Hi readers, or I guess I should say, listeners! I hope you’re doing well. This week’s post is exciting and new for me because I have never recorded a podcast. I hope this is fun and informative for you all to listen to. I was excited to learn more about the topic I picked this week. I have attached my transcript of the podcast in case you need closed captioning.
When I was thinking about what I wanted to write and speak about for this week’s blog post podcast, I was inspired by my experience at Ball State University’s collection of historical clothing and accessories. This collection is called the Mary Beeman Historic Collection and it is filled with donated clothing, accessories, and shoes from more than 100 years ago. I did not know that my university had a historic collection of clothing until this year, my junior year, and now it is something that I am actually able to work with and study due to one of my fashion classes I am taking currently. I would probably not know we had this collection without taking this specific class. It is called Fashion Promotions and as a class we are actually creating an event that will showcase clothing, accessories, and shoes from this collection that we think is interesting and a good representation of the entire collection. This event will be like a live museum that guests can walk through to learn more about our collection and look at historical garments and separate outfits from our own closets that we have put together that are inspired by those pieces that we pulled from this collection.
Because I have been able to visit the Beeman Collection of Historic Clothing and explore some of the collection recently, I was inspired to research how other colleges and museums collect clothing, shoes, and accessories and any facts I could find about how they preserve them. I chose this topic because of my recent visits to my university’s collection and because I have always found preservation interesting because I enjoy visiting museums to see historic pieces such as shoes and clothing from various eras.
An article that I found that has helped me learn more about historical garment and shoe preservation was an article written by the New York Times that discussed the “unofficial Smith College Historic Clothing Collection: of 3,000 dresses, suits, shoes, bags, and accessories.” The article discussed that in order to even look at the collection you have to “descend a flight of stairs and pass through a cinder block corridor into a windowless space that is home to these articles”. It stated that the entirety of their collection is housed in 50 metal storage lockers in the basement of the theater department of their women’s college. These historical pieces are crammed among costume racks and cardboard boxes, jammed together on padded hangers, stacked on shelves, and squirreled away in any available nook and cranny.”
When I picture this visualization, it is a similar reflection of the condition of the Beeman Collection building. One major difference that I realized between the Smith College collection and our collection is that it is not housed in a windowless space in a cinder block room. Our collection is located in a real house with windows in every room. All of the clothing is housed in every room except for the kitchen of course. I am assuming that the reason their clothing is housed in a windowless, storage locker is so that they are able to maintain the temperature and light that affects the clothing, shoes, and other pieces.
The description of how the clothing is stored is similar to how it is stored at our university. We also use every nook and cranny of our available space for our shoes and clothes. We have hundreds of boxes (original and not original) holding shoes that have been donated stacked on shelves, and thousands of historical garments hanging on padded hangers as well. For the pieces that are much older, they are in dress bags with tags on the outsides to describe what is inside the bag.
The tagging method at our collection is interesting to me as well. It allows the visitor to see what year the piece or pieces is from, who donated it and when, and how to care for the item, such as with or without extra care. The New York Times article was interesting because it named some of the famous items that are housed in the Smith collection, such as “designer names like Claire McCardell and Mary Quant, and some garments that belonged to famous people, such as Sylvia Plath’s Girl Scout uniform. But, the majority of their items have unknown origins that may be stained, torn, mended and otherwise flawed in some way that reflects the exigencies of real life: families, responsibility, and hardship.”
I think this is evident in the shoe and clothing collection at Ball State as well. Although we do have a large selection of exciting, perfect garments donated by famous people and historic donors to Ball State (such as women from the Ball family) there is a multitude of shoes, clothes, and accessories that aren’t as perfectly untouched. Like the article was saying, most of the time these are the pieces and garments that get overlooked and are dismissed by museums and collectors of apparel. But I am glad that at our collection, we did not dismiss these pieces that were donated to us to use for study and presentations. I think it is important that we are able to study these historic items of dress even if you can see their wear and tear, because at some point, they meant something to someone. If you don’t think about it, a pair of shoes from the 1940s might be insignificant today, but really they are a rich piece of art and fashion history that is very valuable for study and understanding of that time period.
One of the reasons universities and museums collect historical garments, shoes, and accessories is because they are valuable. Not only are they valuable in the aspect of storytelling and historical understanding, but they also hold monetary value. Most of the time, the older the piece is, the higher the monetary value for it is. But there are also decades and certain designers of shoes and clothing and accessories that are more valuable than others due to their rarity or design. These are the facts that the museums and universities want to uncover.
