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Key figures

Origin and history

The Cholet Textile and Fashion Museum is housed in an old laundry built in 1881 on the banks of the Sauvageau River. This building, a witness to 19th-century industrial architecture, was originally home to canvas bleaching activities, essential to the local economy. The laundry stopped operations in 1963 after a gradual decline, then served as a warehouse before being saved from demolition in the 1980s by the joint action of the Association of Friends of the Museum of Textile Choletais (AAMTC) and the city of Cholet. Its functional architecture and history made it an ideal place to host a museum dedicated to textile heritage.

The Cholet region, called Choletais, was one of the main textile production centres in France as early as the 11th century, with a major boom in the 19th century. At that time, weaving occupied 5,000 weavers, 10,000 weaving machines and 20,000 weaving machines, making this activity the local economic pillar. However, the industrial crisis of the 1970s hit the sector hard, leading to the gradual disappearance of the workshops. To preserve this memory, an association mobilized in the 1980s to collect testimonies, machines and archives, leading to the creation of the museum in 1995. It was labeled "Musée de France" in 2002.

The museum presents the processing stages of fibres (shaft, linen, cotton), from spinning to weaving, as well as working conditions in the 19th century. A workshop there perpetuates the manufacture of Cholet's red handkerchief, a historical symbol linked to the vendean revolt of 1793 and popularized by industrialist Léon Maret at the beginning of the 20th century. This handkerchief, with red (blood of the fighters) and white (alloy) colours, was produced industrially until 2003 by Turpault, the last factory in the region. The museum has taken over the craft production under the brand Weble de Cholet, selling about 1,500 annual copies in 2015.

In addition to its permanent collections, the museum houses a garden of textile and tinctoriale plants, illustrating traditional dyeing methods. It also offers temporary exhibitions on contemporary fashion or textile heritage, and participates in Heritage Days. A documentation centre rich in archives, audiovisual holdings and objects (including a collection of handkerchiefs) completes the cultural offer. Managed by the city of Cholet and supported by AAMTC, the museum collaborates with regional actors such as the Western Mode Pole.

The museum has grown steadily from 11,176 visitors in 2003 to over 21,580 in 2011. In 2015, for its twenty years, it was renovated and renamed the Textile and Fashion Museum, expanding its scope to include contemporary textile arts. Its success builds on the valorization of centuries-old local know-how, while opening up to diverse audiences through events and partnerships with the fashion world.

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