Fancy Pants Set Up Week: Behind The Scenes

It's been a week since Fancy Pants: A Celebration of Style 1920 - 1945, out vintage fashion exhibition in Worcester, opened at the City Museum and Art Gallery! Have you visited yet?!

Here's a few photos of behind the scenes when were setting up the exhibition.

Here Clare is laying out the fabric in the lovely big display case. We used the same fabric that we'd used to cover the top of every mannequin, to create a uniformity:

The idea for the case was for it to represent a shop window display, as the celebration theme is for that era is a VE Day street party, so it continues the street theme. The 1940s room contains more creative, informal display arrangements, this is due in part to it housing the children's activity table. The table is in front of a large, original photo of a VE Day street party so it becomes an extension of the street party celebration theme of the room.

Here we have the table and photograph installed:

Here's Clare making a final adjustment to a fantastic 'make do and mend' suit. It's an original, wartime lady's suit that has been fashioned out of a man's suit. We had to pad out a smaller mannequin with wadding and tissue to ensure the suit hung correctly:

The handmade bunting goes up to put the finishing touches on the street party theme:

A small selection of colourful patterned 1940s clothing hang from our washing line, to further allude to the 'street' element of the street party celebration theme. Here it is partially installed. Ron made us a fantastically authentic washing line!

The main room that houses the 1920s and 30s costume has a much more formal layout. This is a photo of when we were working out what to put where, before the barriers go up. The layout was informed in part by the colour of each dress and how the colours and the numbers of mannequins balanced and worked as groupings.

We also wanted to make sure that dresses with any interesting rear, side or sleeve detailing, were completely viewable. There's nothing more frustrating in fashion exhibitions when you know there's some interesting detailing round the back but it's completely hidden!

When it came to the final layout, two dresses from our original selection were dropped from the 1920s section. This child's embroidered 1920s dress is lovely but it didn't look it's best on the mannequin. It didn't quite hang right and it needed a full slip underneath to make it look its best. By removing it altogether we also had a better balance of mannequins for display:

This 1920s silk dress also didn't make the final cut. The pale off-white fabric didn't look great against the bright white walls, especially next to much more detailed dresses containing some similar colours and it didn't hang well either. Although the long, pointy collars are a great feature of 1920s and early 1930s clothing, it was one of those rare occasions when an item of clothing looked disappointingly lacklustre when put on a mannequin! 

We also had the issue of balancing the number of mannequins, and felt this was another that was best left out, rather than squeezed in for the sake of it.

One of the last jobs on the final day of setting up was making up some frames of interesting ephemera from the 1940s. Here's Clare picking some pictures and articles from original magazines:

We also filled three frames of original photos from the 1920s to the 40s, as well as original greetings cards that worked perfectly with the celebration theme. Here's Jo putting the finishing touches to the 1930s frame with a hand coloured photo of her Great Aunt Gwen as the centre piece:

When everything was in place, there was just time to make a few final adjustments just before the opening night got underway. We went round the exhibition making sure everything was hanging correctly.

It's a really funny feeling touching the exhibits once the barriers we're up, it still felt naughty even as the curators!!