Jean Muir: A Fashion Icon

7 Nov 2008-15 Mar 2009

Fashion icon and entrepreneur – Jen Muir’s work and career path certainly gives today’s young women inspiration. Starting out selling clothes in Liberty, she moved into designing for Jaeger and starting her own clothing company fit for stars. She could count Barbra Streisand, Joanna Lumley, Diana Rigg and Judi Dench among her clientele.

The 18,000-strong collection of her work, displayed at the National Museum of Scotland, is a real first. Fiona Anderson, Senior Curator, Dress and Textiles at NMS said “We’re extremely grateful to Harry Leuckert for this outstanding donation. Jean Muir was one of the UK’s leading fashion designers and she had an international following. The Collection is the largest and most complete record of a fashion designer’s work held by a museum internationally. It gives unrivalled insights into the entire workings of a successful fashion designer. As well as featuring Jean Muir’s signature matte jersey, suede, leather and wool crepe in navy and black, it also shows unexpected elements such as her fantastic use of colour.”

With Aberdeenshire grandparents, Jean Muir was proud of her roots, and was able to make her own contribution to the country’s culture. She was a founding member of the Museum of Scotland’s London Fundraising Committee when it was established in 1994.

Visitors will be able to see the design process from sketches through to finished garments and footage of promotional videos. The British designer’s work is well worth investigating thoroughly as it is of international significance. She is world renowned as 'the new queen of the dress' (in Paris), and 'the jewel in the crown of British fashion' (in New York). To her customers she was 'addictive' and in her own words,'evolutionary not revolutionary'.