Accessories come in all shapes and sizes – and they’re everywhere! Sometimes they’re there without us noticing, sometimes they really catch the eye. They can be purely decorative or serve a more practical, technical purpose. Sometimes they reveal something about professions; they signify affiliations whilst simultaneously drawing boundaries, and they can also become a political statement. Accessories are much more than just insignificant trinkets: they play a pivotal role in fashion, in the truest sense of the word.

The exhibition highlighted this through selected objects from the ‘Textile Everyday Culture’ collection, which were organised into several thematic sections. For example, accessories can serve a medical purpose, as we demonstrate with orthopaedic foot correction splints and a bra with a prosthesis for breast cancer patients. However, they can also be used for body modification for aesthetic reasons, as shoulder pads and a hip belt illustrate. Accessories can be political on various levels – for example, when it comes to uniform buttons or to (de)constructing certain gender norms and sartorial role models. We displayed a bow tie that became a catalyst for cross-dressing and thus found its way into the exhibition as a representative example of queer objects or queer clothing practices.

We explored the theme of sensitive – often animal-derived – materials, using, amongst other things, a crocodile-skin bag as an example. The animal was illegally hunted in the 1920s, and the bag therefore provides an opportunity to critically examine colonial practices. The ‘rheumafell’, by contrast, is significantly more recent and of European origin: until the early 2000s, such objects made from cat fur were traded regularly within the EU. Accessories are also typically used as souvenirs. They serve as reminders of places or people, as demonstrated by a dance lesson fan from the 1920s and a cap with a Union Jack motif from London. Much like a poetry album, the fan, with its short poems, bore witness to the admirers of its former owner, whilst the cap reminded the giver of a visit to the famous Carnaby Street in the 1970s. Sometimes accessories are central to numerous practices during a particular era, only to subsequently fall into oblivion. This is the case with gaiters, hat pins and money pouches, which, from today’s perspective, are regarded to some extent as ‘curiosities’ and which, in the exhibition, served as examples of changing clothing practices over the years.

During the summer semester of 2025, students at the Institute of Material Culture undertook an in-depth study of accessories from the ‘Textile Everyday Culture’ (STAK) collection and their various functions, as mentioned above, as part of a seminar. The exhibition presented the results of the seminar both in terms of content and material objects. Visitors were able to take home free sets of postcards designed by the students to accompany the objects. In addition, accessories designed to be worn were created in the form of temporary tattoos featuring motifs ranging from buttons to plasters, which can temporarily embellish outfits on the skin. If you’d like, you can also download the templates below, which you can print out yourself at home as either stickers or temporary tattoos. The exhibition aimed to encourage visitors to engage more closely with accessories and to take a closer look at them. After all, accessories can be the starting point for telling many different stories – perhaps afterwards we’ll see our everyday companions, both big and small, in a different light!

Curators: Veronika Dawydow, Klara von Lindern

Dates: 14 January 2026 – 20 May 2026