Walsall Museum Service's nationally significant [1] Hodson Shop Collection comprises the unsold shop stock of a general drapers' shop in the small town of Willenhall in the West Midlands of England. It contains everyday clothing from the mid-twentieth century aimed at ordinary working-class and lower middle-class women and their children. These are garments and accessories that rarely find their way into museum collections, [2] making this an unusual and interesting resource for the study of everyday clothing.
In 1920 Edith Hodson established a small shop in the front room of her family home at 54 New Road, Willenhall. Catering for a local clientele, the shop sold women's and children's clothing, haberdashery and household goods. Edith was joined at the shop by her sister, Flora, in 1927, but business declined in the late 1950s. Edith died in 1966 and Flora, finding it difficult to manage alone, shut up shop in 1971. Rather than getting rid of the stock, she simply closed the door. After her death in 1983 the collection was discovered and transferred into the ownership of Walsall Museum. In 2003, the Black Country Living Museum took over the running of the premises, turning 54 New Road into a museum known as the Locksmith's House.
The collection contains around 3,000 items dating from the 1920s to the 1960s; including outerwear garments and underwear for women and children, plus accessories, dress patterns, magazines, haberdashery, cosmetics and domestic items. There is a small collection of clothing and accessories for men. The clothing is almost entirely machine-sewn, generally inexpensively made, and was purchased from a range of ready-to-wear manufacturers particularly in Birmingham and Leicester.
The introduction of man-made fabrics facilitated the development of cheap mass-produced clothing from the 1920s onwards, making fashion and a choice of clothing affordable to many women for the first time. There are a large number of artificial silk and rayon garments that date from the 1920s in the Hodson Shop Collection, with nylon, Orlon, Courtelle, Tricel and terylene being used from the 1950s.
The archival material relating to the running of the shop includes order books, invoices, a credit or 'club' book, trade catalogues and advertising material. Many of the garments still have their original price tags attached, giving an insight into the purchasing power of consumers at the lower end of the market and the compromises made by working-class people between quality and affordability.
The Utility Scheme was introduced in the United Kingdom during World War II as a response to the growing shortage of materials in the country. Designers were challenged to create styles using the minimum amounts of fabric, and trimmings were restricted. The general clothing collection of Walsall Museum Service includes a large selection of Utility garments, with 278 items in the Hodson Shop Collection alone.
The kimono is a traditional Japanese garment and the national dress of Japan. The kimono is a wrapped-front garment with square sleeves and a rectangular body, and is worn left side wrapped over right, unless the wearer is deceased. The kimono is traditionally worn with a broad sash, called an obi, and is commonly worn with accessories such as zōri sandals and tabi socks.
Clothing is any item worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural products found in the environment, put together. The wearing of clothing is mostly restricted to human beings and is a feature of all human societies. The amount and type of clothing worn depends on gender, body type, social factors, and geographic considerations. Garments cover the body, footwear covers the feet, gloves cover the hands, while hats and headgear cover the head, and underwear covers the private parts.
An apron is a garment that is worn over other clothing to cover the front of the body. They may have several purposes, typically as a functional accessory that protects clothes and skin from stains and marks. However, other types of aprons may be worn as a decoration, for hygienic reasons, as part of a uniform, or as protection from certain dangers such as acid, allergens or excessive heat. It can also be used at work stations to hold extra tools and pieces or protect from dust and unwanted materials.
Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a sewing needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era. Before the invention of spinning yarn or weaving fabric, archaeologists believe Stone Age people across Europe and Asia sewed fur and leather clothing using bone, antler or ivory sewing-needles and "thread" made of various animal body parts including sinew, catgut, and veins.
There are typically two types of clothing worn in Japan: traditional clothing known as Japanese clothing, including the national dress of Japan, the kimono, and Western clothing, which encompasses all else not recognised as either national dress or the dress of another country.
In sewing and haberdashery, notions are small objects or accessories, including items that are sewn or otherwise attached to a finished article, such as buttons, snaps, and collar stays. Notions also include the small tools used in sewing, such as needles, thread, pins, marking pens, elastic, and seam rippers. The noun is almost always used in the plural. The term is chiefly in American English. It was also formerly used in the phrase "Yankee notions", meaning American products. A fabric store will have a section or department devoted to notions, and a spool of thread is considered a notion.
Huipil is the most common traditional garment worn by indigenous women from central Mexico to Central America.
A romper suit, usually shortened to romper, is a one-piece or two-piece combination of shorts and a shirt. It is also known as a playsuit. Its generally short sleeves and legs contrast with the long ones of the adult jumpsuit.
