I’ve been a bit of a culture vulture and went to the Fashion and Textile Museum twice this week. I know I only live down the road but that’s quite a bit even for me.

On Saturday I went along with my Girl Guide group –  I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on the blog before but I am a Girl Guide pack leader (or Barn Owl as they call me!). Guides is bit different from my day and the badges that I remember from my past (which I can’t remember much of at all – in fact all I remember is rewiring a plug and putting on very bad theatre shows) have been replaced by things a little more 21st Century.

Recently we’ve been working on our Passion-4-Fashion badge. As part of this I decided to take the group to the Fashion Museum to see their latest exhibition on Catwalk photography.  The museum is great for Guide groups – children under the age of 12 are free and they gave all the girls an activity pack to work on while they were there.  

The girls loved their time there. Most of the work for the badge I’ve tried to keep quite “worthy” - we’ve been looking at fair trade practices, talking about sweatshops and cheap fashion and have been creating pillowcase dresses for the Dress a Girl around the World charity – so it was nice to have a frivolous end to the badge.

The second trip there this week was on Wednesday to take part in the Couture Inside Out session. This was just an hour – but what an hour!

The Museum curator, Dennis, took us on a fantasy trip around some of the museum’s Couture dresses.   Obviously I’ve seen designer clothes before – but the step up to couture is lost until you see it person. The details and the fabric have to be see to be believed.

We were treated to a whole section of dresses from post-war to present day – but with most being from the 50s and 60s.  I lost track of taking notes and can’t do justice to array of items – for a much better review of this see Karen’s account at http://didyoumakethat.wordpress.com

I made a complete fool of myself by going up to Karen, who I recognised as soon as I got there, and gushing about how much I loved her blog. It was only afterwards that I realised that sounded like a right weirdo stalker!  If she ever reads this – apologies! I am normal (honest).

So here are some of the treats…

Table view

The hand rolled hem on a Dior gown

Some more internals from the Dior

What looks like a simple Balenciaga wrap style sarong

And the reality of that "simple" look

Chanel dress

Chanel jacket

The famous Chanel chain to keep the jacket hanging correctly

You might recognise this as the dress that Halle Berry wore when she won her Oscar (not this actual dress I should say). It's by Ellie Saab

More detail from the bodice

Last year I was very disappointed to miss out on a place on a short course on Couture clothing at the Fashion and Textile Museum on Bermondsey Street (SE1, London). But they are running it again - and I booked my place today - hooray!

It's just a 1.5 hour session and billed as "A rare opportunity to view the ins and outs of couture construction. Participants will have the opportunity to examine the internal structure and sewing techniques of couture garments from Dior, Chanel and Balenciaga."
How amazing does that sound?!

If you are interested booking is here - http://www.ftmlondon.org/events/future_events/detail/?ID=243