Something interesting that sets Smith’s College apart from other colleges with a historical collection of clothing is their focus on what they approve for their collection. The article states that “other colleges and universities maintain textile and apparel collections, including Drexel and Iowa State, but Smith’s focus on women’s clothing and more specifically on women’s “social uniforms” – clothing that signifies identity and functions as part of the archaeology of gender, complete with usage markers – sets it apart.” This focus has definitely made their collection more valuable and different than the others. I know that our collection at Ball State is not this narrowly focused, we have men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel from hundreds of years and different lifestyles, but it would make the collection more prestigious if we were more selective and narrowly focused.
I agreed with a segment of the article that really gets down to why a preserving historical apparel is important. “It’s not about couture, said Jan Reeder, a fashion historian who was a curator and Smith graduate, but “it’s about how we study the past in a very intimate way.” I think this is a great point. The idea that the clothing has to be couture, from someone famous, or just generally more expensive derails the viewer from possibly studying clothing that would be more intimate and used in the everyday life of the mass population during that time period. I also thought this point was well interpreted by the article when it stated “Generally, when building costume collections, the most famous museums not dedicated purely to fashion or textiles – the Metropolitan or the Victoria and Albert – look to pieces defined as ‘exceptional’ and ‘leading.’ That is, garments or textiles that speak to the decorative arts, or moments of great historical significance, as opposed to the quotidian nature of everyday life.”
This points out the fact that it is most likely that museums will be more narrow-focused and selective on what pieces they choose to display and why they choose to display them. This makes me think that universities and independent collectors are more likely to preserve large selections of apparel in different levels of wear and tear, allowing them to tell more than one, narrowly focused story, or theme, with their collection.
This is exactly what Ms. Smith from Smith’s Collection of Historic Clothing did. She built a collection that she defines as “a liberal arts archive that advances the academic inquiry of women of diverse economic and social backgrounds through the study of their dress from the 19th century to today.” Her collection of clothing and shoes from the 19th century to today was also donated by alumna, similar to Ball State and other university collections, or she purchases them from auctions or websites like eBay. I thought it was very admirable that Ms. Smith funds much of the shopping and donations for the collection herself. She is providing the resources to continue the exploration and study of her historical apparel collection largely by herself.
Another reason historical preservation is important is because we are now living in an increasingly technologically based era. The idea that historical preservation still has a physical aspect is important and allows the viewer to physically connect with the past and specific story of the shoes or clothes that they are holding. It is also possible that these collections, in museums and universities could become more technologically integrated. This could range from a technological database being located on-site for visitors to use to understand exactly what is right in front of them, or a website that allows remote studying of the collection. My university’s collection does have a database on site that would allow me to look at what the collection holds — without actually going through thousands of apparel items – but I think that is the fun part and is what I have done the times I have been able to visit with my class.
But, adding technological advancements to a collection like Smith’s is hard to find funding for. Not many universities or individual curators are able to find funding for advancements in building space, technology, or the apparel because not many investors see the worth in it. It is true that it is hard to quantify what an entire historic collection’s worth would actually be. The article brought up a good point about why this is the case today: “It lies in notions about the value of honoring and studying the lives of women, not in any specific dollar amount tied to the quality of a textile or the profile of the person who once wore it. Clothing is also expensive to protect and display; it requires climate control and appropriate light and storage. At a time when institutions of higher learning are undergoing budget cuts and are under increasing pressures to elevate the STEM disciplines, the math to save a dress collection doesn’t necessarily add up.”
This idea that saving a dress collection would be unreasonable because it might not be as valuable as other uses of resources in museums or universities is simply not true. These collections are rich resources of stories and history that go deeper than just the physical representation of the apparel. Although these collections can be a large investment, they are more valuable than any monetary amount because the donated clothes, shoes, and accessories played a role in someone’s life once, and they can again. The preservation efforts of these collections in museums and universities allow for visitors to experience a physical piece of history that would otherwise never be attainable without the given funding and other resources.
I am thankful that I was able to see the collection of historical clothing at my university. It has helped me appreciate the history of fashion and the value of the story that these items hold. I hope that I have helped you learn a little bit more about the ideas, processes, and current events around preservation of historic apparel in museums and universities.
If you would like to read the article that I used for my research, I have included the link. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/fashion/smith-college-clothing-collection.html
Thanks for listening or reading,
Until next time,
Anna
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