Wonderful Women: Costumes for Royalty, Writers and Rebels

Explore the lives of some of the great women of the last 450 years, from royalty to writers and rebels, through an evocative showcase of costumes featured in blockbuster films, at Harrogate’s Royal Pump Room Museum this autumn. Harrogate, as everybody knows, is a fashionable town, and since the roaring success of the Downton Abbey exhibition, the autumn costume show at this landmark Harrogate museum has become a favourite event. Some of the costumes on display help to reveal a different side of some of these great women. The bronze gauze dress worn by Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998) represents the simpler gowns that the young Queen of England would have worn in private, whereas in public her extravagant dress was intended to emphasise her power, announce her dominant personality and capture the imagination of her subjects. The business-like brown suit, worn by Renee Zellweger in Miss Potter (2006) embodies Beatrix Potter’s struggle to be taken seriously. Well known as the author and illustrator of Peter Rabbit, she was also a natural scientist and conservationist. Also on show are the costumes worn by: - Elizabeth Hurley when she played Christabel Bielenberg in the 1988 TV series Christabel, - A cerise pink silk taffeta evening dress worn by Madonna playing Eva Peron in Evita (1988), - A satin dress worn by Nicole Kidman when she played Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002) - An embroidered dress, worn by Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane (2007) with the newly fashionable empire-line waist adopted by Jane Austen and her contemporaries. Wonderful Women tells the story of these strong females through this thought provoking showcase of costumes which reveals the very different periods of society in which they lived.

Suitable for
Family friendly

Admission
Adult £4; Concession/NUS £2.90; Child £2.35; Family (2 adults and up to 3 children) £11.50.

Website
www.harrogate.gov.uk/royalpumproommuseum

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/yh000130?id=EVENT539350