Fashion

The Röhsska Museum’s fashion collection comprises approximately 2,000 objects, ranging from the eighteenth century to the present day. It includes garments, accessories, costume jewellery, fashion illustrations, and fashion magazines, together reflecting the development of fashion over time and its close relationship to society and culture. Fashion is an artistic form of expression that shapes our lives in many ways – through how we dress, how we observe others, how we consume, communicate, and imagine ourselves. The power of clothing is closely connected to heritage: the histories and cultural meanings embedded in materials, forms, traditions, and social structures. Fashion is often perceived as fleeting, something that quickly emerges and disappears. Yet a historical perspective reveals a more complex role. Fashion also functions as a cultural medium through which ideas of beauty, power, identity, and belonging are articulated through the body, materials, and form. While fashion moves through time, it also carries history with it. Earlier expressions, symbols, and craft traditions are continually revisited and reinterpreted in new contexts. In this way, fashion becomes a continuous link between past and present – materialising contemporary ideals through historical reference.