Support Us Donation To Support Our Work We love sharing and celebrating fashion history with you, but we are only a small museum, staffed mostly by volunteers. We work hard to keep our prices low, but if you can give more please consider a monetary donation. Your donation would go towards a range of vital costs we have to keep the museum running, from heating and dehumidifying our rooms so we can provide the correct environment for our historic textiles, to emergency repair works (this year we have had to contend with a leaking roof, a broken dishwasher in our tearoom and issues with our boiler). It could also help us to afford to keep running events by contributing to the payment of equipment, guests and staff as well as subsiding the prices for our family focused workshops. We are a charity, as well as one of the only fashion focused museums in the UK. If you can, please consider donating today. Thank you. If you would like to make a monetary donation please follow this link: https://fashion-museum-blandford.arttickets.org.uk/donate Charity Number (Cavalcade of Costume Ltd): 1052471 Contact us at fashionmuseumblandford@kgodman Our donations page is hosted by the Art Fund SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER Enter your email here...* Yes, subscribe me to your newsletter. * Subscribe

Accessibility Free entry for one carer / companion accompanying a disabled visitor Access to the Tearoom and Shop via ramp Accessible toilet Restricted wheelchair access to the ground floor Illuminated magnifying glasses available from the ticket desk Hearing induction loop available in the Lecture Room for use during talks and lectures We are currently researching funding to make Blandford Fashion Museum more accessible.

Privacy Policy Effective Date 17/11/2018 This Privacy Policy applies to the Blandford Fashion Museum website www.blandfordfashionmuseum.co.uk and operated websites and its subdomains. This Privacy Policy explains what information of yours will be collected by the museum when you access the website and how the information will be used, and how you can control the collection, correction and/or deletion of information. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information we collect by other means (including offline) or from other sources. The use of information collected through our websites shall be limited to the purposes under this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service to customers. This website may log some information about website users (such as IP addresses). This information is anonymous and is held purely for system administration purposes. We may collect personally identifiable information about you, such as your full name, phone number and email address. Personal information will be stored on a secure server and will be processed by the site’s webmaster as the data controller. This data will be held and processed under the terms of the Data Protection Act 2018. Such information may be shared across the museum for the purpose of providing services to you. We will not give information about you to anyone else, or use information about you for other purposes, unless your consent has been given or the law allows this. The use of your personal information is also covered by our registration under the Data Protection Act 2018. You can, under this legislation, request a copy of the information we hold about you. If any information we hold about you is incorrect please let us know. 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'The Textile Collection of Elisabeth Frink' February 2024-November 2026 February 2024-November 2026 Dame Elisabeth Frink RA (1930-1993) Dame Elisabeth Frink was greatly affected by her up bringing during the Second World War and the military family she came from. Her work examines the strength and vulnerability of the male form. She was fascinated by birds and often depicted them. Using wire frames, Frink would build up her sculptures with plaster before casting them in bronze. In her lifetime she created 403 sculptures. As well as sculptures Frink drew, painted and designed in other mediums. Her art career started at Guildford Art School before she went on to Chelsea School of Art. Upon graduating in 1952, her first exhibition was entitled 'Humans and Other Animals'. Through the 1950s and 1960s, she taught at the Chelsea School of Art and St Martin's School of Art in London, alongside her blossoming art career. Whilst living and working in France in the late 1960s that she first started to experiment with her so-called 'Goggle Head' statues, partly inspired by the glasses worn by General Oufkir and to examine oppressive regimes. Upon returning to the UK, she moved to Dorset in 1976 and the following year she was elected as a Royal Academician. In 1982 she was awarded a DBE and continued to exhibit her work and take on large scale sculpture commissions including The Walking Madonna in 1981 which stands outside Salsbury Cathedral. Her final work, The Welcoming Christ, for Liverpool Cathedral was unveiled a few days before her death from cancer in 1993. Many of her sculptures are on display in museums, galleries, towns, cities and religious buildings across Britain and the world. Photographs and ephemera are available to study at Dorset History Centre. The Museum of Dorset holds the Elisabeth Frink collection. The textiles on display are from the Frink Archive at The Blandford Fashion Museum, provided to The Blandford Fashion Museum in accordance with the wishes of the artist's late son, Lin Jammet. Previous Next

