The Hopkins Costume Trust

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Alan and Vanessa Hopkins have been collecting historical clothing, textiles and accessories in the United Kingdom for more than fifty years. Their Collection spans a period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and includes items representing all social classes, although as poorer people wore out their clothes, the bulk of the Collection is inevitably from the better off part of society. What ordinary people wore is interesting because it relates to the real life of the past; it would be nice to find out about the lives of the actual people who wore the clothes in the Collection and occasionally this has been possible.

Many items have only survived because they had been kept for dressing up or amateur dramatics, which invariably involved alterations and some damage.

In 2019 The Hopkins Costume Trust was founded to ensure the legacy of the Collection and make it more widely available for the greater public. This website is a glimpse into the Collection, which is currently housed in London in the UK, and is available for professional costume designers, assistants, and students of costume history to access for academic and reconstruction study purposes.