A new exhibition titled 'Kingston Glamour' is opening on Friday (16 May) from 10am - 5pm.

It is part of Kingston 2025 and will be exhibited at Kingston Museum during the museum's opening hours on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays until 10 January.

Kingston Glamour is an exhibition on art and innovation in the suburbs.

It invites locals to discover Kingston's glamorous reputation for late night cabaret, race cars and fashion, and how it led the way in architecture and modern design.

Focusing on the 1920s to the 1970s encompassing art deco, the Ace of Spades nightclub on the Kingston Bypass, Suburban Modernism, and Mary Quant and the Singing Sixties, this exhibition will celebrate Kingston's starring role in the enterprising history of the suburbs.

Curator Ruth Brimacombe said: "this exhibition shines a light on the paradox that's why the term "Suburban" is often used to indicate a provincial state of mind and a boring location characterised by an unremarkable environment, in reality, throughout the Twentieth century, the suburbs of West London have been the source of cutting-edge developments that bring with them at the allure of glamour.

" It rediscovers these glamorous aspects of Kingston's past and celebrates the groundbreaking innovations of the inventors, architects, and fashion and design pioneers who achieved great things from within the borough."

Exhibition highlights include:

• Footage and images from the Ace of Spades Roadhouse, which in its heyday, was the glitziest and most famous nightclub outside the West End, located on the Kingston Bypass in Hook, which developed in response to the growing motoring culture of the inter- war period.
• A display of exceptional furniture and works of art by Betty Joel, one of the most high-profile art deco designers of the 30s and 40s, who had a prestigious client list drawn from high society and commissioned the leading architect Harry Stuart Goodheart-Rendel to build her a purpose-built factory at Hook Rise on the Kingston Bypass.
• An array of the cosmetics and eye-catching promotional material relating to the partnership in the Sixties between the Gala Cosmetics Company and the fashion designer Mary Quant, the successes to Betty Joel's factory in Hook Rise, who between them orchestrated the 'young make up shake up' of that era and permanently introduced fashion into the cosmetics industry.
• A recently rediscovered set of press photos relating to a rare public appearance by Mary Quant at Bentall's department store on 27 April 1977 to promote her collaboration with Viyella's 'London Pride' Label dash a reminder of the pioneering role of the department store, the first in the country to introduce a 'Miss Junior Fashion' Department, played in the young fashion revolution that radically altered the popular culture of Britain in the latter half of the Twentieth Century.