By Heather Howe, to Museum Spotlight Europe (June 2018)
Europe is the birthplace of couture high fashion, and the topography of European Museums is studded with beautiful and artistically conceived paeans to the history of fashion. Europe is the place where centuries of fashion and its school were conceived, and where the movement of the crowned heads and their circles decided history. What the people who matter wear, and who they get it from, is the process of haute couture. The elite fashion shopper is vended the ultimate clothing from the fashion designer and its suppliers.
But where do the goods come from? Who decides what is right to wear, and when? Brilliant minds have come to the fore to answer those questions and deliver their statement of style, elegance, and cultural tradition as they make it. Travelers to Europe will be spoiled for choice in locating excellent destinations in fashion for admiration and learning. The best of the great fashion Houses and creative talent is on show. By no means is this the collected lexicon of European designer fashion, just that which is hosted within European boundaries.
Visitors to European museums of fashion should keep in mind that some of the exhibits require clearing times of one hour before closing. Not all exhibits are hosted in English or French. Driving or street access should be researched ahead of time, and online bulletins about the condition of the exhibits should be double-checked before a trip is executed. Online ticket buying can save significant queue time. Many of these museums have special or no fare days, which are of course crowded. It should also be noted that rotation of exhibits will leave many visitors with an experience not exactly the same as that of others.
1. Museo Balenciaga, Getaria (Gipuzkoa), Spain.
Cristobal Balenciaga merited a prime place in European fashion circles, being one of the most glamorous and creative minds the occupation has ever known. This seaside location and stunning architecture enhance the exclusivity and romance of Balenciaga’s motif. Movie stars, opera singers, titled ladies and wealthy patronesses kept the Spanish Balenciaga a big name through 1944, with customers risking their lives to attend his fashion shows. The silhouette of the blocked coat or finish of lace over a contrasting color denoted some of Balenciaga’s greatest successes.
Balenciaga fashion was not cheap, and a woman wearing a luxury dress or outfit looked the part. The Spanish royal family wore this label, as did many other aristocrats. Balenciaga fashion denoted a woman of importance, a woman of rank, and a woman to be reckoned with in a societal or cultural context. When the Spanish Civil War erupted Balenciaga astutely migrated to Paris, France. Throughout the 1950’s Balenciaga showed what women wore, as a cultural statement as much as a wearable form of art.
On a yacht, movie set, or red carpet party, Balenciaga dressed women in the highest kick of fashion. Balenciaga once refused to show his runway fashion show because of the habits of the era’s commercial designers to steal his designs. Instead of giving the press four weeks to develop their reviews and publish photos, he refused to reveal his line until the day before the garments reached the stores. The legacy of many Balenciaga’s designs hearken through the most avante garde of today’s new looks.
The sewing patterns of the 1960’s and the 1070’s reflect the famous dresses Balenciaga made in heavy drapery and textured silk satin and other heavy fabrics, in contrastingly simple designs. Balanciaga inspired famous designers of the modern era, such as Oscar de la Renta, Hubert de Givenchy, and Gianfranco Ferre. The designer himself became the decider of a woman’s rank, by virtue of dressing her, instead of the woman’s rank reflecting glory of the designer. Today, Balenciaga’s fashion brand is helmed creatively by others, but the man’s history is evident in the Museum.
2. The Armani Silo, Milan, Italy
Giorgio Armani has demolished the competition with stunning evening gowns and suits in muted shades for ladies who lunch and power plaids. The Armani suit for women and men has defined several of the last decades for day and evening wear. Movie stars, European royalty, aristocrats and business titans of every stripe rush for Armani season after season. Fluid and sculptural, colorful and abstract, Armani is a household world on Mars for refined elegance and “La Modee”.
Giorgio Armani chose for his museum space a funnel silo used in generations past for grain refinement, as a metaphor for his own process. Milanese fashion virtually was remapped when Armani’s shows drew the best of the fashion press and the celebrity horde to view the designer’s latest ouevre. Visitors remark on the essence of the space, the effect of the atmosphere and the pleasing aspect of the Silo. Many visitors to this European museum have mentioned the positive mood that abounds in this place. A gathering ground for fans of the designer, fashion students, or mere day visitors looking to capture a poignant moment, the Armani “Silo” funnels a rapturous escape on a highway of thought, craftsmanship, and dream.
