Age of Elegance at Ayers House Museum
What: Age of Elegance: Fashionable Living in Victorian Adelaide
An immersive fashion installation with more than 40 authentic period costumes
Where: Ayers House Museum, 288 North Terrace, Adelaide
When: Showing to 29 July, Tuesday - Sunday 10am – 4pm; Fridays 10am- 9pm.
How: Pre-book tickets at: www.trybooking.com/UBGW
Admission: $20 Adult, $18 Concession, $15 National Trust members, $50 Family (2 Adults, up to 3 Children), $12 Student (ages 15+), $10 Children (ages 5-15), FREE Under 5.
Australia’s favourite dressmaker takes us back to Adelaide’s glamorous past
Marion Boyce wowed us with her flamboyant dresses for Kate Winslet, Sarah Snook and Phryne Fisher, covering Australian fashion from the 1920s and 1950s. Now she is taking us back to the 80s, the 1880s, in a stunning new fashion installation opening in Adelaide this week.
The acclaimed designer and curator has brought together more than 40 authentic period costumes for a new exhibition that captures the luxury, glamour and grace of high society in Victorian-era Adelaide.
Appropriately, Age of Elegance: Fashionable Living in Victorian Adelaide will be held in Ayers House – the city’s grandest Victorian-era home.
Presented by the National Trust of South Australia, Age of Elegance was inspired by the huge success of the Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and The Dressmaker exhibitions, which featured costumes designed by Boyce. For this new exhibition she has brought to life some of the marvellous creations made by dressmakers up to 150 years ago and carefully preserved by the National Trust.
“This time we expect that visitors will feel as if they have stumbled upon a grand soiree,” said co-curator Dr Jill MacKenzie. “Invitations to these exclusive high-society affairs parties at Henry Ayers’ opulent mansion were highly prized.”
Many of the costumes are very rare and fragile. Visitors will be surprised and delighted with the skill of their design and the vibrancy of the colours used, contrary to perceptions of Victorian fashion as sombre and dark.
The exhibition, which opened on Thursday 29 March, coincided with the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay exhibition covering France’s Impressionist painters of the same period – and Boyce can see many connections.
“We followed what they did in Europe and the UK,” she said. “At the time, Adelaide was an incredibly wealthy society and it was really up there with the world fashions of the period.”
Both exhibitions are exclusive to Adelaide.
In recreating one of Henry’s famous evening balls, the room is heavily decorated with gold, and “the whole thing just glitters,” says Boyce. “The most important thing is to transport people back and to use the house the way Henry did: to bring it alive. We do that using all the senses including smell, sound and lighting- to create an immersive experience of being at of Henry’s fabulous parties.”
For more information
Visit: ayershousemuseum.org.au/events/ageofelegance/
Email: ayershouse@nationaltrustsa.org.au
Phone: (08) 8223 1406
~ Contributed by The National Trust of South Australia
