A unique international collection of almost 100,000 precious items of clothing from the Bath Fashion Museum is being temporarily stored at a factory in Warminster.
The museum’s whole collection, created over more than 50 years, is being stored at the warehouse of luxury glovemakers Dents Ltd.
The oldest item is a man’s shirt dating from the late 1500s and the collection includes wigs and mannequins as well as the statute of a horse called Jock.
It also features modern classics from British designers such as Mary Quant, who played a prominent role in London's Swinging Sixties culture.
Museum manager Rosemary Harden said the new location in a large warehouse was the biggest closet she had ever seen.
"Here we have the whole of the museum collection in one huge, enormous space," she said.
The collection occupies 17,000 square feet of storage space on more than 200 racks and rails and has been given a temporary home there while work is taking place to create a new museum at the Old Post Office in Bath city centre.
It was moved from the Assembly Rooms in Bath and is temporarily closed while the museum prepares to relocate into its new home in several years’ time.
Mrs Harden said: “We are very pleased to announce that the Fashion Museum’s world-class collection has found a temporary home at the headquarters of the luxury glovemakers Dents, while we work to create a new museum at the Old Post Office in the centre of Bath.
“This gives us a unique opportunity to create one of the world’s great museums of fashion! It will be more accessible, engage with a wider range of people and tell a greater range of stories than ever before.
“There are almost 100,000 objects in the Fashion Museum collection, ranging from decorated gloves from the time of Shakespeare to fashions by today’s leading designers in the Dress of the Year collection.
“These precious objects, all showing different aspects of the history of fashion, have (for the most part) been given to the museum by many generous individuals and organisations during the 50 plus years that the Fashion Museum has been in Bath.”
Deborah Moore, Dents’ chief executive, said: “We are so pleased that we are able to have the collection here at Dents in Warminster. It is such a great fit with our heritage background and has completely taken over our mezzanine floor upstairs.
“We have an initial two-year contract which will be reviewed but it is working out really well and we have got our Dents Glove Museum here in Warminster as well.”
Over the last few months, the Museum’s curatorial team have undertaken the huge task of packing up the collection and moving the 100,000 objects into a secure storage facility at the site owned by the heritage fashion brand on the outskirts of Warminster.
Founded in 1777, Dents has a long history of supplying luxury gloves for royalty, celebrities and the film industry. This includes the beautifully embroidered leather glove that Queen Elizabeth II wore during her coronation ceremony in 1953.
The company has a long-standing working relationship with the Fashion Museum as both organisations are involved in the management of the Collection of the Worshipful Company of Glovers of London, which has been on loan to the Fashion Museum since the mid-1980s.
The new Fashion Museum will form part of Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Milsom Quarter Masterplan, an ambitious 20-year vision to transform the Milsom Quarter area of Bath into a fashion destination for the South West, attracting creative industries to the area, relocating the Fashion Museum and providing 180 new homes.
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