A Passion for Fashion: a Liverpool's lady's wardrobe
The first major exhibition devoted to costume held at the Walker, A Passion for Fashion highlighted an important but previously unseen collection.
All of the 130 items displayed in the exhibition were selected from an enormous collection of 700 items formerly belonging to Mrs Emily Margaret Tinne. Donated to National Museums Liverpool by her daughter, this is now probably the largest surviving collection of period clothes from one person's wardrobe in Britain.
Clothing, shoes and accessories worn by Emily Tinne and her children between about 1910 and 1940 were showcased in the exhibition, giving an insight into a long-vanished part of Liverpool's past.
Emily's wardrobe provides us with a snapshot of changing fashions, as worn by a middle-class woman and her family in one of Britain's greatest provincial cities in the period between the two World Wars. It also tells us something about how people shopped for clothes in Liverpool during that time.
Read more about the Tinnes
Highlights from the collection
Click on the thumbnails below to see a selection of the highlights from each of the areas of the collection. Some of the highlights from 'A Passion for Fashion' are also available to send as e-cards here|.
Exhibition catalogue
A catalogue published to accompany the exhibition, 'Mrs Tinne’s Wardrobe: A Liverpool Lady’s Clothes, 1900-1940', is available to buy from our online shop|.