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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities, Part I, an interview with Dr. Colleen Hill
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Cassie Zachary
The History of Fashion is a production of dress media with over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day we all get dressed.
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April Callahan
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear. We are friends, fashion historians and your.
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Cassie Zachary
Hosts, Cassie Zachary and April Callahan. Cast in the immortal words of the American writer and early 20th century icon Dorothy Parker, quote the cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. And if that's the case, cure us not this week as we revel in the peculiar and particular historic phenomenon of the Wunderkammer, or Cabinet of Curiosities.
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April Callahan
Cabinets of Curiosities date all the way back to the early 16th century and in many ways were a private collector's precursor to museum collections. So they're an assortment of rare and unusual objects assembled by an individual who displayed them in cabinets or casement pieces, while other collections could fill entire rooms. And Cabinets of Curiosity were a place of investigation and awe and could contain just about anything under the sun that the collector deemed worthy. This included everything from botanical and biological specimens to ancient coins, decorative art objects, tools, musical instruments. I mean, really, nothing was off limits. And that of course, includes uncommon objects of dress.
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Cassie Zachary
And the historic precedent of fashion in the Wunderkammer, or Cabinet of Curiosities, is the subject of the exceptionally innovative new exhibition at the museum at fit, a Cabinet of Curiosities, which is now on view through April 20, 2025. This week, the exhibition's curator, Dr. Colleen Hill, the senior curator at the Museum at FIT, joins us for a two part exploration of fashion, past and present through the lens of the Wunderkammer.
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April Callahan
Our regular listeners will recall Dr. Hill joined us back in 2021 to discuss her in depth research on fashion of the 1990s. And we are so, so pleased that she returns all this week. Colleen, welcome back to dressed.
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Cassie Zachary
Dr. Hill, a very warm welcome back to Dressed.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Thank you. Great to be here.
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Cassie Zachary
Yeah. And I want to stress the doctor part. Congratulations, my friend. You recently completed your PhD. And I'm mentioning this very specifically here because the entire topic of our discussion today has literally been years in the making. It was the subject of your PhD research. And I have to say, it's such an inventive realm of inquiry. As far as I know, I don't think anybody has ever looked into the presence of fashion and dress in these types of historic collections. This is definitely forging into brand new territory. And the results are charming, they're fascinating, they're novel. Thank you for this. I think one of the premises of the show really asks the viewer to engage with their innate curiosity in hopes of, like, sparking feelings of awe and wonder. And that's so fun to see in a fashion exhibition.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Thank you so much. That was definitely a huge goal of my PhD research, and I was actually able to study the psychology of curiosity with the trained psychologist. So it was really a great way to reinvigorate my curatorial practice and hopefully pique the curiosity of our visitors.
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Cassie Zachary
Yeah, I do want to talk a little bit about the history of collecting objects and museums. Before we can get to museums, though, we have to talk about what came first. So what is or was a Cabinet of Curiosity or Wunderkammer, and where and when do we start to see them emerge?
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Sure. Well, I'm going to keep this response brief because I think we'll get into a nitty gritty of cabinets. I think the easiest way to think of them is as precursors to the modern museum. And they were collections of rare and extraordinary or interesting or scientifically important objects that were collected in Europe from essentially the 16th through the 18th centuries.
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Cassie Zachary
And also, too, I think one of the really interesting points that you made in the exhibition text is that one of the first precedents for collecting objects and then putting them on public display actually began with the Catholic Church, which was very interesting to me. How so? What were they doing was kind of.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Surprising to me, too. As I was doing this PhD research on the cabinets of curiosities, of course, I kept having to ask myself a lot of questions, and one of the questions was, okay, so we start to see these collections building in the 16th century. Where did they come from? They didn't just come from nowhere. And I was quite surprised to learn that some Historians feel that it was the collecting practices of the medieval Catholic Church that led to the expansion of collecting in the 16th century. And that was really about the acquisition and display of religious relics and other sacred artifacts. And of course, those have some interesting and evident overlaps between what was in the churches and the cabinets of curiosities. They're often human anatomical specimens. And I think we'll talk a little bit about why those were collected in the cabinets and how I've connected those to fashion. But the relics themselves in these churches were often highlighted through special trains or vessels that drew attention to them and really underscored their significance. And of course, was intended to inspire awe. And so you can see this direct line as we move into the 16th century, the idea of more awe inspiring objects becoming those that were collected through global travel and trade, that were related to new scientific discoveries. And there was also a greater interest in collecting artwork. So there is an interesting line that you can trace from these early religious relics.
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Cassie Zachary
Yeah, yeah.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Also too.
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Cassie Zachary
And that I'm just like building another connecting thread here for many years within the study of museology. So for any of our listeners who might not be familiar with that term, it's basically the study of the role of museums within society. So for many years for us, a major focus of the discourse in museology has been how the inclusion or exclusion of specific objects in a collection lends credence and value to those works and the power that both curators and institutions hold in quote, unquote, validating certain pieces over others in their collecting practices. We really have to talk about here this power dynamic of who was creating these cabinets of curiosities. And this is the next part of this question is a huge, huge question. Admittedly, I know this. What type of objects were they collecting?
