The Costume Society of America kicked off its 48th National Symposium with some sensational news: curators Kevin Jones and Christina Johnson had received a prestigious award for the Sporting Fashion exhibition catalogue!
As stated by the CSA: "The Costume Society of America is pleased to announce Kevin Jones and Christina Johnson as recipients of the 2022 CSA Millia Davenport Publications Award for their work titled Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800-1960. Published in 2021 to coincide with a traveling exhibition of the same title, this image-rich book analyzes the impact of sports and recreation on women’s dressed identities. Jones and Johnson point to technological developments and evolving social mores as key in redefining how women presented themselves publicly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries."
Kevin Jones with the award chair, Mark Hutter, of Colonial Williamsburg, in Minneapolis.
We are honored by this generous accolade from the CSA.
Sporting Fashion Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960 is available for purchase here.
As the Art of Costume Design in Film exhibition comes to a close, we need to undress the mannequins and get the costumes ready for shipping. Now, we prepare to undo the arduous task of dressing them in the first place!
Dressing a mannequin is challenging work! People bend – mannequins don’t. Mannequins come apart in sections, which helps to manipulate stiff body parts through delicate garments. Barriers of cotton stockinette slide over each mannequin to protect the costumes. Ensembles are never altered to fit the mannequins; instead, mannequins are chosen slightly smaller than the garments and then padded out to approximate actors’ sizes using archival batting pinned or hand-sewn to the stockinette barrier. If that sounds precarious, don’t worry – mannequins, unlike actors, never get upset if poked with a needle!
Sometimes, archival tissue is used to give volume to sleeves and skirts. Entomological pins (extremely fine pins used for insect collections) are used to secure collars or close gaps. Each ensemble is gently steamed with filtered water after being dressed; ironing may be good for our clothes, but it’s too harsh on costumes. All this takes skill and dedication, but if we’ve done our jobs well, none of our efforts will ever show!
Court Bodice
Great Britain, 1761
Silver-embroidered cloth-of-gold
Helen Larson Historic Fashion Collection
FIDM Museum Purchase: Funds raised by the FIDM Museum Fashion Council [2011-2015]
2017.5.32
None of this was lost on the members of the American Institute of Conservation textile and costume specialists who visited the museum in May. We welcomed the group of about 50 people, gave a guided tour of the exhibition, and went behind the scenes for a show and tell with some FIDM Museum treasures, which were graciously referred to as a "spectacular collection" in the CSA press release. The tour included this bodice, worn by Lady Mary Douglas to King George III’s coronation at Westminster Abby in 1761.
For an article aptly entitled, "Conservators ‘speechless’ that Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to Met Gala" in the Los Angeles Times, FIDM Museum curator Kevin Jones was approached to weigh in on the recent controversy. He said, "Gravity can do a lot of damage. Whenever you move, something is giving way, even if you can’t see it. Under a microscope it would show all these little splits. And over time that would be a big problem.
"What’s at risk, Jones adds, is more than just a dress. The garment is a vehicle channeling history – "it speaks" – and damage to it has cultural consequences for generations to come. Our job is to get the garment to the next generation with as little damage as possible, so that 500 years from now, these objects are around to talk about our history, our collective history as people, design, technology, arts, and culture. All of that gets blended into a single object, in this case a garment. It represents a moment in time." (LA Times, May 3, 2022)
Read the entire article here.
