Free exhibition of historic jewellery, badges and watches from the St Albans Museums collection, paired with photographs of local residents and their stories.
Accessories: Wearing Your Story is running at St Albans Museum + Gallery in the Town Hall on St Peter's Street, and it's one of those exhibitions that stays open long enough to fit in whenever you can manage it. It opened on 11 September and runs until 31 January, so you've got plenty of time to get round to it.
The whole thing is built around the things we wear that aren't exactly clothes — the accessories that end up telling more about us than the outfit itself. The museum has pulled a selection of historic objects from its own collection: necklaces, pins, bracelets, watches, ties, decorative nail accessories, and membership badges. It's a broad mix, from the small, personal things like a pin or a watch to the more obvious statements like a necklace or a tie, and they're all from the St Albans Museums collection.
What makes it work, though, is how they've paired those old pieces with something current. Alongside the historic items, there are photographs of local St Albans residents showing the accessories they wear today, with their own stories to go with them. The stories cover a lot of ground: treasured family heirlooms, symbols of belonging, fashion, celebration, and just plain self-expression. By putting the museum's jewellery and badges next to contemporary portraits and first-person accounts, the exhibition asks how what we wear signals who we are and where we belong, and how that changes across generations.
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It's free entry, and the gallery is open daily from 10:00 to 16:00, so you can pop in on a weekday or a weekend without worrying about tickets. You'll find it at St Albans Museum + Gallery, Town Hall, St Peter's Street, St Albans, AL1 3DH.
