Archives in Action: Heritage, culture and the power of memory through fashion

In 2025, tens of thousands of textiles and dress artefacts journeyed to the specially built, museum-quality, climate-controlled chill of the Falmouth University archives.

Delicately embroidered waistcoats, exquisite handmade lace, shawls, shoes, handbags, hats - the entire gamut of historical dress now form Falmouth University Textiles & Dress Collection. But the question remained: how to preserve 18th Century artefacts while making them widely available to a 21st Century audience of researchers, students and historians?