Fantastic fashion - Barbara Cox

Fantastic Fashion takes a look at some of the most bizarrely beautiful and outlandish trends in clothing and ornament, from the medieval steeple headdress and the eighteenth-century dandies of the Macaroni Club, to the dangeroulsly tight corsets of the 19th century and the futuristic space-age look of the 1960s.

From the preposterously high wigs worn by persons of prominence in the eighteenth century to the glitterly platform boots of the 1970s, the history of fashion is filled with weird and wonderful trends – some flashes in the pan, others enduring and evolving over hundreds of years. At the time these styles were heralded as delightful innovations but, with the benefits of hindsight, many of these fads and fashions can now be seen as the absurd, uncomfortable and sometimes downright dangerous foolishness that they were. Fantastic Fashion is a celebration of all that is fantastically bizarre in our sartorial past.