The Historical Collection of the National Museum contains a relatively extensive set of textile items, a significant part of which are period clothes. Despite the well-known curators who had formed it, this part of the collection has never been systematically dealt with in terms of fashion or the clothes as such. Within the preparation of the concept of new permanent expositions, a need arose to draw from this collection and to find unique period clothes which would be possible to prepare and present to the public. An extensive selection of items focuses on typical clothes commonly produced during the whole 19th century and the early 20th century. The set of historical clothes from the Historical Collection offers an almost complete selection of such clothes, the majority of which has never been dealt with historically, and some of which have never even been presented to the public. The project will focus only on women’s clothes which reflect changes in the fashion line, materials and technologies, as well as in the time as such, more intensively than men’s clothes. The selected clothes are not merely objects the outer appearance of which will be admired by visitors to the new permanent expositions; they also represent an astonishing source of much more information about period fashion, aesthetics, ideals, technical possibilities, technological procedures and materials, and tell several stories at once (of the maker of every piece and its owner/bearer) and also a story of the clothes themselves, i.e. what occasion they served for and what they could witness. All of this may be found out through a sensitive and thorough textile-technological and cultural-historical research of every single piece of the selected set. Results obtained in this way will provide much missing information which will be utilised for the presentation of period fashion, aesthetics and also technical and technological skills in making common custom-tailored clothes in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Clothes, as objects of daily use, used for various occasions (ordinary as well as festive), document the social status of both their bearers and makers, thus, illustrating the time of their creation, often in an unexpected way.


Project name: Complex survey of a selected collection of complete women’s clothes intended for permanent exhibitions in the National Museum
Duration: 2017–2018
Agency: National Museum
Project type: Internal grant
NM’s investigator: Bc. Veronika Šulcová, DiS.


Anticipated results/outputs:
The results of the internal project will be published in the form of expert publications and lectures given at conferences focused on the history of clothing and textile in our country (Textile in the Museum, the History of Clothing course, conferences of the National Heritage Institute, etc.) or even abroad (depending on the current circumstances).

Šulcová Veronika, Bc., DiS.

Restaurátorka textilu (na rodičovské dovolené)
E-mail: veronika.sulcova@nm.cz
Phone: 416 782 825