3. Gucci Gardens/ Gucci Museo, Firenze, Italy
The Italian design giant is world-known as a fashion label and lifestyling brand, and the ensuing Gucci Gardens and Museo have attracted hordes of fashion lovers and European visitors the world over. Ronaldo Gucci began in 1924 and took a fledgling idea to sew dress patterns to its ultimate consequence as a globally famous renowned fashion designers. The bamboo bag and Gucci loafer stand as motifs of European style. Soon Gucci went to America, and his future took off.
The elite stars of 1950’s and 1960’s European celebrity frequented the master shoemaker for shoes design flair. The cognoscenti of the 1960’s era loved the pop art reflections of the most outlandish color combinations and sexy daring in the designs. Today’s fashion shows reflect a nod to Gucci whenever a body-conscious and elaborate (but tasteful) silhouette strolls the runway.
In the late 1980’s and 1990’s, Gucci as a fashion house re-emerged as a recognized name in haute couture by producing no-holds-barred fashion lines for women who had a lot of glamour on show. A Gucci fashion in the 2000’s could look floral and voluptuous and also streamlined, sexy, and decorated with form-fitted gold accessories. Gucci prints define femininity and wearable art couched in a quasi-traditional design. Today this legacy of the fashion industry is promoted by a global brand, the beginning of which is in the Gucci Gardens.
The Museo building took two years to build, and it is a captivating archive of fashion history, where touchstones of Gucci design are framed in an architectural space without any modern equal. From sport equipment to floral limited edition custom papers, Gucci left an imprint not easy to fill. With the ghostly heroes of the Renaissance looking over one’s shoulder, the Gucci Museo furnishes an opportunity to observe and review the Gucci fashion contribution to art in a proper context.
4. (Musee) Pallais Galliera, Paris, France
This groundbreaking palladium of fashion exhibits is a collection of curated and thoughtful extracts of major designers and their impact on the world and society. In past centuries the legacy of certain designers has become more well-known due to the evolution of journalism, media, and public relations. Pallais Galliera introduces exhibits regularly to celebrate fashion and its progenitors throughout Europe. Pierre Balmain has been a recent focus of the many exhibits, and many more are planned and upcoming. Lanvin is the focus of another.
The House of Chanel has made a groundbreaking donation to the Pallais Galliera, assuring the visitor to Europe of a permanent exhibit to the ouevre of Chanel by 2019. The Paris apartment of Gabrielle Chanel is informally considered the museum of Chanel, as recognized as Rudolf Nureyev’s, as a testimonial statement of achievement beyond class and attainment of prestige. Chanel is today the absolute definition of a transformative mind on a native-born but class-defined cultural life.
While the upcoming Pallais Galliera exhibit slated for next year will be the latest in a graduating order of recognition for this amazing designer, today the building shop in Chanel’s Number Five Rue Cambon continues and still produces the world’s most amazing fashion imprint.
Gabrielle Chanel was born a girl with no options and no future in provincial France. In her late teens and early twenties, she shrewdly organized a hat shop from her relationships with two wealthy lovers. Chanel had a razor eye for line and design, and her fame as a milliner to divas of France’s theatre and opera grew and grew. Chanel dressed her relatives and friends and walked the boardwalks, attracting amazed attention for her stunning fashions. In an era when women wore pounds of muslin on their head, Chanel styled jaunty men’s boaters for women. In an era when knit jersey was used only for underwear, Chanel styled loose flowing pajamas for the cafe society to lounge in.
In a time when aristocrats of the fashion world received clients in hushed salons and catered to the trends, Chanel set the pattern herself for the world to follow. In this way Chanel invented the norm for how women dressed, high and low. The bold signatures of Chanel’s sketch atelier ideas became mass produced memes that lower rungs lived in. Critics and collaborators alike praised her inimitable genius at creating fashion out of simplicity. Chanel came back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, stunning the world with a decisive design look, in an era that seemed to meander in comparison.
The Pallais Galliera will host the permanent fashion exhibit soon that will have all Europe flocking (again) to see the imagination and practicality of one woman’s inventions for public wear. The innovation of Chanel’s designs, from the 1920’s to the 1970’s, will forever attract women of style and elegance.
