Fashion & Textiles Institute Collections

The Textiles & Dress Collection is a reference collection of textiles, dress and associated materials. It features women’s, men’s and children’s wear and accessories, fashion and interiors fabrics and textile artefacts. There is also a large collection of published material including commercial dress patterns, knitting and crochet patterns, dressmaking and craft magazines. There are examples of everything from everyday underwear to opulent opera capes, wallpaper to plastic macs, dancing shoes to delicate doilies.

Illuminating how textiles shape our identities and our histories, this collection records and represents the changing nature of everyday dress, actively seeking to record the design, the cut, the details, the fabrics and the methods of manufacture, valuing the garments that serve us in our daily lives as much as those that celebrate us on milestone occasions. Earliest examples include seventeenth-century lace, with dress and accessories spanning from the early 1800s to the present. 

The collection also incorporates major specialist holdings gifted by private collectors, including The Men’s Bodywear Collection, The Ivy Leaf Bespoke Corsetry Collection, The Shelagh Lovett Turner Collection, The Fletcher Lace Collection, The Lorraine Topper Collection detailing a Hundred Years of the History of the Bra, and pieces linked to Cornwall accompanied by personal narratives from donors and wearers.

This remarkable resource offers inspiration and insight to researchers of textile and costume history, designers working in fashion or interiors, and anyone intrigued by the enduring cultural significance of clothing and cloth. 

The Devonshire Collection of Period Costume was founded in 1967 by theatre enthusiasts Peter Clapham, Paula Morel and Annette Ingold, who combined their personal collections of historical garments. Over the years they built one of the largest privately owned dress and textile collections in the UK, displayed for decades in a dedicated museum in a Grade I listed house on Totnes High Street. 

In 2025, as the museum’s lease came to an end, a charitable trust was created and arrangements made for Falmouth University to become custodians for the next five years after. Falmouth was chosen as the new home to keep the collection in the Southwest and benefit from the university’s expertise across fashion, technology and the creative industries. 

The Fashion & Textiles Institute’s Wardrobe Store is a working costume house, with thousands of items for use in student and professional film and television production.

It stocks a wide range of men’s and women’s contemporary, everyday clothing, as well as sportswear, workwear, service uniforms, period, historical and national dress. 

Items of dress from the Wardrobe Store are working items, and as such are able to be used in film, television, stage and immersive productions. The items are therefore open to external film productions.

Costume donations

We are limited in our capacity to accept donations, and can not accept theatre costume at this time. However, we would welcome screen quality vintage, period, historic and national dress and accessories.  

Visiting us

Students can access the Stores during term time, and by appointment. A selection may be viewed by appointment for research. Members of the public can also browse the Wardrobe Store’s costume rails by appointment. Please contact WardrobeStore@falmouth.ac.uk.