Riotous Colour, Daring Patterns: Fashions + Textiles 18th to 21st Centuries

This dazzling display features over 120 items from around the world drawn from the ROM’s extensive textile and costume collection, many of which are on display for the first time.

Highlights include:  The first paper dresses from 1966 and a silk dress imprinted with newspaper headlines designed by John Galliano for Christian Dior.  A look at how designers and artists, from Dame Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier to Pablo Picasso, have applied their work to printed furnishing and fashion textiles, with outcomes often witty, ironic and political.  Pattern-dyed textiles in Africa and Asia.

The wide range of techniques used to create these iconic styles reveal little-known links between hand and industrial printing and eastern and western traditions.  Women's and children’s fashions from the 1790s to 1880, which show how inventive textile manufacturers enticed consumers by combining printing techniques to create new colours and patterns.

Riotous Colour demonstrates that fashion exists in vivid colour throughout the world, and that the desire to look smart has driven many of humankind's technical advances.