All the World’s a Stage: Dressed by Angels @ The Old Truman Brewery, London |

What do Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Star Wars, The Grand Budapest Hotel, TV shows Dr Who and Downton Abbey and musical Wicked have in common?

The answer is not as obscure as you may think, but it's pretty simple – London-based Angels Costumiers.

The prestigious costume house has been dressing many actors, dancers and musicians throughout the times and it's currently celebrating its 175th aniversary with a special exhibition at The Old Truman Brewery in London.

Curated by Mario Iacampo, in collaboration with Carol Stenberg and Derrick Moore from promotion and show management company ExhibiTours Ltd, Dressed by Angels features over 100 costumes, all from Angels' back catalogue, spanning a wide range of genres, from drama and history to romance and sci-fi.

While the exhibition allows to admire pieces made for Fred Astaire, Noel Coward, Laurence Olivier, Tom Baker, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep, the main point behind it is not paying homage to celebrities, but tell Angels' story in an engaging way.

The costumier has indeed been going for seven generations and the story behind this exhibition starts in Victorian London when London's theatre and dance halls began to flourish.

Soon after arriving in London, Daniel Angel, founder of the costume house and tailor, started acquiring clothes from the estates of the deceased and hiring them out to Londoners.

Visitors will then discover the dance hall days and get a chance to see the military uniforms for the two World Wars (during WWII Angels also provided dress uniforms for the Free French Army and for ENSA, the army entertainment troupe).

As the decades passed, Angels provided iconic designs for bands, musicians and television shows, and thrived with the musical blockbuster explosion of the 1980s.

The exhibition finishes with a look into the world of fancy dress to show how these costumes have their beginnings in the elaborate film and theatre originals.

The centre point of the exhibition features costumes from Titanic, Indiana Jones and Queen Elizabeth I, but there are further interesting pieces including Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau hat and Christopher Lee's cape from Dracula Has Risen.

A special display is dedicated to the recreation of the Queen's Coronation dress, commissioned in 2012 by Harrods to Angels and originally designed by Sir Norman Hartnell.

Angels' warehouse is filled with 5 million items of clothing, hung on 8.5 miles of railing, so the costumes, accessories, photographs, letters and artefacts showcased at the Old Truman Brewery represent a tiny fraction of what's in the costumier's archive.

Yet the selection is pretty interesting and the displays allow to learn cinematic trivia and admire the costumes in detail.

Not many visitors may indeed know that the insignia around the sailors' hats on the Titanic set was created backwards so that the extras wearing them could be digitally reversed for the other side of the ship.

Looking at the embroideries on a gown, the appliqued elements on an evening dress or the pristine decorations on a uniform, visitors will also realise that a theatre play, a film or a musical may be telling fictional stories, but costumes must be precise, well cut and well made to give credibility to the characters.

The best thing about "Dressed by Angels" remains its accessibility: you don't need to be a fashionista or a costume expert to enjoy it, but there's plenty to see and enjoy for families, sci-fi geeks, dance enthusiasts (the organisers should have actually dedicated a corner where ballet fans can just swoon at the delicate beauty of The Red Shoes costume and covet the film ruby ballet slippers…) and music fans as well.

The event also provides digital games and offers the chance to learn via interactive media displays how to use measurement tapes and forms. A workshop room introduces visitors to the craft of costume from design to finished product, and a programme led by industry experts tackles topics such as special effects make up, providing also participants with basic tailoring notions or offering them the chance to listen to anecdotes and stories from the world of costume makers. In a nutshell, this is costume design made easy for everybody – grab your chance to join the fun if you can.