Fashion and Textile Museum

Fashion & Textile Museum

We move exhibitions too! Whether you are planning a European exhibition or a one-off tradeshow in China, we have the equipment and experience to make it happen.

Part of the Fashion and Textile exhibition, we moved the Fashion and Textile Museum’s Autumn exhibition to its new residence in Falkenberg, Sweden. The exhibition featured over 150 iconic vintage fashion pieces from across the 20th Century. Pieces included rare 1920’s Chanel cardigan suits, 1930’s swimwear and conceptual garments from fashion greats such as Vivienne Westwood, Comme des Garcons and Julien MacDonald.

Our Role

Our lead art-handler John Carrington has worked at Alban Shipping for the last 8 years and commented: “When we move exhibitions, the client’s most important concerns are the time pressures and the fragility of the items. They need to feel confident that the exhibition can open in a new city on the date that’s been advertised.” He added, “It’s important to them that they’re working with a shipping company that’s used to moving a large number of delicate items around. Pieces like these would obviously be impossible to replace if they got damaged. We handle pieces like this every week and it’s what we’re trained to do.”

The variety of delicate fabrics required specialist packaging, all of which was provided by Alban Shipping. This included acid-free boxes to maintain the correct atmospheric pH balance, as well as wooden crates to protect the whole shipment. Transportation to Falkenberg was undertaken on Alban Shipping’s consolidated European vehicle service, with a team of experienced art and antique handlers. The containers, meanwhile, were disassembled by four Alban personnel and transported into storage in Yorkshire. John says:

“Each and every job we do here is very different, from the more complex international consignments like this one, through to transporting an antique vase from an auction house to a collector. Our office team is very experienced at translating the customer’s requirements into how many people we need to make it happen and what sort of materials we will need.”