Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style

Celebrating our enduring love of water, this exhibition will dive into design’s role in shaping our relationship with swimming over the past 100 years – both in the water and beside it.

From the 1920s, swimwear was marketed for swimming rather than bathing as fitness became fashionable. Groundbreaking women set a number of records in the water, and a beach holiday was all the rage, evident in the lidos built across Britain’s towns and coastlines.

This exhibition will chart the century that followed, right up to the role of swimming in modern life and how it has influenced and subverted our ideas of autonomy and agency, and sport and style. Visitors will discover the full spectrum of the design of swimming — from sports performance to fashion and architecture.

Splash! is guest-curated by Amber Butchart, a dress and design historian and broadcaster known for her history segments on BBC One’s The Great British Sewing Bee.

Background image: Subversive Sirens