Murray’s Cabaret Club | The exhibition has been extended to the 12th April. New time slots are now available.

Murray’s Cabaret Club in London’s Soho was a notorious jazz and revue club which opened in 1913 on Beak Street.

Known for extravagant dance shows and risqué embroidered costumes the Club’s hostesses included Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies who were both at the heart of the most enduring political scandals of our time, the Profumo Affair in the 1960’s.

Attracting royalty including HRH Princess Margaret and the Duke of Edinburgh, whose Thursday Club friends frequently went to Murray’s for a glamorous evening of fine dining, wining and women, as most recently depicted in the Netflix series The Crown.

Vintage Poster collector, Charlie Jeffreys, in conjunction with the Museum of Soho

are mounting an exhibition and sale of a selection of the original illustrations at The Century Club including costume designs from Murray’s Fifties heyday.

The majority are by Ronald Cobb (1909-1997) whose risqué gouaches combine ingenuity and style. They are an amusing assortment of witty French maid fantasies, macabre mannequins in sweeping cloaks, and startling space-age headdresses. G-strings and period humour abound but Cobb’s bizarre confections of plastic, gauze and body paint are always on the right side of kitsch. There are also a few designs by Michael Bronze (1916-1979) whose sketches are intricate and lavish. His bejewelled Cleopatra-style costumes ooze the elegant sophistication of Fifties glamour. Some earlier costumes by Hilda Wetton (1896-1980), the legendary designer with The Windmill Theatre will also be on display.

Exhibition curated by the V&A’s Ben Levy.