Western fashion in the 1920s underwent a modernization. Women's fashion continued to evolve from the restrictions of gender roles and traditional styles of the Victorian era. Women wore looser clothing which revealed more of the arms and legs, that had begun at least a decade prior with the rising of hemlines to the ankle and the movement from the S-bend corset to the columnar silhouette of the 1910s. Men also began to wear less formal daily attire and athletic clothing or 'Sportswear' became a part of mainstream fashion for the first time.
Clothkits is an English clothing and craft company, based in Chichester, West Sussex who sell kit clothing, dressmaking kits, haberdashery, sewing machines and all manner of other sewing supplies. In addition to this bricks and mortar retail outlet, the company have a large online business, and teach dressmaking classes from their contemporary sewing studio.
Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends, and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. He or she can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."
Sportswear is an American fashion term originally used to describe separates, but which since the 1930s has come to be applied to day and evening fashions of varying degrees of formality that demonstrate a specific relaxed approach to their design, while remaining appropriate for a wide range of social occasions. The term is not necessarily synonymous with activewear, clothing designed specifically for participants in sporting pursuits. Although sports clothing was available from European haute couture houses and "sporty" garments were increasingly worn as everyday or informal wear, the early American sportswear designers were associated with ready-to-wear manufacturers. While most fashions in America in the early 20th century were directly copied from, or influenced heavily by Paris, American sportswear became a home-grown exception to this rule, and could be described as the American Look. Sportswear was designed to be easy to look after, with accessible fastenings that enabled a modern emancipated woman to dress herself without a maid's assistance.
The Medieval period in England is usually classified as the time between the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance, roughly the years AD 410–1485. For various peoples living in England, the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Danes, Normans and Britons, clothing in the medieval era differed widely for men and women as well as for different classes in the social hierarchy. The general styles of Early medieval European dress were shared in England. In the later part of the period, men's clothing changed much more rapidly than women's styles. Clothes were very expensive and both the men and women of lower social classes continued also divided social classes by regulating the colors and styles these various ranks were permitted to wear. In the early Middle Ages, clothing was typically simple and, particularly in the case of lower-class peoples, served only basic utilitarian functions such as modesty and protection from the elements. As time went on the advent of more advanced textile techniques and increased international relations, clothing gradually got more and more intricate and elegant, even with those under the wealthy classes, up into the renaissance.
Walsall Museum was a small, local history museum located in the centre of Walsall in the West Midlands. The holdings of Walsall Museum ranged from seventeenth-century firemarks to twenty-first century posters. There was also a large collection of costume and textiles; notably The Hodson Shop Collection, a unique collection of unsold shop stock of working-class clothing dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. The museum closed permanently in March 2015. The collections were placed in secure storage and remain under the care of Walsall Council's Museum Service.
Paper clothing is garments and accessories made from paper or paper substitutes.
The Locksmith's House is a museum in Willenhall, England. The premises, on New Road, consist of a house and backyard workshops, typical of the many family run lock making businesses which once thrived in the town.
The Utility Clothing Scheme was a programme introduced in the United Kingdom during the Second World War. In response to the shortage of clothing materials and labour due to wartime austerity, the Government's Board of Trade put the Utility Clothing Scheme in place in order to standardise the production, sale, and purchase of clothing in wartime. The Scheme embodied a variety of measures to ensure the availability of fabric, clothing, and shoes, which were proposed to ensure availability, no matter of the consumer’s socioeconomic circumstances.
Oversized fashion, distinct from plus-sized fashion, consists of clothing and other accessories that are larger than normal and reflect some sort of attitude, message, or trend of the period at hand. While oversized fashion trends from the 1920s to the turn of the century vary from decade to decade, there are many overarching themes that have been expressed during the past one hundred or so years. Masculinity, for example, has played a large role in many of the underlying communications of the fashions, although virility is manifested differently in the clothing depending on the era. Oversized fashion production, furthermore, runs largely parallel with the states of the American and global economies. Modernly, oversized fashion has taken on a new form - primarily in the realm of oversized accessories.
Traditional clothing is one of the factors that has differentiated this nation from neighboring countries, dating back as far as the Illyrian era.
The Khalili Collection of Kimono is a private collection of more than 450 Japanese kimono assembled by the British-Iranian scholar, collector and philanthropist Nasser D. Khalili. It is one of eight collections assembled, published and exhibited by Khalili, each of which is considered to be among the most important collections within their respective fields.