Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre and Performance Archives

October is the month at the Victoria and Albert Museum for fashion photography. Their exhibition ‘Fragile Beauty’ showcases iconic images across subjects such as fashion, celebrity, reportage, and the male body from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection. A course on the history of fashion photography includes insight from curators, photographers, and leading industry creatives who are revolutionising the field.

In partnership with The Victoria and Albert Museum, 880+ images from the Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre and Performance Archives have joined Bloomsbury Dress and Costume Library as part of our Online Museum Collections.

The high-quality images from both the V&A’s permanent collections and temporary exhibitions are the national collection of performing arts and includes images of Dance Performances, Ballet Russes, and Theatrical Drawings. This collection documents current practice and the history of all areas of performing arts in the UK, including drama, dance, opera, circus, puppetry, comedy, musical theatre, costume, set design, pantomime, popular music, and more.

Each image is supported by rich descriptive data, and features links to related content from across Bloomsbury Fashion Central to aid the discovery journey.

The collection is available alongside the existing Victoria and Albert Museum collection which is part of Berg Fashion Library. This collection, which is made up of 45,000 objects spans four centuries, with some rare pieces dating from the seventeenth century, though its strength lies in the eighteenth century and later. Berg Fashion Library is home to over 17,000 images of fashion objects from museums around the world.

Find out more about Bloomsbury Dress and Costume Library, Berg Fashion Library and other collections on Bloomsbury Fashion Central including trials and purchasing.