The School of Historical Dress: Tour 2

The School of Historical Dress was founded in 2009 to promote the study of dress using primary sources, in particular surviving clothing and textiles. It houses the Janet Arnold Archive, and the fifth volume in her Patterns of Fashion series on bodies, stays, hoops and rumps, c.1600–1795, is presently in preparation. The Hopkins Collection of garments and textiles brings further riches; four nineteenth-century corsets from this collection have been loaned to the V&A for the current ‘Undressed’ exhibition. 

Members are invited for a tour of this fascinating school, with an opportunity to see a selection of Janet Arnold drawings, items from the collections and examples of reconstructions in the school’s new home, originally built in 1841 as the Royal South London Dispensary for the Working Poor and situated directly opposite the Imperial War Museum.