Zandra came to the Bata SHoe Museum when I was still there to see what we had done and how it was organized as a model for her own museum. This was in 1995/96 ish. Her premise was to open a museum of British modern fashion design (post war British fashions), so it wasn't just her own clothes but she also wanted to show the work of her contemporaries -- Bruce Oldfield, Terry de Havilland, Celia Birtwell etc. etc. This was in the days when the designer label was just becoming important in mainstream fashion and was now affecting vintage fashion collecting. I swear, before the mid 90s a Ceil Chapman cocktail dress had no value outside of any other old silk cocktail dress of the period... However, that trend was just starting then and Zandra noticed it and wanted to capitalize on it by bringing attention to her, and her fellow British designer's work of the 1950s - 1990s. She got her museum open but by that time the Victoria and Albert Museum, and other British museums were now focussing on British design, and post-war design, and in the case of the V&A, they began mounting exhibitions of British fashion designers which cut into Zandra's museums' purpose. She never really had a lot of funding behind her and the support she had from her fellow designers evaporated when the V&A and other institutions began doing exhibitions because her museum was HER museum, not an English institution that had been around for over a century and was internationally known. Its too bad because she didn't get much credit for seeing the future of vintage fashion at the time, but she certainly was instrumental in getting modern British fashion recognized and collectible.
