BATH’S Fashion Museum is set to reopen in autumn 2030 as architects have been appointed to turn Bath’s old post office into its new home.

The iconic institution has been homeless since the National Trust took back its former premises at the Assembly Rooms in 2022.

Now the Fashion Museum is set to reopen at a new location in the city centre. Architects 6a have been handed the job of turning the Grade II listed old post office on the corner of New Bond Street into a “state-of-the-art 21st-century cultural institution.”

Construction is expected to start in 2027, with the museum expected to open its doors in the autumn of 2030 — eight years after it closed at its former home of the Assembly Rooms. The museum will include new learning spaces for workshops, lectures, and school visits, a cafe and shop, and venues for hire.

Paul Roper, Bath and North East Somerset Council’s cabinet member for economic and cultural sustainable development, said: “The creation of our new Fashion Museum is of national and international significance. This is reflected in the outstanding architectural practices who tendered for this project.

“This is going to be a new, world class institution in a UNESCO World Heritage City and there is huge excitement that, at long last, we will be able to display our unique and outstanding fashion collection in a setting it fully deserves.”

The award-winning architecture firm specialises in “sensitively transforming” historic spaces and previous projects include gallery spaces at the Tate Liverpool and the South London Gallery. Tom Emerson, co-founder of 6a, said: “We are delighted to be selected to design the Fashion Museum Bath. Fashion, re-use, museums, and galleries have been central to our practice, and we look forward to bringing these threads together in this ambitious project.

“The Fashion Museum’s collection, just like the architecture of Bath, is an incredible source of inspiration and we are excited to work with the museum team to bring it to the broadest of audiences.”

The original Fashion Museum collection was gifted to the city by Doris Langley Moore in 1959, although it has since been added to. There are now over 100,000 objects in the Fashion Museum collection, ranging from the 1600s up to modern day.

The Fashion Museum had to leave its former home of 60 years at the Assembly Rooms in October 2022 after the National Trust, which owns the historic building, exercised a break clause in its lease.