'Laura Ashley : From Kitchen to Catwalk' Extended until Summer 2026 In 1953, inspired by a Women's Institute exhibition at the V and A Museum, Laura and Bernard Ashley started printing fabrics in their kitchen. They soon started selling tea towels, and in 1955 opened a showroom in Old Burlington Street in London. Gardening aprons and smocks marked a move towards garments. In 1959, Laura Ashley started to use flower motifs, something the company would become well known for. Once the Ashley family relocated to Mid Wales and opened a shop in Machylleth, Laura Ashley began to experiment with historical styles. After initially having a small factory in Kent, an old social club in Carno provided a new location for the Welsh factory. Five years later, the company was so successful they moved to disused railway station to build a new factory. Through the 1960s and 1970s, there was a boom in small British led boutiques that would shape the British high street for the next few decades. Along with other British female designers, such as Mary Quant and Barbara Hulanicki (Biba), Laura Ashley became a household name and her dresses, especially her floral, prairie-style, maxi dresses became highly desirable and synonymous with the era. Throughout the 1970s, the Laura Ashley brand achieved international recognition and in 1980 they launched their homewares catalogue. Laura Ashley passed away in 1985 and the company was floated on the stock market. By the 2000s, the brand had started to fall out of favour and focused back on homewares. The late 2010s and early 2020s started to see a revival for the brand as original pieces appeared in vintage shops but the company went into administration Previous Next

Become a Member For information about becoming a Member of the Museum, which includes free access and discounts to our events, please email fashionmuseumblandford@gmail.com

Donations /Acquisitions Due to storage issues, we have to be very strict on accepting donations and making acquisitions. If you would like to donate items to the Blandford Fashion Museum please email photographs and any relevant information to collections@blandfordfashionmuseum.co.uk The donations will then be considered by our display team, before going through the acquisition panel, where the collections' manager and a group of trustees will decide if we accept the item. This process can take a few months. We are lucky that we receive a lot of offers of donations, but to process them takes time. If your item is accepted, we will arrange the relevant paperwork and set a date to deposit the item.Please note, as we are a fashion museum we only take items relating to costume and fashionable dress. We do not currently accept other textiles (such as quilts, tapestries etc) or social history items (such as dolls). We currently do not have the budget to purchase any items for the collection. Items accepted may be taken into our main collection, our education collection or be used for set dressing, but we will discuss these options with you more thoroughly depending on what we think is best for the item. Please do not deposit or post any donations to the museum without prior confirmation that we will accept the item. Doing this may result in disposal. Thank you for considering donating to us.

Online Talks List Online Talks for 2026 coming soon ......

< Back Boxes of Fun! Decorate a treasure box and make a treasure to put in it. This is a family workshop and is suitable for all ages. Parents/carers must attend with their child/children. All materials are supplied and a snack is provided part way through the morning. Parents and children are also welcome to look around the Museum after the workshop. A different workshop about weaving is planned for the afternoon and you may wish to book both workshops. We need at least 4 people to book this workshop or it may not be able to run, so tell your friends and bring them with you. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/boxes-of-fun-tickets-1981582836607 Previous Next

'Power Dressing' February 2025 - November 2026 Power Dressing: 1770-1990 Fashion and textiles have long been signifiers of power and wealth. Throughout the ages, the colour and fabric of garments communicated the status of the wearer. Certain fabrics and colours have even been banned for lower classes. The style of a garment can enable the wearer to create a statement and take up space. The production of textiles has the power to create fortunes and destabilise entire economies. This exhibition is split into two rooms. The Powerful Silhouette focuses on how emphasis on shoulders in women's wear can create a commanding figure, from the shoulder pads of the 1980s to Romantic leg-of-mutton sleeves of the 1820s. Power & Textiles examines the cultural and economic significance of certain fabrics through time, from sumptuary laws and velvet to paisley shawls and The British Empire. See handout for more information. Previous Next

Governance Blandford Fashion Museum is a charity registered under the name of Cavalcade of Costume Limited (Charity Number: 1052471) and also a registered company limited by guarantee. It is governed by a board of Trustees each serving for a term of three years. Presently there are nine trustees including the Treasurer and Chairman.In addition to an Annual General Meeting, the Trustees meet monthly. The day-to day management of the museum is the responsibility of the Management committee under the direction of the Operations Manager. This committee meets quarterly. The Costume and Display team, led by the Museum’s Curator, are responsible for the care of the museum’s collections and the programme of exhibitions.Feel free to contact us for any further information.