Dressing Downton: Changing Fashion for Changing Times

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GMC+A is proud to have collaborated with NBC/Universal, The Museum of London, and EDG on this visionary new costume exhibition. An exhibition developed around the costumes of the most visible television show developed in Great Britain in decades, the content focused on the dramatic social change that happened due to the Great War. A dramatic shift from the established class system to the beginning of a middle class, urban culture, and women’s rights, leading to the demise of the unsustainable aristocratic class and the luxurious lifestyle once lived.

The exhibition was designed to support and travel to historic homes as well as history museums. Bringing objects and costumes from the show into a setting aligned with the location and the style of the show, historic homes have been placing costumes and graphics within their houses while history centers present the exhibition in their galleries, both providing a unique and compelling guest experience.

Ensuring there was rich content as well as the spectacle of the costumes was forefront on our minds as we produced the design and massaged the content. Working with the Museum of London, who brought the story of Great Britain at the time of the war, along with direct collaboration with Downton Abbey’s show historian and the three costume designers, we were able to unite in a three-dimensional experience, the historical fact of the time with the very detailed and historically precise elements that the show’s plot line embraces thoroughly.

The graphics used patterns and colors appropriate to the Georgian period. The elegant graphics and images are colored by topic so that no matter where the graphics are placed in a house, the topics are united to the main text panels through the patters and the colors they use.

Dressing Downton: Changing Fashion for Changing Times

  • Client: Exhibits Development Group

  • Opened February 2015, Asheville North Carolina

  • Size: 6,000 Square Feet 

  • Demographic: 10 and up

Scope of Services:

  • Conceptual & Schematic Design 

  • Graphic Design

  • Facility Interface Coordination 

  • Media Production & Scripting 

  • Audio Tour Development & Production

  • Venue Design