Bailiffgate Museum & Gallery

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Notes to Editors

About Bailiffgate Museum & Gallery:

Bailiffgate is an award winning, independent museum and gallery led and run by volunteers. Housed in a Grade 2 listed former church over three floors, in the historic Castle Quarter of Alnwick. 
Bailiffgate is an Accredited museum and a registered charity.  

Open Tuesday to Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays throughout the year from 10am to 4pm.  Admission: Adults £4; Concessions £3; Children (5-16) £1; Under 5s Free.

About Stella Tennant

Stella Tennant is a British Super Model. The granddaughter of Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire and Deborah Mitford, Stella was born in Scotland and attended St Leonards School in St Andrews.  She was studying sculpture at the Winchester School of Art when she was "discovered" and since 1993 has had a successful career as a fashion model.  Since 2016 together with her friend Isabella Cawdor, a former Vogue fashion editor, she has been a creative director at Holland & Holland, gunmaker and clothing retailer founded in 1835.  Stella lives with her husband and four children near Duns, in the small village of Edrom in Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders.

About Alnwick

Alnwick is a medieval market town in north Northumberland, England, 32 miles south of Berwick upon Tweed and the Scottish Border. The railway station at Alnmouth (4 miles from the centre of Alnwick) has regular connections on the east coast line to towns and cities around the UK with journeys to London Kings Cross of

3 ½  hours and to Edinburgh of 1 ¼ hours.  

Alnwick Castle is still lived in by the Duke & Duchess of Northumberland and is a popular tourist destination.  Other places to visit in the centre of Alnwick are Alnwick Garden and Barter Books, one of the largest secondhand bookshops in the UK, housed in the former Alnwick train station.

Four miles from the beach, the coastline near Alnwick comprises over 20 spectacular miles of golden sands, rocky outcrops and sand dunes.  Inland lie the Cheviot and Simonside Hills and friendly and interesting villages in the least populated and most remote County of England.