International designer fashion gift to the V&A

The V&A’s Department of Textiles and Dress collection is the beneficiary of a generous donation of top level international designer outfits from the 1960s to the present day from the wardrobe of Jill Ritblat, Patron of New Art at the Tate and wife of businessman John Ritblat. The first selection of over 200 outfits will arrive in the museum in 1998 and a display of about twenty of them will be on view in the Dress Collection. The range of designers represented is very broad, including Dior, Ungaro, Jacques Heim and Yves St Laurent in the Sixties with Zandra Rhodes and Valentino in the Seventies, Ralph Lauren and Armani in the Eighties and Romeo Gigli, Issey Miyake and milliner Philip Treacy in the Nineties. Mrs Ritblat plans to offer further items from her wardrobe at a later date, including her “going away outfit” made by Christian Dior.