The Fashion and Textile Museum is a paid, single-exhibition museum on Bermondsey Street, open Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 6pm and closed on Sundays and Mondays. An adult ticket is £11.50, or £12.65 if you add the museum's 10% donation, and under-12s go free. It shows two exhibitions a year rather than a permanent collection, which means there are also weeks when it is shut altogether.
That last point is the one to get right before you set out. Because the whole building is given over to one show at a time, the museum closes between exhibitions while the galleries are stripped and rebuilt. In autumn 2026 that gap runs until Friday 2 October, when the museum reopens with an exhibition on Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell that stays up until 11 April 2027. If you are in London before 2 October, the front door will be locked and the shop with it.
The museum sits about eight minutes' walk from London Bridge station, on a street our guide to Borough and Bermondsey covers in full. This page is the visit itself: the hours, the ticket prices, what the single gallery is actually like, and how long to allow.
Fashion and Textile Museum: the essentials
- Address
- 83 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3XF
- Open
- Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00–18:00; last entry 17:15
- Closed
- Sundays and Mondays, except the final Sunday of each exhibition
- Between exhibitions
- Closed until Friday 2 October 2026
- Adult ticket
- £11.50, or £12.65 including the optional 10% donation (September 2026)
- Children
- Under 12 free; ages 12–17 £9.50 (£10.45 with donation)
- How long
- The museum suggests 45 minutes to an hour
- Nearest station
- London Bridge (Jubilee, Northern, National Rail), eight minutes from the St Thomas Street exit
The closure between shows, and how to check for the next one
Most small museums have a permanent display that carries them through quiet periods. This one does not. There is a modest permanent collection of twentieth-century fashion and textiles, gathered by Zandra Rhodes in the museum's early years, but only a rotating selection of it is shown, curated by volunteers, in the foyer. Everything else is the temporary exhibition.
So the pattern over a year is roughly two long exhibitions with a gap of a few weeks between them for the changeover. The gap is not a maintenance shutdown that might get cancelled; it is structural, and it happens every time. The museum announces the reopening date as a banner on its own home page, and that is the only place to be sure. Do not rely on a listings site, and do not assume that because the shop and the workshop programme are running the galleries are open.
Bermondsey Street on a Monday is a wasted trip. The museum is shut on Sundays and Mondays, and Borough Market to the north runs a reduced Monday. If Monday is your day in this part of London, cross the river instead, or start with the arches in our guide to Maltby Street and the Bermondsey markets and treat the museum as a separate morning.
Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, 2 October 2026 to 11 April 2027
The exhibition that reopens the museum covers the designer Ossie Clark and the textile designer Celia Birtwell, the couple whose printed dresses defined a particular strand of British clothing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is a good fit for the building: Clark cut the shapes, Birtwell drew the prints, and the museum's subject is precisely the seam between the two.
Tickets for it are on sale in advance. Advance booking is recommended rather than required, and if you have not booked, reception will usually let you in on the day when there is room. A museum this size does not generate the sort of queue that makes advance booking essential, but a Saturday afternoon in the first weeks of a well-reviewed show is the exception.
What a ticket costs, and the two numbers you will be shown
Every price appears twice: once with a 10% donation added and once without. The lower number is a real option, not a trick, and staff will not query it. These are the September 2026 prices as the museum publishes them.
| Ticket | Without donation | With 10% donation |
|---|---|---|
| Adult, 26 and over | £11.50 | £12.65 |
| Ages 18–25 (proof of age needed) | £10.50 | £11.55 |
| Student with NUS or equivalent card | £9.50 | £10.45 |
| Ages 12–17 | £9.50 | £10.45 |
| Disabled visitor (carer free) | £10.50 | £11.55 |
| National Art Pass holder | £5.75 | £6.33 |
| Under 12 | Free | - |
For two adults and two children of ten and thirteen, that is £11.50 plus £11.50 plus nothing plus £9.50, so £32.50 without donations. It is not free, and this is not one of the national collections in our guide to free museums in London - but for a family it lands well below the cost of an hour at most paid attractions in central London.
A National Art Pass halves the adult price here. Pass holders pay £5.75 rather than £11.50, and the pass also covers a long list of other small London museums. If you are visiting several paid independents on one trip, work out the arithmetic before you buy your second ticket.
The orange and pink building, and who designed it
The building is the reason people stop on the pavement, and it is not simply pink. Zandra Rhodes founded the museum in 2003 and commissioned the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, who gave a former warehouse site flat planes of orange and hot pink with very few windows on the street side. Legorreta worked in that palette across Mexico, and on a grey Bermondsey afternoon the effect is startling in a way no photograph quite carries.
The same block holds flats and Rhodes's own design studio above the galleries, so the museum occupies less of it than the frontage suggests. Since 2007 it has been run by Newham College, one of the larger further education colleges in England, which is why the museum's public programme leans heavily towards courses and workshops in printing, pattern-cutting and mending rather than towards blockbuster exhibitions.
