[Photo credits: Peter J Stone]
The contents of Bath’s world-famous Fashion Museum may currently be in storage while we await the ‘fashioning’ of a new home for the collection, but that doesn’t stop it from having an online presence.
Today the website is announcing which fashion designers have been chosen for the ‘Dress of the Year’ 2025.
Ever since the museum was started in 1963 – and while it was based in the basement of the Assembly Rooms – a leading figure from the fashion industry has been invited to select the outfit that best captures the ‘mood, spirit and direction of fashion in the previous year.’
Here is today’s announcement:
“Fashion Museum Bath and Bath & North East Somerset Council have revealed the Dress of the Year 2025 selections: a striking acid-yellow dress from Sarah Burton’s debut for Givenchy and a softly tailored three-piece suit from Giorgio Armani’s final collection.
Chosen by The Guardian‘s Associate Editor for Fashion, Jess Cartner-Morley, the two looks capture a significant moment in fashion history. One marks the beginning of a major new creative chapter for a historic couture house; the other celebrates the legacy of one of the most influential designers of the modern era.
The Dress of the Year 2025 can be viewed online at https://www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/dress-year-2025
Every year since Fashion Museum Bath was established in 1963, a leading figure from the fashion industry has been invited to select the outfit that best captures the mood, spirit and direction of fashion in the previous year. The chosen designs are then added to the Museum’s internationally significant collection which Bath & North East Somerset Council cares for on behalf of residents and visitors alike. The collection forms part of the Council’s wider commitment to preserving Bath’s cultural heritage while investing in its future as a world-class cultural destination.
For 2025, Jess Cartner-Morley has selected work by French and Italian design houses.
The womenswear selection is Look 11 from Sarah Burton’s debut Autumn/Winter 2025 ready-to-wear collection for Givenchy, unveiled during Paris Fashion Week in March 2025. The look features an acid-yellow knitted mesh dress worn over lingerie-inspired foundations and styled with sculptural crystal earrings and black patent leather boots.
Burton’s arrival at Givenchy was one of the most anticipated fashion moments in 2025. After a career spent at Alexander McQueen, first working alongside founder Alexander ‘Lee’ McQueen and later leading the house as Creative Director, her appointment signalled an exciting new chapter for both designer and one of fashion’s most historic couture houses.
Drawing on the spirit of Hubert de Givenchy’s iconic couture dresses, Burton reimagined the 1950s silhouette through experimental knit techniques that expose the foundations of the garment and place the female form at its centre. The look reflects the sheer and “naked dressing” trend that dominated catwalks and red carpets throughout 2025, while offering a distinctly modern perspective on femininity from one of the few women leading a major luxury fashion house.
The menswear selection is Look 6 from Giorgio Armani’s Spring/Summer 2026 ready-to-wear collection, presented in Milan in June 2025. The look appeared on the catwalk again in September as part of the womenswear show held at the Pinacoteca di Brera museum. Consisting of a softly tailored navy jacket, waistcoat and trousers worn with a rope belt and suede sandals, the ensemble embodies the relaxed elegance that defined Armani’s career.
The collection holds particular significance as the final body of work personally overseen by Armani before his death in September 2025, during the 50th anniversary year of the brand he founded in 1975.
For five decades, Armani reshaped modern tailoring, replacing rigid structures with fluid silhouettes that redefined ideas of elegance, power and masculinity. The selected look is a fitting reflection of that legacy: understated, effortless and meticulously refined.
Jess Cartner-Morley explained her selections:
“I am proud, honoured and excited to be this year’s selector. Dress of the Year is a fabulous tradition of smart, accessible visual storytelling and I jumped at the opportunity to contribute.
Making my selections has been a highlight of this year – and one of its most high-pressure assignments. How to choose just one or two looks from a year that saw incredible fashion everywhere from Naomi Osaka’s tennis looks to Charli XCX in McQueen at Glastonbury to the world’s catwalks and the Hollywood red carpets?
An obsession with bodily perfection pervades every aspect of contemporary life, from a media landscape that is shifting from words to video, to the mainstreaming of cosmetic surgery, to the ever more central role of sport in popular culture. Givenchy’s daffodil yellow mesh dress, with its focus on the body, speaks to this plotline in an elegant, joyful tone. Sarah Burton is an extraordinary talent and has given so much to British fashion, and I want to celebrate her.
The loss of Giorgio Armani in 2025 was a defining moment for fashion. Armani was one of the great innovators of modern design, with a distinctive relaxed, minimalist style that not only read the zeitgeist, but also helped to shape it. This look, part of the last collection Armani designed, and seen on the catwalk just weeks after his death, has an understated but powerful presence that captures the Armani spirit.”
Elisabeth Murray, Senior Curator at Fashion Museum Bath, said:
“This year’s selection by Jess Cartner-Morley captures two significant and poignant moments in fashion in 2025: the highly anticipated debut collection of Sarah Burton at Givenchy, and the close of an era at Armani following the sad passing of Giorgio Armani. We’re delighted to welcome these looks into the Fashion Museum Bath’s Dress of the Year collection as records of these moments. Since 1963, Dress of the Year has provided a snapshot of the key fashion moments, ideas and conversations of its time, creating a unique record of fashion history as it unfolds.”
