What can handwritten invoices from Queen Marie Antoinette, or fanzines collected by the LGBTQ+ community, tell us about fashion past and present? For many people, the term ‘fashion archive’ probably suggests a store of clothes. But in fact, conventional fashion archives contain masses of paper documents and metadata.

Invitations, letters, receipts and photographs are all crucial in the creation of a new garment or fashion collection. But once the party is over, they are often thrown away or forgotten. The exhibition turns a spotlight on overlooked and discarded documents and artefacts from the modern fashion industry. Here they are treated as a vital resource to our understanding of the creative processes of fashion history – and as objects with their own aesthetic qualities.