The Clothes We Wore – Exhibition in Harrogate

Did your fashionable youth see you wearing the psychedelic prints of the swinging sixties or perhaps the power dressing shoulder pads of the 1980s?

The Royal Pump Room Museum’s new fashion retrospective ‘The Clothes We Wore’ is set to give budding designers, fashionistas and anyone else with an interest in clothes the opportunity to take a peek inside the wardrobes of Harrogate’s stylish residents from the 1950s to the 1990s to see what they were wearing.

The exhibition will provide the opportunity to reminisce about your own fashionable past and explore the dramatic changes in fashion that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century. The tour through the fashion archives will take us from the elegant dresses with their narrow waists and kick-pleated skirts of the 1950s, to the synthetic fabrics of the 1960s, the platform shoes and maxi dresses of the 1970s, the shoulder pads of the 1980s, and perhaps less flattering, the bright baggy jumpers of the 1990s. ‘The Clothes We Wore’ provides the opportunity to see the styles which withstood the test of time to those which were quickly forgotten.

The Royal Pump Room Museum’s ‘The Clothes We Wore’ exhibition runs from Saturday 17 January until Monday 13 April, 2015.

If reminiscing in this exhibition brings back memories and you have a story to tell about your life in Harrogate from 1945 to the present day we would be keen to speak to you. The Royal Pump Room Museum will be holding an exciting new community exhibition ‘Harrogate Stories’ from April 2015 which will feature stories from the people who have visited, lived and worked in the town over the last 70 years. It would be great to be able to include your stories!

If you have a story to tell and any objects or images you would like to show then please contact Nicola Baxter or Sheila Asante by emailing museums@harrogate.gov.uk or calling 01423 556188.

A drop-in event will also be held at the Mercer Art Gallery on Sunday 15 February from 1pm to 4pm for anyone interested in contributing to the exhibition.