Following the main exhibition in Gallery 1, Gallery 2 will, for the first time in 2026, present a thematic educational exhibition focused on the educational and awareness-raising aspects of the fashion and textile industry in a regional context. The exhibition will approach fashion not only as a visual language and a social symbol, but also as a dream of fashion: an idea of elegance, prestige, and “glamour” that, in the reality of production, often proves fragile, changeable, and gradually fading. This very contrast—between the tarnished glory of fashion images on the one hand and the concrete work, materials, and technologies on the other—will form one of the key layers of the exhibition.

The exhibition will offer visitors an opportunity to look into both the history and the present of textile production in the Ústí Region and to better understand its social, technological, and material contexts. Conceived as an interactive platform, the exhibition will be structured into two main thematic strands. The first focuses on the history of the regional textile industry: it will present the tradition of local factories, their importance for the region’s development, and the transformations of production technologies. Through archival materials, photographs, documents, and historical exhibits, it maps the development of textile manufacturing from its beginnings to the present day, showing how ideals of fashion and social status have shifted alongside industrial reality.

The second part of the exhibition will be a material textile archive, enabling direct contact with different types of fabrics and highlighting the exhibition’s relationship to craft: hands-on work, detail, surfaces, seams, linings, and traces of wear and use. Here, the exhibition works with a haptic experience and offers basic orientation in materials, their properties, production processes, and possibilities for use in contemporary sustainable design.

An important thread is also the idea that craft is time: time invested in learning, repetition, precision, and patience. And this time is often “hidden” in fashion—in what appears as an instant image or effect, but in fact is built on hours of work, layering, and decision-making. The dream and image of fashion thus meet what holds them together: material, technology, skill, and time.