5. Musee Yves Saint Laurent Paris, Paris, France
France has owned the greater share of fashion genius, and YSL is proof. What is today a worldwide brand was once the brainchild of an individual with daring, creativity, and inventiveness. YSL re-invented what modern women think of as a “suit”. The designer called it “Le Smoking”, as the look was a smoking jacket restyled as a uniform (for women) of immense sophistication. With Monsieur’s partner, Pierre Berge, a fashion empire was born. For many years, French actress Catherine Deneuve was the face of YSL’s print campaigns. YSL and Berge then branched out into fragrances, and Opium was a serious and long-lived success.
Yves St. Laurent sketched a familiar palette of edgy, rock-and-roll black gold, silver and luxury fashion collections regularly published as art by introspective photographers. Through the 1970’s and 1980’s, Yves Saint Laurent served up biting commentaries on the role of woman as an assertive force, shaping feminine outfits out of determinedly masculine motifs. The result was provocative and iconic. YSL was expensive, alluring, dressed-up and still formidably haute couture with a naughty edge. Helmut Newton made a series of artistic photographic portfolios featured in fashion magazines of the 1970’s and 1980’s to extend the mood of YSL in the public eye, conforming art and fashion into the fashion landscape yet again.
This 16th Arrondissement architectural gem will be enjoyable to many, but as always, online ticket purchase to skip the queue is a good idea, and keep in mind that many such museums clear the rooms and defer admission close to closing time. In terms of relativity, YSL was himself a “millennial”, finding success at an absurdly young age. If YSL had known that his blockbuster Trapeze collection at 21 years of age was only the first of decades of fashion world authority and presence, he would have smiled.
6. Christian Dior, Granville, France
The entire nation of France knows today about the legendary arbiter of taste that was Christian Dior. Dead at 57, he sprang from an aristocratic upbringing well versed in the arts. If Dior’s father hadn’t needed to sell this home after financial reverses, Christian’s career might have splintered into architecture after all. The residence includes a plan of concordance designed from a study of gardens and with an architectural point of view. But this museum exhibit serves to remind one how Dior was a horse of a different color even from the beginning.
Christian Dior convinced private investors to found a fashion house after reviewing his fledgling sketch and filicoutrial work for early designers of the 1950’s. Working as an assistant, a sketch artist, a tailor, he moved from place to place, gaining ground, gaining helmsmanship of a great talent. Soon Dior was ready to amaze the fashion world and its customers with glossy candy shells of architectural importance, meant to be worn. From the first collection, patrons went crazy at the aplomb and hauteur of the Dior taste.
Christian Dior fabricated the New Look that electrified the World in 1947. Dior made suits that were sculptural, delicate, and authoritative. The postwar austerity was over: customers eagerly reached out for Dior’s frothy and yardage-hefty confections. The refined silhouette of a Dior model was unmistakable. Style innovations in the Dior salon met the demand for glamorous women seeking to define themselves and get noticed for elegance and extreme refinement. For visitors hoping to slurp up the creme de la creme of French elegance, this was the bomb.
7. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
Dedicated to celebrating arts and design, this memorial palace to Queen Victoria and her beloved husband is a common red-carpet marquee for glamorous events. The Victoria and Albert was actually used for almost a hundred years before experts concluded from original architectural plans the back end was really the entrance. The V & A houses a permanent collection of over two million objects of design manufacture. The current exhibits range from Frida Kahlo to Commercial Graphics in the 1930’s.
Touring the fine artworks that lace the hallways of the V & A is a destination in and of itself. Admission is free with a surcharge for specific and website-denoted feature exhibits. Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge has been announced as the Royal Patron supporting fundraising efforts for the V & A. The Victoria & Albert is a British landmark (and cultural institution) toured by Londonians, European visitors, and art experts daily to absorb the Empire of Britain and its after-effects in palatial surroundings.
8. Fashion and Textile Museum, London, England
Contemporary fashion has a home in England, and its name is the Fashion and Textile Museum forthwith. The peach and mustard-yellow building isn’t easy to miss. Installations showcase inspiring textile displays and frequently changed contemporary artist/designer exhibits. A small space that yields big impressions, the Fashion and Textile Museum makes for a short half-day trip for those planning a day in Central London and its outer boroughs. Check for newly curated exhibits on fashion, textiles, design, and/or photography by a specific person, during a specific time period, or in a certain genre.
