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Left, evening dress by Charles James 1936 CT004009, right, evening dress by SA Brooking c1874 CCE0278.1. ©Nicholas Sinclair 2004 |
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Afternoon dress c1885 CT004271. ©Nicholas Sinclair 2004 |
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The Messel Family Dress Collection consists of over five hundred items, largely women's wear, most of which was worn and collected by Anne, Countess of Rosse and her mother, Maud Messel. It is a unique collection of exceptionally high-quality, unusual yet fashionable garments, worn by six generations of women from one creative and influential family over a period of one hundred and thirty-five years, from 1870-2005.
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Maud Messel c1902. ©Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea: Linley Sambourne House
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Cecil Beaton portrait of Anne, Countess of Rosse wearing a Charles James Ascot outfit, 1933. ©Birr Castle Archives. |
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Detail of dress c1902 CT004037.
©Nicholas Sinclair
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The collection includes couture garments, ready-to-wear and homemade clothing, antique Han garments from China, fancy dress and original examples of late eighteenth-century garments worn as fancy dress. It embraces work by some of the best of couturiers based in London and Dublin, including Lucile, Charles James, Norman Hartnell, Irene Gilbert and little known London couturiers from the 1900s and 1910s such as Sarah Fullerton Monteith Young.
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Detail of dress 1953 CCE0278.13
©Nicholas Sinclair
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The clothes in the Messel Dress Collection are far more than elegant fashion items. They live on as material fragments through which it is possible to trace the biographies of these women, who rose, through marriage, from private middle class comfort to the public stage of the aristocracy.
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Detail of dress 1938 CCE0278.7
©Nicholas Sinclair
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The family's drive to collect, preserve and memorialise their past remains strong still today. The current generation of women have kept items related to their weddings and so the Messel Collection continues to grow, making tangible the memories and lives of generations, past, present and future.
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Hat by Woolands 1898 CCE0278.20
©Nicholas Sinclair
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The majority of the Messel Dress Collection is housed in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery on long-term loan from the family and The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea: Linley Sambourne House Museum. In 2005-2006 the collection was the subject of a major exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery titled Fashion & Fancy Dress: The Messel Family Dress Collection 1865-2005; the exhibition was supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation Regional Museums Initiative.
See all items in the Messel Dress Collection
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