As Bath & North East Somerset Council progresses plans for the Fashion Museum’s new home in Bath’s Old Post Office, the Dress of the Year programme continues to ensure the collection remains a living record of contemporary fashion.
Councillor Paul Roper, Cabinet Member for Economic and Cultural Sustainable Development, said:
“The Dress of the Year programme highlights the international reach of the Fashion Museum Bath Collection and its unique role in documenting the story of fashion as it unfolds. Adding these significant designs by Sarah Burton for Givenchy and Giorgio Armani further strengthens a collection of global importance, ensuring that when the new Fashion Museum opens in 2030, visitors will be able to experience contemporary fashion alongside some of the finest historic dress collections in the world.”
The Dress of the Year initiative was established by Fashion Museum Bath founder Doris Langley Moore to create a year-by-year record of contemporary fashion. Today, it is one of the world’s longest-running records of changing tastes, styles and cultural moments, capturing the evolution of fashion from 1963 to the present day.
Among previous selections are designs by Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Donatella Versace, Gareth Pugh, Simone Rocha, Bianca Saunders, Gucci and UNDERCOVER. Over the decades, the Fashion Museum has invited some of fashion’s most influential editors, stylists, designers and commentators to make the annual selection, creating a unique record of fashion history as it happens.
The Dress of the Year 2025 selections will join the Fashion Museum Bath Collection ahead of the museum’s reopening in its new home at Bath’s Old Post Office in 2030. Led by Bath & North East Somerset Council, with funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the West of England Combined Mayoral Authority, and the Clore Duffield Foundation the project will secure the future of the internationally significant collection and create a landmark cultural destination in the heart of the city, connecting new audiences with more than 400 years of fashion history.
The Dress of the Year 2025 can be viewed online at https://www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/dress-year-2025
Stay up to date with the new Fashion Museum by signing up to the newsletter at www.fashionmuseum.co.uk or follow along on Facebook and Instagram.
About Fashion Museum Bath
Funding
The cost of the new Fashion Museum is £39.5 million, with circa 75% already secured through commitments from Bath & Noth East Somerset Council, West of England Combined Mayoral Authority, Clore Duffield Foundation, and The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
In May 2025, Fashion Museum Bath received £768,000 in development funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund* to help advance plans for its transformation. This enabled the museum to develop a full application for a £7.2 million National Lottery grant, which was successfully awarded in July 2026.
Thanks to the money raised by National Lottery players, development funding has supported 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.
The vision for Fashion Museum Bath
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 artform 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 galleries to display more of the internationally renowned Fashion Museum Bath Collection than ever before.
- Showcase a changing programme of exhibitions and displays as well as commissions from creative practitioners.
- 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’ relevant for all ages and reducing 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: Bath & North East Somerset Council is the custodian of the Fashion Museum Collection, caring for and safeguarding this internationally significant collection on behalf of the public. It is 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 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 late 2027, and that the new museum will open in Autumn 2030.
Milsom Quarter Regeneration: The Milsom Quarter Masterplan, aims to reimagine Milsom Quarter as a vibrant destination for fashion, culture, business and living. Wider proposals include increased opportunities for creative workspaces, and enhancements to public realm and streetscapes. These plans support Bath’s ambitions for sustainable, culture‑led regeneration and reinforce the Quarter’s role as a key hub for the city’s economic future.
For more information on the Milsom Quarter Masterplan, see our video and website.
At the heart of the Fashion Museum redevelopment is the creation of a new public square in front of the Old Post Office, the future home of the new Museum, and St Michael’s Church. Currently dominated by vehicle traffic, this area will be redesigned as an attractive, welcoming civic space with improved movement routes for pedestrians and cyclists, space for community events, and new green landscaping.
The public realm improvements will:
- Create a new public square outside St Michael’s Church and the Old Post Office, transforming a car‑dominated area into a welcoming civic space for the city.
- Support the new Fashion Museum Bath by delivering safer, wider pavements and improved public spaces essential for museum access and visitor safety.
- Make streets more welcoming and accessible, with wider pavements, raised crossings, and new cycle parking to improve walking and cycling throughout the Quarter.
- Maintain essential access for buses and Blue Badge holders, while improving disabled parking and loading areas for businesses.
- Add more trees and planting, supporting nature recovery, offering shade, and helping to cool the urban environment.
- Highlight Bath’s historic buildings and public spaces, creating a more attractive environment that celebrates the city’s architectural character.
- Provide flexible outdoor spaces for events, activities and learning, encouraging community use and supporting the cultural life of the Quarter.
For more information on the public realm improvements, see our website.
*About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. That’s why as the largest funder for the UK’s heritage we are dedicated to supporting projects that connect people and communities to heritage, as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.
By 2033 we aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to make a decisive difference for people, places and communities.
Follow @HeritageFundUK on Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLottery #HeritageFund