Inside: one gallery, a mezzanine, and deliberately dim light
The exhibition occupies the ground-floor main gallery and a mezzanine above it. That is the whole museum. Textiles fade under light, so the main gallery is kept dark - dark enough that reading the small print on a label is genuinely hard if your eyes are not what they were. The museum keeps magnifying glasses at the front desk and large-print captions at the gallery entrance, and both are free to pick up.
There is background music throughout, and video screens that start on their own, mostly muted or quiet. Portable folding stools live in the cloakroom for anyone who wants to sit in front of a case, and there are benches in the foyer. Toilets are on the ground floor and include an accessible cubicle with baby-change.
The entrance is step-free, a ramp reaches the ticket desk in the foyer, and a wheelchair-accessible lift serves the mezzanine, though you have to ask a member of staff to use it rather than finding it yourself. For the wider picture on getting around, see our guide to accessible London for wheelchair users.
Rules that catch people out
- No food or drink in the museum beyond bottled water. There is no café inside.
- Pencils only. Pens and markers are not allowed in the galleries, which matters if you plan to sketch.
- Photography without flash is generally fine for personal use, but individual exhibitions can override that, so look for a sign.
- The cloakroom is unstaffed. It is a convenience, not a left-luggage service, and the museum says so plainly.
Getting there, and the exit to use at London Bridge
From London Bridge station, leave by the St Thomas Street exit on the south side, turn left, and Bermondsey Street runs south under the railway; the museum is on the left after about eight minutes. Our guide to London Bridge station explains why picking the wrong exit there costs five minutes and a flight of steps.
Buses 47, 343 and 381 stop on Tooley Street, which is closer than the station if you are coming along the river. Bermondsey station on the Jubilee line is about the same walk from the other direction. There is no museum car park, the streets around are permit-only in the daytime, and the nearest multi-storey is where Kipling Street meets Snowsfields, five minutes away.
How long it takes, and the quietest hour
The museum's own estimate is 45 minutes to an hour, and that is honest. One well-hung room and a mezzanine do not take longer unless you read every label, in which case allow ninety minutes. The museum says the entrance is busiest early and that from 3pm is the quietest time to look at the exhibition, which also happens to be when Bermondsey Street is at its best for a late lunch.
That makes it an unusually easy museum to build a half-day around. Arrive at three, spend an hour inside, and you come out into the part of the day when the restaurants along the street are turning over. The eating is covered by our guide to where to eat near London Bridge; we have not repeated it here.
Who it suits, and when to skip it
Come if
- You make clothes, print fabric, or want to look closely at how a garment is cut
- You want a museum you can finish, in a part of London worth walking anyway
- You hold a National Art Pass, which halves the price
- It is raining and you are already south of the river
Skip it if
- You are here between exhibitions, which is several weeks a year
- You want a collection to browse: there is no permanent display beyond the foyer case
- It is a Sunday or Monday
- You have limited time and have not yet seen the free national museums
If the subject is what draws you rather than this particular building, there are alternatives. The Design Museum in Kensington shows fashion alongside other design, Somerset House runs large fashion exhibitions, and the Fashion Gallery at the V&A is closed for rebuilding until autumn 2028, with clothing appearing in temporary shows there and at V&A East Storehouse instead. Our guide to London Fashion Week covers what happens in February and September, most of which is not open to the public. For textiles of an older kind, the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow is free.
Two other museums in this round are run on a similar scale by a single trust or charity, with the same need to check before you travel: the Ragged School Museum in Mile End and the Museum of Water and Steam in Brentford. There is a fuller list in our guide to London's best small museums.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Fashion and Textile Museum free?
No. An adult ticket is £11.50, or £12.65 if you add the museum's optional 10% donation, as of September 2026. Children under 12 are free, and one carer accompanying a disabled visitor is free. Holders of a National Art Pass pay half the adult price.
What days is the museum open?
Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm, with last entry at 5.15pm. It is closed on Sundays and Mondays, with one exception: it opens on the final Sunday of each exhibition. It also closes entirely for a few weeks between exhibitions, so check the museum's own site for the reopening date.
How long does a visit take?
The museum recommends 45 minutes to an hour, and that is realistic for one exhibition spread over a ground-floor gallery and a mezzanine. Allow ninety minutes if you read every caption. It is not a half-day museum, and it does not pretend to be.
Is there a café at the Fashion and Textile Museum?
No, and no food or drink other than bottled water is allowed inside. Bermondsey Street immediately outside has cafés, wine bars and restaurants, and Borough Market is about ten minutes north.
Is it suitable for children?
Under-12s go free and the museum runs family workshops, but the exhibition itself is one dim room of clothes behind glass, with nothing to touch. Children who sew or draw will get something from it; most under-eights will not last the hour.
Sources
- Fashion and Textile Museum - Plan Your Visit (checked September 2026)
- Fashion and Textile Museum - Ticket Information (checked September 2026)
- Fashion and Textile Museum - Accessibility and Facilities (checked September 2026)
- Fashion and Textile Museum - Visitor Guidelines (checked September 2026)
- Fashion and Textile Museum - About the Museum (checked September 2026)