A secret not many people tap into, The FET Museum changes its exhibits quarterly and shows out visitors in advance of closing time. In a neighborhood with complementary shops and eateries, its gets the Cit out of his head for an hour or two. Founded by designer Zandra Rhodes, (in 2003) the Fabric and Textile Museum draws from its collection and custom curations.
9. ModeMuseum Provincie Antwerpen (MoMu), Antwerp, Belgium
This Museum presents a Bi-Annual exhibit of over 25,000 works to the industry of craft and textiles in the fashion and theatrical services trade. A jaw-dropping collection of current and historical goods make this a destination all on its own. The Museum prides itself on collecting, conserving, and borrowing pieces and works that reflect a historical and contextual advancement in the world of sewn and fashioned goods. Be it folk art, costume, or cultural accessory, the exhibits shown here demonstrate the relationship of textiles to costume, and the artistry in-between the bolt of fabric and the red carpet.
10. Salvatore Ferragamo Museum, Florence, Italy
The signature bow on the front of every set of Ferragamo loafers is the worldwide success of shoemaker Salvator Ferragamo. How does this match up with a Florentine Museum in a Tuscan palazzo from Pre-Medici times? Medieval Italy had security concerns in the big city, and a power Tuscan from early Florence had the palazzi Spini Feroni erected to edify his place and position. Frescoes, merlons, piazzas, and native murals of religious nature were ensconced within and on these walls. Nobility took note and steered clear politically of the owners.
Today, the shoe is on the other foot, with a shoemaker owning the key to the palazzo. But with over 10,000 models of shoes to display, the Museo has a lot of selection at hand. Ferragamo (surprisingly to many) became a shoemaker to the stars in Hollywood throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s. He even took courses at the University of Southern California to understand why the human foot and the leather shoe did not always operate in harmony.
By the 1990’s House of Ferragamo had established the grosgrain stylized bow with its branded metal hinge on a leather flat as the de facto women’s preppy staple. A huge amount of custom design lasts crowded the walls of the warehouse. The elite of the fashion and retail world wanted Ferragamo shoes. In the freewheeling take-no-prisoners 1980’s, men wore animal skin “loafers” costing hundreds of dollars, and Wall Street financiers playing Master of the Universe wore the gleaming leather types as well. Today the Ferragamo brand lends status to any shoe made under its flag.
11. Gallery of Costume, Manchester, England
The mills of Manchester churned throughout the later 1880’s making thread and refining yarn for English textile manufacturers. Connect to the Twenty-first century, when the Gallery of Costume wraps up what has become of all those loose threads. Textile design and its manufacture can be clocked empirically but the quality of the output ends up measured in the cloth the designers use to transcend cut, print, and color.
12. Museum of Costume and Lace, Brussels, Belgium
In Europe centuries ago, a bundle of lace was worth the cost of a sailing ship in trade. Aristocrats wore lace on their hats, collars, wrists, underclothes, and in the home, it was an adornment. In paintings, lace immediately denotes a person of nobility, wealth, and breeding. Ornamental lace on tablecloths, table napkins, drapes, pillows, sofa covers, any and all type of refinement demanded decorations of the most delicate and ornamental type. This mini-museum embraces the impact of lace upon a dress, an industry, a national trade balance. The universal acknowledgment of lace in every class level of society denotes an appreciation of the fine quality and national pride in the lace product made for export.
Lace was almost a currency in Medieval times, practically like blue jeans are today in third world countries. The intricacy and color of a lace suggested its value and origin. The most important persons were painted wearing lace at the wrists and throat. Queen Elizabeth (in representations) was known for her neck ruff. Flemish lace, Irish lace, French lace, and Venetian lace made up the difference between a mere dress and a costume. As a cultural pivot, lace was both a trade and an embellishment craft. This museum has a video demonstration, machines, and perhaps rotating other exhibits, checking with the website for payment terms and scheduling is a must.
13. Fortuny Museum, Venice, Italy
Abdicating from the verdict of Parisian Haute Couture, the unarguably divine fashion inspiration of Fortuny resides in a splendid museum in Venice, Italy. Long before Mary McFadden, Mariano Fortuny Y Madrazo put brush to paper and set the world of imaginative feminine dressing afire. Born a Spaniard, Fortuny was a Renaissance man of the early Twentieth century in many ways. His collaboration and patronage, as well as a long married life, continued through the surprisingly diverse disciplines of fashion, theater lighting, sculpture, painting, textiles, and furniture design.
