I’M in an unfamiliar room where the strong, late-summer sunlight is strictly deflected by shuttered windows. Across the gloom a busy little group of female figures come slowly into focus. They’re wearing long skirts, tight bodices, neat waistlines, exquisite needlework detail, gorgeous colours ... and for a moment, I can almost believe I've walked into the set of a period drama. I imagine I can hear them gossip and giggle in between takes.

Instead, the atmosphere is hushed and the “girls” are completely silent. This is no television studio, and although these dresses would perfectly suit the likes of Keira Knightley or Jennifer Ehle they haven’t been made for contemporary actors. In fact, they haven’t been worn for at least 130 years.

The room I’ve been ushered into is in the bowels of Glasgow's Burrell Collection. Here, more than 40 outfits made to order in the 19th century for the real-life daughters of wealthy Glasgow merchants, made rich by the twin industries of tobacco and shipbuilding, are being expertly restored for their debut presentation to the public at Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery.

As well as dresses, the Century Of Style exhibition features petticoats, corsets, bustles and crinolines and is the culmination of more than three years’ painstaking work by a team of specialists headed by textile conservator Maggie Dobbie, who studied embroidery and weaving at Glasgow School of Art, trained and worked in costume conservation at London's V&A, and has been at Glasgow Museums for 14 years. It will be the Kelvingrove's first major costume exhibition since 1992, and many of the items have never been on display before.

The costumes on show, mostly womenswear, represent only a sixth of Glasgow Museums’ 300-strong collection of purchased and donated items. They’ve been hidden from view, stored away in packing boxes at the Burrell since the closure of the Camphill House museum, where the collection used to be on show. After the exhibition, they will be stored at the Museums’ Nitshill resource centre, since Glasgow doesn't have a dedicated museum of fashion.

Which makes seeing the dresses before me all the more special. They were handmade in the 1800s by a group of top Glaswegian dressmakers based in Bath Street in the city centre – a very exclusive address for those seeking the very best couture designs at a time when Victorian Glasgow was enjoying its status as the second city of the Empire. It was arguably Glasgow’s golden age, and that is reflected in what people wore.

Examples of poorer people’s clothes are almost non-existent since they were worn so much they would have simply fallen apart. By contrast, the wearers of the clothes shown here would have been affluent middle and upper-class women, wealthy enough to own at least 12 dresses and order two new ones each season. Altering neck and hemlines and updating bonnets with new ribbons was common; throwaway culture did not exist then. As a result, there are more of them still in existence.

Their delicate embroidered cottons, woven silks and hand-stitched pleats, seams, hems, buttons and eyelets reflect the styles, materials and colours that dominated the world of couture at different times throughout the 19th century.

Also on show will be exquisite dresses made by the Glasgow designers’ international contemporaries including French couturiers Charles Frederick Worth and Merlot Larchevêque. These garments are included to show that leading Glasgow dressmakers and department stores such as Simpson, Hunter and Young and Fraser Sons & Co, quickly picked up on Parisian styles.

The aim, explains Rebecca Quinton, Glasgow Museums' curator of European Costume and Textiles, is to put into context Glasgow and the west of Scotland’s important role as a leading textile manufacturer and the city’s dominance as a major retail centre – yes, even then. The reason for the dim light, she tells me, is to protect the precious colours from further fading.

I can’t help feeling a little faint when I’m introduced to Jessie, a mannequin wearing a charming, modest, princess-line cream silk grosgrain wedding dress. It was worn by John Logie Baird’s mother, Jessie Morrison Inglis, when she married Church of Scotland minister John Baird of Helensburgh on March 18, 1878. Their famous son was, of course, the inventor of television.

We admire the silk thread fringing, crimped silk ribbon, delicate pleats, crocheted silk buttons; it’s all in cream as bleach wasn’t used then. As well as its near-perfect state, I’m stunned by the sheer skill and effort that must have gone into the making of it. Sewing machines had only begun to come in around this time, triggering the tailors’ riots, in which machines were smashed and patents burned. But although some parts of an outfit could be machine-stitched and burgeoning mass production meant women could have more in their wardrobes, made-to-measure was still considered the most high-end way to dress, as it still is today.

Jessie’s dress was designed and entirely handstitched by Miss Armour of 355 Bath Street, Glasgow.

“This is a posh wedding dress, and it illustrates the emerging trend of wearing white to be married after it was worn by Queen Victoria,” says Quinton. “Jessie was an orphan raised by her uncle John Inglis of A&J Inglis, the shipping engineers who built the Waverley paddle steamer. Her dowry bought the manse when she married Rev John Baird.

“We don’t know where Jessie and John got married. In those days people sometimes got married from home rather than church. Presumably since she was marrying a minister, it would be been the church or manse. Her wedding veil would have been three-quarter length and her headdress would have been a mix of paper and fabric forget-me-nots.”

