Fashion Museum doll returns
Fresh from her triumphant second debut, this time at the
Victoria and Albert’s Museum Couture exhibition, miniature
mannequin Miss Virginia Lachasse will be back in Bath and on
display at Bath & North East Somerset’s Fashion Museum
from Saturday 16 February to Friday 4 April 2008.
Update: this display has been extended to 1 June
2008.
Miss Virginia Lachasse is a miniature wax mannequin – complete
with a couture wardrobe – and was produced by the House of Lachasse
in 1954. She first went on tour, to great acclaim, around towns and
cities in Britain in the 1950s to raise money for the Greater
London Fund for the Blind. She then disappeared from the
public eye, and ‘rested’ until the House of Lachasse closed down in
2006 when Peter Lewis Crown, the owner of Lachasse, donated her and
her entire wardrobe to the Fashion Museum.
In a collaborative partnership between the museums, Miss
Lachasse was carefully conserved, photographed and researched by
staff at the Victoria and Albert Museum and then formed one of the
highlights of the recent Couture exhibition, which finished a
couple of weeks ago in early January 2008.
Miss Virginia Lachasee and a selection of clothes from her
wardrobe, including a tiny pair of stockings by Wolsey, a dressing
case complete with Yardley cosmetics, and a packet of coloured
cocktail cigarettes, will be on display at the Council-run Fashion
Museum in Bath from 16 February to 4 April 2008. She then goes off
on her international travels as part of the V&A’s Couture
exhibition tour, finally returning to Bath in 2009.
For more information about the Fashion Museum, log onto
http://www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/
or ring 01225 477173.
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
Attached picture: Miss Virginia Lachasse, fashion doll and
wardrobe, London 1954. Fashion Museum, Bath. Photo © Victoria
and Albert Museum.
For images contact: Maggie Bone, Museums Publicity Officer, Bath
& North East Somerset Council, on 01225 477736, or e-mail
maggie_bone@bathnes.gov.uk
For comment:
Rosemary Harden, Manager, Fashion Museum, on 01225 477282 or email
rosemary_harden@bathnes.gov.uk
Fashion Museum
• The Fashion Museum was formerly known as the Museum of Costume,
it is owned and operated by Bath & North East Somerset Council.
A major redisplay and relaunch of the Museum began in January 2007
and was completed in July 2007.
• The Museum has an outstanding collection of more than 60,000
objects of fashionable dress- including dresses, shirts, skirts,
jumpers, and even underwear and nightgowns, plus shoes and
accessories from the late sixteenth century to the present day. The
Collection also includes works on paper (for example, fashion
drawings, photographs and dressmaking patterns) that relate to the
history of fashion.
• It is one of the largest and finest collections of original
fashionable dress in the world, and in 1999 it was awarded
Designated status by the UK government as a non-national museum
that holds a pre-eminent collection.