Over 500 high-profile costumes from the collection of the British Film Institute (BFI), including Marilyn Monroe’s shimmy dress from Some Like it Hot, are being transferred to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A).
Most of the items will be housed at the new Clothworkers' Centre for Textile and Fashion Study and Conservation, which is due to open October 2013 at Blythe House, the V&A's west London site.
A V&A statement said that the move “will establish a new area of collecting for the museum”.
Amanda Neville, director of the BFI, said: “I have long thought that there should be a national film costume collection.”
Meanwhile, select pieces from the BFI archive are due to go on display in the V&A’s Theatre and Performance galleries. Outfits such as John Bloomfield’s 1987 Superman costume worn by Christopher Reeve in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, will go on show in the V&A exhibition ‘Hollywood Costume’ (20 October - 27 January 2013).
Rosemary Harden, manager of the Fashion Museum, which is part of Bath and North East Somerset Council, welcomed the transfer: "Some of the world’s best film costumiers are British, leaders in their field, and so it is right and fitting that the collection should be housed in a leading national museum, with the promise of future collecting in this currently under-represented area of dress history.
"Museums have rather lagged behind the Planet Hollywood-esque approach to collecting film costume, and it’s brilliant now that this is being redressed in this country."
The BFI costume collection was assembled by the now defunct Museum of Moving Image on London’s South Bank. The BFI closed the museum in 1999 because “the costs didn't justify us keeping it open”, a BFI spokesman previously told Museums Journal.
The gallery at the BFI on London’s Southbank closed last April following a 15% cut in real terms to the body’s grant-in-aid over the next four years.
The BFI national archive collections – comprising stills, scripts and posters – are held in specialist storage facilities at the J.Paul Getty Jr Conservation Centre in Berkhamsted, and the BFI Master Film Store in Gaydon, Warwickshire.
Most of the items will be housed at the new Clothworkers' Centre for Textile and Fashion Study and Conservation, which is due to open October 2013 at Blythe House, the V&A's west London site.
A V&A statement said that the move “will establish a new area of collecting for the museum”.
Amanda Neville, director of the BFI, said: “I have long thought that there should be a national film costume collection.”
Meanwhile, select pieces from the BFI archive are due to go on display in the V&A’s Theatre and Performance galleries. Outfits such as John Bloomfield’s 1987 Superman costume worn by Christopher Reeve in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, will go on show in the V&A exhibition ‘Hollywood Costume’ (20 October - 27 January 2013).
Rosemary Harden, manager of the Fashion Museum, which is part of Bath and North East Somerset Council, welcomed the transfer: "Some of the world’s best film costumiers are British, leaders in their field, and so it is right and fitting that the collection should be housed in a leading national museum, with the promise of future collecting in this currently under-represented area of dress history.
"Museums have rather lagged behind the Planet Hollywood-esque approach to collecting film costume, and it’s brilliant now that this is being redressed in this country."
The BFI costume collection was assembled by the now defunct Museum of Moving Image on London’s South Bank. The BFI closed the museum in 1999 because “the costs didn't justify us keeping it open”, a BFI spokesman previously told Museums Journal.
The gallery at the BFI on London’s Southbank closed last April following a 15% cut in real terms to the body’s grant-in-aid over the next four years.
The BFI national archive collections – comprising stills, scripts and posters – are held in specialist storage facilities at the J.Paul Getty Jr Conservation Centre in Berkhamsted, and the BFI Master Film Store in Gaydon, Warwickshire.