An avid art collector, Fortuny also dabbled in photography and lighting design. His trademark was pleating and deep-dyed hues which make a Fortuny gown a collectible thing of beauty in any incarnation. The “Delphos” dress was a single falling sheath of infinitely complex pleating, in a single color hue of singular purity. As if a visit to Venice in and of itself is not a gift, a browse at the Fortuny museum gives fashion followers and students of creativity and invention a flash of deep-dyed genius. While this is chiefly an art museum, Fortuny did own it and live in this ode to art. It is impossible not to admire the verisimilitude of the talent that lay behind it.
14. Missoni Ma Gallarate (Museo MAGA), Gallarate, Italy
This jewel of Lombardy showcases the intrepid colorworks of knit geniuses Missoni and famiglia. The tradecraft involved in the dyeing, threading, knitting and coloring fantastic amounts of varying patterns and textures has created a wealth of materials for the House of Missoni to use in their fashion designs. While knitwear was once considered unsuitable for anything but undergarments, Missoni proved that an unlimited amount of layers, fibers, materials, and palettes can produce stunning custom garments and exciting statements of color in the Missoni fashion lines.
Ottavio and Rosita Missoni created unusual and noteworthy garments of individual design, fabricated from goods of particular subtlety or brilliance. In the early 1950’s, Varese-based Missoni started to imprint their fashion style on the elite fashionistas of the age. Soon their stamp was confident and recognized, the Missoni imprimatur firmly on the ready-to-wear map.
Missoni garments have a continuing tradition of bright and subtle motifs. The trademark delicacy of the yarn contrasted with the boldness of color and its interplay have kept Missoni at the forefront of over fifty years of fashion and textiles history. The inclusion of Missoni in the haute couture collective starts a conversation about how functional knits can be in women’s wear, bathing suits, eveningwear, and suits.
15. German Hat Museum, Aligau, Germany
Millinery is many times the pathway to a great fashion designer’s fame. Yet, the art of tasteful hattery was a European habit far before the discovery of America. In Europe, a hat denoted a man’s important stature in society. A Florentine merchant’s slouch velvet cap, a Ghibelline Burgomeister’s cloche, or a Fez from Tokay signaled what important part its owner and wearer played in society. The plumes and ribbons on a Chevalier’s hat or the plaid in a Scot’s tam o’ shanter decried its owner’s station and likely his political views and associations. Fashion and architecture contrive to unify their connections in a statement piece such as a hat.
Yet in polo, a tack helmet provides protection. In horseback riding, the equestrienne’s saddlery helmet is par for the course. The hat always made a statement, provided for some drama. Centuries later, in women’s fashion, the creations did the same thing, except more decoratively. The material and formation of an accessory near the face always captured attention. The hat industry as here sketched by the Reich brothers’ legacy shows how Aligau history was hung on hat production throughout the twentieth century. The popularity and style of various hats is striking when presented as an exhibit that focuses on the use and fashions of hats in various cultures around the world.
At places like Ascot and Fashion Week, millinery is equipment rather than sports equipage. Formally, a hat is a statement meant to imply status and importance (again). Today hat-wear is an accepted form of art in that the object and their forms are contrived in a manner to deliberately attract an evaluative eye. Yet the commercial offsets for producers can have real-life consequences when an entire region loses work in a downturn. The evolution of a hat from a pragmatic form of protective headgear to an object of pop culture is shaped and traced in the hat Museum’s galleries.
16. Museum of Fine Arts and Lace, Alecon, France
Alencon lace also pays homage to the types of lace like Valencienne and Chantilly, as well as the lace making tradition that has kept elegance on the land of French hands for many centuries. While minute in the eyes of some visitors, this museum allows for an art space for “newbies” to learn and consider what effort and craft goes into lacemaking, now and in the past. Technically, this is the manual technology of the past.
17. Calais Lace Museum, Calais, France
This extraordinary Museum of Dentelle (lace) showcases the command of lace craft that French needlewomen have grasped since … the fashion dawn of time? The Museum at Calais has a lot to look at and learn about. Learn how to make lace and see how it can be incorporated into dresses, fashion, table linens, and various other home fashions that make the table, window, and the entire home elegant.
