COSTUMES

The costumes collection has more than 3,000 outfits and accessories with examples from every decade from 1730 to the present day. The displays in the Costume Room are changed every year after careful choice from the Fairlynch costume collection, which is one of the finest in the South West. The oldest costumes in our possession date from as early as 1700, and not only do we have ladies’ dresses, but also military uniforms and children’s clothes, together with the relevant accessories. There are also textiles, including quilts, which were the subject of a popular exhibition in 2018.

read about the fairlynch corset

Annual exhibitions  

​Each year we select exceptional items from our collection to illustrate a theme. In 2022 our display complements the exhibition downstairs marking the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne. In 1953 local communities came together to celebrate the coronation and our exhibition street party showcases the summer fashions of the fifties that women wore.

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past exhibitions

2019 | Rural Life

​In 2019 the theme was Rural Life and our display featured 19th Century agricultural workers’ clothes including a very rare milkmaid’s dress.

2018 | 100 Years of Devon Weddings

The 2018 costume display was 100 Years of Devon Weddings. The rural silk wedding dress was the subject of an important conservation project funded by the Textile Society and undertaken by Morwena Stephens ACR, Conservator of Textiles and Ethnographic Artefacts.

Barege Rural Wedding Dress Report

2018 | patchwork quilts

We were also delighted to showcase a few of our stunning patchwork quilts. Many beautiful and rarely seen items from Fairlynch’s textile collection were put on display for the first time.

2017 | bicentenary of the birth of Admiral Preedy

In 2017 Fairlynch marked the bicentenary of the birth of Admiral Preedy, who retired to Budleigh Salterton after famously commanding the ship that laid the first transatlantic telegraph line. Our Victorian ladies are pictured receiving a telegram.

2017 | 1967 swinging sixties

We also celebrated our own anniversary that year. It was 50 years since Fairlynch Arts Centre and Museum opened its doors in 1967 and our second costume exhibition of the year had fun with a swinging sixties theme.

2016 | Worlds Apart: A Play in Three Acts for Women

The Fairlynch costume exhibition space has a backdrop painted by the local well-known artist Joyce Dennys, who also loved writing and acting for the amateur theatre. In 2016 our display was based on a scene from one of her plays: Worlds Apart: A Play in Three Acts for Women. It was set in the 1850s and one of the parts was written specially for our co-founder Miss Joy Gawne.

2015 | Bright Young Things

The 1930s saw the rise of the small dress shop, and this was reflected in our 2015 display. Such shops flourished in towns that had no large department stores. Fashion changed slightly from the 1920s: waists were back, details such as buttons were more prominent and hair was longer.

2014 | Bright Young Things

The 2015 exhibition had followed on from our display in 2014, which had featured clothes from the period after the Great War, when Bright Young Things and ‘flappers’ set the fashions.