Fashion at Play in Leeds

11 August 2025, by Natalie Raw

In this week's blog, Natalie Raw, Curator of Dress and Textiles at Leeds Museums and Galleries, talks us through their Fashion at Play exhibition at Lotherton Hall.

Lotherton Hall is an Edwardian country house and garden, on the outskirts of Leeds and is the home of Leeds Museums and Galleries, Fashion Galleries. Every year we have a new display and for 2025 the exhibition is Fashion at Play – children’s clothing through the ages. 

The exhibition showcases our fantastic collection of children’s clothing and many of the items on display were worn, made or bought in Leeds. Displayed alongside the clothes are paintings, prints and drawings from our fine art collections which show the different clothing worn by babies, children and their families dating back to the 1600s. 

Selecting what to put on display was sometimes difficult, as we have so many lovely garments. A theme was selected for each of the four rooms of the galleries, ‘For the Little Ones – babies and toddlers’, ‘Haven’t you Grown – children to teenagers, ‘All Work and No Play’ and ‘Family Fashions’.  

The first room of the exhibition focusses on the specific and practical needs of babies and toddlers.  There is everything from swaddling to modern sleepsuits and Victorian short dresses worn by boys and girls to dungarees. The earliest outfit we have in the exhibition is a beautiful linen swaddling set dating from 1690-1710, kindly on loan from Nottingham City Museums and Art Galleries. In the 1600s newborn babies were wrapped tightly from head to toe for the first few weeks. The set on display includes the decorative bib which would be pinned on top of the wrappings and the stayband which went around the head to hold it tightly in place.  

As the exhibition moves on to looking at older children, the fashions on display explore growing up and the push and pulls between still being a child but also taking those first steps into the adult world too. I wanted to question the often-repeated narrative that children in the 18th and 19th century were all dressed simply as mini adults. Once you start to look closely at children’s clothing from this period there are subtle differences from the styles worn by adults and although they might not be obvious to us, they would have been to the children and adults at the time. One example is a little grey woollen dress dating from the 1880s. It has the same princess line seen in the dresses worn by fashionable women. However, the skirt is much shorter than the adult version and although the skirt has been designed to mimic the look of there being a bustle, the shape is created simply by the cut and construction, so no foundation garment is needed. 

Specifically designed children clothing became more readily available by the late 19th century, with the development of the ready to wear industry. In this section of the exhibition, we could not ignore how clothing manufacturing, including children’s wear, was once a major industry in Leeds. On display are two tunic tops, one of light blue and the other of yellow, which are the type of garment worn by boys for playing in, during the 1910s and 1920s. The tops still have their paper labels attached showing that they were made by the Leeds tailoring manufacturer John Barran and Sons. Best known for making made to measure and ready to wear suits for men, John Barrans also made a lot of children’s clothing too, so much so that they were affectionately known as the ‘Little Boys’ Tailor’.

Children have always loved to play dressing up. By the end of the 19th century off the peg costume were available to buy. A lovely example is a little Bo Peep outfit from 1900. The dress was bought from Mrs Walter Sugden, a specialist children’s clothing shop, in Leeds and was worn by a little girl called Gladys Redman to a Chapel concert. The dress is inspired by 18th century fashions and is made of a printed cotton ruched up like the polonaise of the 1770s, over a light blue quilted petticoat style skirt. The dress was clearly loved and worn a lot as it was not in the best condition, with a large tear in the front bodice alongside further tears in the polonaise on the skirt. Luckily funding was secured for conservation so it can now be seen and enjoyed as it once was. 

A group of Youth Curators were invited to work on the exhibition to put together a display about modern teenage fashions. Teenagers are underrepresented in our collections, so the group were not only in charge of deciding what to display but also where to source the outfits from. There was a shopping trip which involved mainly going to charity shops to buy a 1990s revival outfit of a tartan shirt, jeans and a Nirvana T-shirt, displayed alongside some Doc Martens. More T-shirts were leant by the group to represent how teenagers use their clothes to express their hobbies and interests. Each one also holding important memories for the youth curators themselves. 

The final theme of the exhibition, ‘Family Fashions’ looks at how children bring lots of changes to family life including the clothing worn by parents and carers too. Visitors can see maternity, feeding and baby wearing garments. One of the dresses on display dates from the 1830s has a cleverly concealed opening, under the ruching on the bodice, which was used for breastfeeding. Additional clues on the dress hint at the changing shape of the mother who wore it as the waist has been taken in and let out many times. 

Throughout the gallery we have added baskets of toys, and of course some beautifully made dressing up, inspired by the clothes we have on display. A newly commissioned film helps to bring children’s voices to the exhibition, as a group of primary school aged children talk about the clothes they like or don’t like to wear. 

The exhibition continues until 12 October 2025.