18. Valentino
You don’t have to travel far to enjoy this museum on Valentino Garavani—it exists only on-line. In the fashion constellation of stars, Valentino is a modern impresario of elegant style with a longevity and legacy enviable even among the greats. Fashion today sees Valentino an Italian presence broadly recognized for royal style, sweet elegance, the chosen label for aristocrats and royals, and the face of a gifted fashion voice. Born in Lombardy, Italy, in line to follow family business interests. Yet Valentino matriculated to the School de Beaux Artes in Paris and studied at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.
Valentino in the 1950’s apprenticed with the legendary Jacques Fath and then at Balenciaga. At the atelier of Jean Desses and then at Guy Laroche, Valentino honed his idea of the taste and craft necessary to meet the highest requirements of the fashion world. Either from sketching, window dressing, or collaborating with clients, Valentino’s inclination toward independent designer stardom continued. By 1960 the designer had organized his business affairs into a eponymous fashion house founded in Rome. By 1962, Valentino delivered his debut fashion line in Florence.
Clients such as Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Audrey Hepburn soon followed, establishing Valentino even further and firmly onto the fashion map of the most elite couture customers. The branding of his house with a signature “V” style and advertising campaigns to enforce this brand identification helped support a decades-long presence in the global world of couture clothing. But Valentino wasn‘t just for jet-setters and movie stars. The wedding of Prince Paul of Greece was significantly awash with Valentino designed dresses throughout the wedding party. In the film “the Devil Wears Prada” (2006) Valentino starred as himself, authentically courting fashion press Queen Bee Miranda Priestley at the Paris Fashion Week.
By the 1990’s, Valentino lives on four continents, and has retired from and/or sold interest in his businesses. In Rome, London, New York, and a chateau near Paris, the life is financed by hundreds of millions of dollars, diversifying profit streams and clothes from his label, now sold in over 90 countries. Valentino also has homes in Switzerland and Tuscany. Valentino’s last show was in 2008, a herald of a retirement long earned. With a jet, a yacht, and several intimates of his circle to look after him, Valentino is a statement of a life lived well. In 2008 a film was released in Venice minutely detailing the way in which Valentino lives a spectacularly fabulous life of intense luxury.
19. Museum Fur Kunst und Gewurbe (Hamburg Museum for Applied Art), Hamburg, Germany
This museum harbors proof that designers from Joop to Martin Margiela matter and have brought fashion dressing from the courtly nineteen-hundreds to today with style and elegance. But the traditional vestments, robes and costumes of various cultures are also on exhibit as examples of applied art in a textile context. The tradition of textile use in a costume format examines beading, embroidery, and garment design as an engineering and cultural interchange. The legacy of those designs can sometimes be glimpsed in later contemporary design work on offer here like Alexander McQueen and/or Courreges.
The use of accessories is highlighted and displayed. Textiles and design interplay in a manner that is hard for the public to experience with appropriate curation and organization. While some of them might be found in collector’s possessions once in a while, this highly different art space allows for a completely unique for public experience. Rare dresses of Japanese make will be displayed in the same walls as French masters like YSL and Spanish designers like Balenciaga. The thought process of shaping a garment from the heritage of textiles surrounding any culture is food for thought.
20. Museum Fur Hamburg Geschicte (Hamburg Museum), Hamburg, Germany
The Museum Fur Hamburg Geschichte is a costume extraordinaire gone wild. Interactive exhibits keep the visitor engaged and entertained. Many of these areas have English translations. The history of Hamburg is made plain by examining ships, maps, and other artifacts as well as a broad and well-curated batch of different exhibits. The visiting public can enjoy tapestries and woven goods with a view to the history associated with their purposes and eras.
21. German Historical Museum, Berlin, Germany
Berlin’s collection of civilian textiles surmounts the divider between industry and designer fashion by displaying the craftwork of the manufacturing and clothing accomplishments from 1750 to present day. Interested visitors can enjoy the spectacle of a collection of like objects from various sources and campaigns, purposes and origins. Flags, civilian uniforms, linens, and other things made from cloth are here displayed in organized collection curated from a master exhibit corpus of over twenty thousand items. This includes armor, jewelry, shoes, and umbrellas! This museum specifically is about non-military items such as protest banners, tapestries and ribbons. Plan an all day visit.
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