You’ve got a few more years to wait to get up close to Bath’s new Fashion Museum venue, but that doesn’t mean you can’t access pieces from the amazing collection.
Fashion Museum Bath has just unveiled Explore the Collection: a prototype of a new online catalogue that offers digital access to one of the UK’s most important contemporary fashion collections.
You can view the prototype online catalogue here: https://www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/explore-collection
Through Explore the Collection, users can delve into stories about more than 500 pieces from the Museum’s renowned Dress of the Year collection – with work from leading designers such as Mary Quant, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and more.
As this first phase is a working prototype, user feedback is being welcomed to guide the next stages of content, storytelling and site development.
The launch is a major milestone in Bath and North East Somerset Council’s journey towards creating a new Fashion Museum in the heart of Bath, opening in 2030. This marks the first digital step in making this internationally significant collection accessible to audiences everywhere, in advance of the Museum’s transformation.
The project has been made possible through public funding by Arts Council England, through its Unlocking Collections programme, supported by National Lottery Project Grants, which supports museums to develop collections‑focused work and increase public engagement.
Opening up a defining collection
Explore the Collection brings every Dress of the Year object together online for the first time, enriched with new photography, expanded object information and fresh curatorial research.
Established in 1963, the Dress of the Year programme invites a leading fashion expert to select a look—or several looks—that capture the mood, innovation and direction of contemporary fashion. Over six decades, the collection has featured iconic designs by Ossie Clark, Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, Kenzo Takada, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Bianca Saunders, among many others.
Co‑designed with young people
The prototype website has been shaped directly with its future users. At the start of 2025, the Museum worked closely with groups of 16–24‑year‑olds, hosting hands‑on workshops at Bath & North East Somerset Libraries, facilitated by a digital engagement specialist. Participants tested layouts, proposed categories, assessed fashion media, and explored real‑world usability challenges.
Their ideas informed everything from the site’s visual design and navigation to the way objects are grouped and filtered, and the content and images found on the site – ensuring that the platform feels relevant, intuitive and inspiring to the next generation of fashion enthusiasts.
Design innovation and new digital approaches
Explore the Collection was then developed through a series of fast‑paced design sprints, each focusing on a core aspect of the digital experience: the search function, image presentation, object record pages and the exploratory use of AI tools to enhance collections data. Each sprint concluded with user‑testing sessions, allowing the team to refine the platform iteratively.
Behind the scenes, the Museum team has been strengthening catalogue data, updating object descriptions and commissioning new high‑quality photography. The Museum also collaborated with digital textiles specialist and MyWorld Fellow, Gabrielle Shiner‑Hill to create 3D scans of selected Dress of the Year looks, opening up new ways to explore fashion virtually.
A foundation for the future Fashion Museum Bath
The launch of this prototype marks the first milestone in a wider digital programme that will run alongside preparations for the Museum’s new home. As Fashion Museum Bath develops its vision to be a world‑class centre of fashion, creativity and learning, expanding digital access is key to connecting audiences with the collection now and long into the future.
Users of the online catalogue are warmly invited to explore the prototype and share their feedback, which will directly inform the next phases of development and help shape the Museum’s long-term digital strategy.
About Fashion Museum Bath
Fashion Museum Bath will bring fashion to life for local and global audiences. It will be located in the Grade II listed Old Post Office in the centre of the UNESCO World Heritage city of Bath. The Museum will champion fashion’s transformative power as a global industry and expression of creativity, culture and identity.
Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. Fashion Museum Bath is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to the money raised by National Lottery players, development funding will support the progress of designs for the new museum, and an extensive community consultation, engagement and outreach activities programme with a range of audiences and local partners.
Saving world-class heritage, Fashion Museum Bath will be a catalyst for change, revitalising its Designated Collection in a new museum that will be an exemplar of environmentally sustainable retrofit in a listed building. The museum will inspire and challenge through fashion, exploring it as an art form and global industry, whilst celebrating the creativity of designers, makers, and wearers, and providing learning, skills, digital and wellbeing programmes.
Fashion Museum Bath will appeal to tourists and locals alike, driving socio-economic change and placemaking and supporting and facilitating the creative industries through championing craft, skills, learning & future talent, and creating pathways to jobs and opportunities. It will be a place of community and opportunity for fashion lovers, culture seekers, local audiences, the fashion industry and next generations. Additionally, it will support communities across the region with a range of programmes addressing barriers to access for people who are generally underserved by heritage. It will be a welcoming and accessible space for all.
The new museum will:
- Provide flexible exhibition spaces to display more of the internationally renowned Fashion Museum Bath Collection than ever before.
- Showcase a changing programme of exhibitions from our own Collection and other major museums.
- Reveal dedicated and accessible spaces for innovative learning and engagement, including lectures, workshops, events, school visits, and residencies.
- Offer café and retail areas.
- Offer commercial venue hire opportunities outside of core public hours.
- Support the creative industries by offering career pathways, talent development pipelines, and partnerships.
- Be an exciting and accessible welcoming space for all – the ‘Museum on the High Street’ is relevant for all ages and reduces barriers for those who have not engaged with heritage before.
- Establish a landmark cultural asset, free to local residents and uniting local, national and international communities through creative activities linked to fashion.
Fashion Museum Bath Collection: Fashion Museum Bath holds one of the world’s leading collections of fashion, spanning 400 years of human creativity, from 1600 to the present day. Founded in 1963 as the Museum of Costume, the original collection was gifted to the city of Bath by collector, writer, and dress historian Doris Langley Moore in 1959. Designated as a collection of outstanding national significance, it has since grown to 100,000 items, with strengths in European, especially British, fashionable dress and accessories. It also encompasses sketches, fashion magazines, fashion photography and designers’ archives.
The Collection includes many of the best examples of fashionable dress in worldwide collections. It is the variety and extent of the collection, accessible in a single museum, that sets it out as rare and unusual on an international scale.
The Old Post Office: The Old Post Office is one of only a few listed 20th-century buildings in the centre of Bath. The project will bring back to life this key heritage and civic building that has fallen into disrepair and will be designed as an exemplar of environmentally sustainable retrofit. The Old Post Office offers up to 3500sqm of space for the Museum, a transformational change in scale to showcase more of the Collection.
Timings: It is anticipated that construction will start on site in 2027 and that the new museum will open in Autumn 2030.
Milsom Quarter Masterplan: The museum is a key part of Bath and North East Somerset Council’s regeneration plan to reimagine central Bath to create a destination for fashion and culture. The Fashion Museum Bath will be an anchor element of the Milsom Quarter Masterplan to make the area a great place to live, work and socialise.
For more information on the Milsom Quarter Masterplan, and the other projects underway, see our video and website.
Support
The Fashion Museum has embarked on its largest ever philanthropic appeal to transform the Old Post Office into a ground-breaking new museum that brings fashion to life for local and global audiences.
We are very grateful to the funders who have embarked on this journey with us. To date, this includes a founding grant from the West of England Combined Authority and generous development funding* from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to progress plans through the detailed design phase.
Arts Council England** are also supporting our Explore the Collection project in collaboration with Bath & North East Somerset Libraries.
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