Ghosts In The Palace

By Mimi Haddon

The Palace Costume vintage clothing collection is a living museum. It has been lovingly curated by it’s owner, Melody Barnett, over the past 50 years. What began as a chest of Victorian dresses found at a swap meet, now acts as a vital resource to the film and television industry’s most prominent costume designers. When first embarking on this journey to record the collection, my first instinct was to photograph the pieces at face value, as a means to share them with the designers and vintage lovers around the globe. But as I grew more intimate with the pieces I was documenting, the more curious I became about the lives that were lived in them. What stories lie behind the hands that made them? What traces of human histories are left within the fibers of the garments? It has been a privilege for me to be able to hold these articles and to have them sing their songs of structure, history and hiding places. Each piece holds within it a universality both ancient and contemporary. The Ghosts in the Palace are very much alive and present, and they are relishing their time in the spotlight, just by sparkling an instant more. MH October 2018