‘Dressed to the Nines’, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 7 December 2019–4 September 2020

This small but engaging exhibition presented dressing for occasions in and around Birmingham from 1850 to the present day. It was one of a series of displays created recently by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery with the intention of inviting the public to help shape the displays of the future after planned renovations. A typical Victorian-era museum, it has at its core the social history of the city, its people and industries, but has become tired and outdated. It is hoped that visitor experience and feedback will prove valuable in helping shape the design and content of future new gallery spaces and exhibitions. As dress and textiles had not previously been privileged here as the basis of an exhibition, this clothing-based exploration of local history and culture was trialled with a view to expanding the idea in the future. The size and fairly simple design of the displays reflected the experimental nature of the enterprise. Most of the objects of dress and accessories had never been out of storage. In common with many social history museums, the dress collection had previously been used simply as support for their exhibitions. Problematically, and often typically for regional museums, dress and textiles at Birmingham were collected as decorative art rather than for their own social history. Sadly, this means that there is most often little or no information to accompany the garments, making it difficult to achieve local context when planning exhibitions. Nevertheless, curator Rebecca Unsworth achieved a fair amount with the limited contextual evidence to hand, supplementing often meagre information with local research to present relevant, contextual storytelling. Using as a basis for the displays garments with some local provenance, the colourful exhibition explored the different ways local residents, officials and business people presented themselves for formal functions, parties and nights out on the town from 1850 to the present day. Twelve carefully chosen outfits covered some of the ways shopping choices and habits have changed over the years, along with social and cultural changes in Birmingham. A demure 1860s silk evening dress made a small display with a glamorous 1930s beaded evening dress worn to a banquet by a lady mayoress (Fig. 1). A larger display opposite aimed to illustrate a broader retrospective of the types and styles of occasion wear from the collection, representing different areas of the local community over the decades. A spectacular gold embroidered 1930s court dress uniform, worn by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, was presented in conjunction with a 1940s Norman Hartnell cocktail dress worn by Hartnell’s sister, who co-founded a dance school in Birmingham (Fig. 2). A 1959 party dress was sadly the only representation of children’s clothing. However, as it was made from nylon it represented the new synthetic fabrics bursting onto the market of the period that made dressing-up more affordable. A bright gold brocade evening jacket worn by a local outfitter in the 1970s was the second of only two menswear garments on display. Celebrating the cultural and social diversity of Birmingham, a beautiful red and gold embroidered 1995 salwar kameez, bought in Handsworth, shared space with a black 1958 Dior ready-towear cocktail dress and a bright pink drag dress worn by the host of a local LGBTQþnightclub in 2019. An eyepopping contemporary carnival costume lit up the final section (Fig. 3). Birmingham celebrates African-Caribbean culture biannually by putting on its collective party hat; this was a fabulous example from the event in 2000. The small but lively displays engaged the visitor, prompting conversations and