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Description

The Museum of Costume focuses on fashionable dress for men, women and children from the late 16th century to the present day and has more than 30,000 objects in its collection.

Within the collection there are a number of individual collections of clothes and fashion accessories, such as the Dress of the Year collection and an important loan collection of decorative gloves belonging to the Worshipful Company of Glovers of London.

The Museum has been designated by MLA (the Council for Museums, Libraries and Archives) as an outstanding collection of national pre-eminence.

We display about only part of the collection at a time. The displays are changed regularly. Everything in the collection can be viewed - just contact us to book a study table.

The Museum of Costume was opened in the Bath Assembly Rooms in 1963. It was the creation of Doris Langley Moore, a designer, collector and historian, who gave her famous private collection of costume to the city.

Bath's magnificent 18th century Assembly Rooms were opened in 1771. Known as the New or Upper Rooms (to distinguish them from the older Assembly Rooms in the lower part of the town) they were designed by John Wood the Younger, the leading architect in the West Country.

This fine set of public rooms was purpose-built for an 18th century form of entertainment called an "assembly". A large number of guests met together to dance, drink tea, play cards and listen to music - or just walk about, talk and flirt.

There are four rooms: the Ballroom; the Tea or Concert Room; the Octagon Room (linking all the rooms), and a Card Room.