Recollect Underwear

Recollect: Underwear presents some ‘naughty and nice’ highlights from the Museum’s diverse collection of underwear. Worn for modesty, comfort and cleanliness, underwear is also used to manipulate and shape the body, and most significantly, it meets our desire for a sensuous second skin.

Enterprising Australian brands have been at the forefront of innovative underwear design. This display brings together a wide range of undergarments and archival material relating to two of these iconic Australian brands; from ‘ladylike’ foundation garments of Berlei and its revolutionary anthropometric survey of Australian women’s bodies, through to Bonds’ no-nonsense underwear and classic Chesty Bond singlet. We also take a peek at the fetish corsets and fur-trimmed whimsy of eccentric Australian artist and dominatrix Madame Lash.

This exhibition is presented by the MAAS Centre for Fashion.