Artandtrashion: 20th Century Chic, 100 years of Women's fashion.

20^th Century Chic, 100 years of Women’s fashion.

Sudley House, Liverpool.

The exhibition at Sudley House is housed in one small room in which chronologically from 1900 to 2000 an example of clothing from that time period is dressed on a mannequin. It has a rather last lustre effect of stimulating the expressions or freedoms that each garment would have produced and reacted in the wearer of the time. The aim of the exhibition is to demonstrate how the twentieth century saw more changes in women’s lives than at any other past and their clothes reflected this. I can see how the fashions change by the garments such as rising and lowing of hem but I don’t feel that enough context was given to the period, only a small label was in front of garment in which stated date and summary of the outfit such as ‘The Belle Epoque -1900-10’ or ‘Anything goes -1920-30.’

I would have liked to see the garments placed around Sudley house in rooms and situations which would have suited their wear, such as ‘Make do and mend -1940-50’ in the greenhouse or ‘Putting on the Ritz -1930-40’ at the bottom of the spiralling staircase of the house, it would have added more style and substance to the exhibition in seeing garments alive and in use.