The earliest House of Fraser dress in the Glasgow Museums’ collection dates back to September 1883. It too is off-white, a two-piece silk satin cuiress-style bodice and satin damask weave skirt attached at the waistband. It was made by Frasers Sons & Co for the wedding of Jessie Brown, the daughter of noted shipping engineer Andrew Brown, provost of Renfrew and a partner in the Clydeside dredging machinery and shipbuilding company William Simons & Co. She married from home and the wedding lunch took place at the St Enoch hotel. It was reported in the newspapers.

Beside them stands a very rare, green shot-silk Pelisse coat, purchased by Glasgow Museums at auction in the 1970s. Dating from the 1820s, it is celebrated by the conservation team here because it is unusual to have something in green that dates from before the introduction of synthetic dyes. This green would have been achieved by blending yellow and blue threads, and the colour endures. Historic textiles where yellow dye was overlayed on blue tended to lose their green colour, since yellow fades faster than blue.

And then, a gorgeous extravagant turquoise bustle bursts onto the scene. The sheer volume and movement of the fabric – silk satin – is a sight to behold and it seems to echo the exceptional cutting and stitching techniques of celebrated modern couturiers such as the late Alexander McQueen. Made in 1870-72 for a member of the Langton family of Lincolnshire, it is a prized early example of the bustle, though it doesn’t have a label to reveal much more. “It’s a bit of an interloper since it’s from England, but it’s such a good example of a different shade of synthetic blue that we felt it should be included. Again, it signalled the family wealth. The Langtons were upper middle-class gentry,” says Quinton.

“We also wanted to show this along with the green coat to illustrate that blue was celebrated as a feminine colour, due to its connotations of fidelity.” The bustle will be displayed with its back to the viewer to show it off.

Also in the exhibition is a man’s hunting coat in scarlet wool broadcloth from about 1841-43, worn by George Houston of Johnstone Castle. There’s also a red soldier’s jacket. Red costumes are intended to encourage visitors to the exhibition to consider red – and pink – as male colours in the early 1800s; pink, a lighter shade of red dye, was not yet exclusively associated with femininity as it is today. The gender split didn’t exist then; the convention of pink for girls and blue for boys is relatively recent.

Yet pink is one of the least represented colours of the 19th century womenswear collections. “We only have three or four items that are pink out of a total of 300, and that’s why I am so delighted to have this stunning example,” says Maggie Dobbie, as she leans over a table on which lies a pale pink bishop-sleeved dress with full skirt and pleated bodice, and prepares to clean it. “It was bought at auction in 1978 and dates from 1833-36, but is from a dress originally made in 1760, when bright pink was in fashion.

“When I began to work on it, I realised there were old pleat marks in the bodice under the new pleats, and thought immediately that they were from an earlier 18th century dress. It fell into place because the darker pink under the pleats is the right colour for that time, and the silks are quite narrow at 20.5 inches wide, which was a typical 18th-century width. So it all pointed to being a remake. We don’t come across this kind of example very often, certainly not with such a big time gap.”

The fading is damage that occurred prior to Glasgow Museums acquiring it, but Dobbie says it is useful to see what can happen to historic dyes if they are not protected. (This is in direct contrast to a brilliant purple patterned stole from around 1856. It’s a rare example of mauvine, the first synthetic organic chemical dye that didn’t fade. Invented by a young London chemistry student William Peaking, Robert Pullar of Perth helped him develop it into commercial production.)

Dobbie adds: “Reusing was not about austerity as it is today. It was because 18th century fabric was of particularly good quality. It was not over-treated with chemicals and finishes, so lasted extremely well. There’s also the romantic idea of using your grandmother’s dress. It allowed you to show that your family had money two generations back, that your family had the dosh.”

The highly tailored dresses, especially the bodices, of the later period were less easy to re-style than the earlier ones. So there tends to be more later bodices available than skirts, since their fabric could be re-used.

I almost call for smelling salts to revive me after spotting perspiration marks under the arms of the pink dress, and food stains down its front. These details alone wipe away time, and bring to life the women who lived and breathed (and ate and drank) while wearing these dresses. It’s thought that this dress would not have been the wearer’s best one.

Dobbie begins to gently surface-clean the dress with a smoke sponge to remove dirt residues. She shows me how easily it lifts as it darkens the vulcanised rubber. “It’s a dry process which doesn’t involve any liquids or chemicals, which is a great advantage as it preserves the fabric.”

She adds that dirt is best removed from textiles because it can damage the fabric. “It can be gritty and over time can sometimes cement into insoluble material which is impossible to remove.

“Some stains you have to keep because they’re important, like Nelson’s blood stains. In general though they are not helpful because they do affect the fabric and can attract insects.”

Seeing the ghosts of my own city’s past become a reality once more through the medium of costume is a fascinating and affecting experience, and I feel almost sorry to have to leave them. But as I turn to look one last time, I get the eerie feeling that we will meet again.

A Century Of Style: Costume |And Colour 1800-1899 will run at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum from Friday (September 25), until February 24, 2016 Glasgowlife.org.uk/museums