Like gardeners, the modern fashion world follows a seasonal cycle, always looking ahead to the next season, trying to anticipate the changes of light, temperature and mood.

 Fashion & Gardens is the first exhibition to explore the relationship between fashion and garden design, from the age of Queen Elizabeth I to the catwalks of London Fashion Week 2014.

The exhibition, curated by writer, historian and Garden Museum Trustee Nicola Shulman, will identify and celebrate the many links and correspondences between gardening and fashion design. The connection has existed for centuries, but this exhibition is the first attempt to make it articulate.

Featuring designers from Valentino and Alexander McQueen to Philip Treacy and Christopher Bailey who continue to be inspired by the garden.

Of his Spring/Summer 2014 collection Bailey comments "I wanted this idea of an English rose garden. There are all these very dusky, gentle, soft colours and then all of a sudden you'll see a spiky, very red rose in the middle of it."

The Museum will provide an insight into the private gardens of our leading designers: we ask why so many garden designers make gardens from which they draw private inspiration.

They will examine how fashion and gardens have shared some of their most alluring decorative elements and the phenomena of particular flowers’ popularity at particular periods. In the age of plant collectors such as John Tradescant, dresses at the royal court were embroidered with accurate botanical images of flowers from overseas, and garden designs began to inspire clothes.

 Valentino’s exceptionally beautiful Spring/Summer 2013 couture collection achieves a new expression of the garden theme: here entire parterres are scrolled out over evening dresses, and the wrought-iron arabesques of park gates appear re-imagined as evening cloaks and capes.

The exhibition asks the question ‘how did people dress to garden, or to visit gardens’? The invention of the landscape garden in 18C England led to a new style of clothing – which, ultimately, leads to the English outdoor style of today.

7th February- 27th April

Lecture by Nicola Shulman on 6th March- tickets here.