Clothing

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Baubles, brooches & beads

We wear jewellery as articles of dress and fashion and for sentimental reasons – as tokens of love, as symbols of mourning, as souvenirs of travel

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Bicornes, bonnets & boaters

There’s a variety of headwear across our collections ranging in date from early to late nineteenth century

Child's stoneware tea set

Child's play

The imagination of a child can turn the simplest toy into a prized possession

Three hatpins c1900

Forgotten objects – the hatpin

Rarely seen or used today, hatpins were once an essential item for the fashionable lady

Man in yellow costume sitting on a chair at Elizabeth Bay House

Iridescent by Gerwyn Davies film

Artist Gerwyn Davies discusses the making of the exhibition 'Iridescent by Gerwyn Davies, at the Museum of Sydney

Keeping cool

Shading the face, fanning a fire into a blaze or cooling food, shooing away insects, conveying social status, even passing discreet romantic messages - the use of the fan goes far beyond the creation of a breeze.

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Keeping time

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries watches were designed to carried on the person, attached to a waist hook, looped over a belt or as part of a chatelaine in the case of women

Barbie 'Fashion Queen', 'After Five' and 'Solo in the Spotlight' with wardrobe

Life in Plastic, it's fantastic

Barbie is the iconic fasion doll of the 21st century that millions of children have grown up with