Information on Loughborough

New exhibition launches from close-knit partnership

Posted on 02/11/2009

Leicestershire Councty Council Community Services

2 November 2009

New exhibition launches from close-knit partnership

On Wednesday 18th November Snibston Discovery Museum will launch a new exhibition entitled ‘In Sheep’s Clothing’ which will showcase the creative talents of second year students from Nottingham Trent University’s Fashion Design course.

The students’ work has been created as part of a project which brought together the Fashion Collections at Snibston, The Woolmark Company, fashion retailer NEXT and two Savile Row Tailors.

Part of a second-year fashion design module, entitled Commerce and Innovation, the project encouraged students to create innovative designs in wool for a modern customer. The added challenge was to use the Museum’s historic fashion collections as the inspiration for the new designs.

Almost one hundred students took part in the competition before fifty were short-listed to create their designs in top quality wool fabrics, provided by some of the World’s greatest weavers.

From these fifty finalists, thirty outfits have been selected to be displayed in the exhibition within the Changing Room at Snibston’s award-winning Fashion Gallery.

The final competition winners were announced in July and the winning students spent a week at Gieves and Hawkes and Henry Poole, two of the most famous tailors from the prestigious Savile Row in London.

Students from the University’s School of Business Fashion Marketing course were able to join the competition in developing a brand for the project, and an identity for the actual exhibition. The winner of this part of the competition spent a week at the London Press Office of high street giant NEXT.

Ernie White, Leicestershire County Council Cabinet Member for Museums said: “This exhibition reflects the range and scale of partnerships that Snibston has developed with businesses and universities during the last 17 years. The project has involved working closely with a global business, a national high street company and a major regional university. Our shared mission is to create the designers and business people of the future, and to encourage them to use our historic collections as the basis for inspiration, creativity and innovation.”

The winners of the competition were

  • zabela Targosz (Womenswear)
  • Jacques Turner (Menswear)
  • Georgina Cashman (Marketing)

The exhibition will run from Thursday 19th November until May 2010. Entry to the museum is £6.75 for adults, £4.50 for children and under 5s go free. Entry to the Fashion Gallery is free on Wednesday afternoons.

The Fashion Gallery is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

**Ends**

Snibston is set on the site of a former colliery and consists of a multi-award-winning interactive museum, colliery buildings of national significance, the Century Theatre, a country park and nature reserve.

The museum displays a rich and diverse collection of objects, telling the story of technology and design and how it has affected everyday life from the past to the present and into the future.

The Fashion Gallery, situated in the museum, is the largest display of historic and contemporary fashion outside London. It features over 150 fully-accessorised mannequins and explores the changing story of fashion from the 1750s to the present day.

For more details please contact Sarah Oakden-Nancarrow on 01530 278444 or see www.snibston.com