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Sure. I always like to start by pointing out that museums are not neutral spaces. And even as we're working in museums in the 21st century, museum staff is hopefully attempting to be as fair and factual as possible in their evaluation and assessment of objects. But there's always a bias there. So this is the result of decades, if not centuries, of how these collections have been built. There are differing opinions between museum staff members, differing social and historical contexts that shape the way we collect and perceive objects. And of course, lived experience, our own personal experiences have a lot to do with how we perceive objects as well. So all of that said, cabinets of curiosities are sometimes described as encyclopedic or universal spaces, and that is, in fact, incorrect. They were always meant to be these Kind of microcosms of knowledge. They weren't really intended to have one of everything. And they were collected by usually white European men. And they tended to be affluent, often nobility or established scholars. And of course, these men had their own tastes and interests, and so they brought their inherent bias into what was considered important from cultures around the world. And as far as your last question, what was collected? It really was a little bit of everything. It's astounding how diverse the collections were. Some of them were focused more exclusively on natural specimens, but even those tended to have other types of artifacts. Quite obviously, there were two overarching collecting categories, which was natural specimens and human made artifacts, and there was a huge breadth of types within those. But of course, a lot of my research focused on the types of fashion objects that were collected, which came from all over the world.
- [10:19]
Cassie Zachary
One of the aha. Moments that really sparked my personal curiosity is when you mentioned in the exhibition that there were many different published catalogs that actually did detailed the holdings of specific cabinets of curiosities by the 17th century. So this has been going on for quite a while. This really begs this question of, aside from the collectors themselves and perhaps their inner circle of friends and family, etcetera, how did people engage with these collections at large? And I'd love to know more about these catalogs. I'm actually chomping at the bit to see one. I'm sure some of them have been digitized online somewhere.
- [11:00]
Dr. Colleen Hill
Yeah, and maybe I'll start with that, because that was actually a really important discovery for me. I worked on a lot of this research at the height of the pandemic. And so whereas I had the opportunity to see some of the extant objects and even some freestanding cabinets prior to lockdown, I had to, of course, like many people, rethink the way I was doing everything, including research. And I realized very quickly that a lot of these really important catalogs have been digitized and actually scanned. So they're on archive.org there's many of them, dozens of them.
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Cassie Zachary
Oh, you know what I'm going to do as soon as we're done with this interview, right?
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Oh, yeah. Because I still have them all bookmarked.
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Cassie Zachary
And in one place.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
And it was such an incredible, incredible resource because you get a sense of how these catalogs looked physically. And often they have frontispieces that are meant to show what the cabinet looked like. You really have to take those with a grain of salt because they are fantastical, they are idealized, but nonetheless, they're very interesting. And Then the catalogs themselves differ quite a lot. Some of them are lists of objects, some of them are more descriptive. Some have additional engravings that show some of the objects that were collected, which is always fascinating. But really importantly, it allowed me time because I can read French, I can read Italian, I cannot read German, I was able to translate things. I was able to really take my time and dive into these objects and how these collectors wanted them to be represented. All of that said, because the cabinets were owned by elite private collectors, they were often not open to the public. So the catalogs were a way to explain to a somewhat wider group of people what was available. But they were often traded among collectors themselves and they disseminated around Europe. So if you couldn't, if you were an English collector, and perhaps you couldn't get to Italy, or you weren't certain if this Italian collection was something you might be interested in, you could engage with it through the catalog first. A really notable exception to the idea that many of the cabinets were available only to people who had particular scholarly or social credentials. So that was really the way that many people got in. An exception to that was a really wonderful 17th century cabinet by a man, or from a man named John Tradeskind, who charged a small fee, but would otherwise allow basically anyone from the public to access this incredible collection.
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Cassie Zachary
Yeah, and also, too, I just realized that we haven't really clearly defined yet what we mean by cabinets. And these are not like tiny little furniture structures. Would you tell us more about what we mean in this context and also perhaps to define Wunderkammer?
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Oh, sure. The cabinets themselves are really fascinating because they could be a freestanding piece of furniture, and technically they could be tiny, but most of the time they weren't. A really famous one is the Augsburg Cabinet, which is now in Uppsala, Sweden. And it is a large freestanding piece of furniture that housed about a thousand objects. So in one piece of furniture, so you can get a sense of the scale of that. But they could. The cabinets could also be a room, or they could be a series of rooms. And so they could be vast and contain tens of thousands of objects. And Wunderkammer is a term that's often used. It's cabinets of curiosities is a sort of translation of that. It's basically meant to mean wonder cabinet or cabinet of wonders. And within the exhibition, I have a section that's the Kunstkammer and that is specific to artwork. So a cabinet. And sometimes those two are used interchangeably, but I really use them distinctively. And yes, a lot of times people actually a little bit more familiar with the German term than they are. Its English translation.
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Cassie Zachary
Many years ago, when you first told me the topic of your PhD research, I was super duper surprised to learn that fashion and dress held such a significant place in many of these various Wunderkammer. I had been familiar with the concept as. More as you referred to earlier, natural specimens. Like we're talking like taxidermied animals and butterfly collections and those types of things. But what types of clothing were being included in them? And do you have any particular collectors or specific cabinets which stand out for their inclusion of garments and accessories?
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Sure, a lot of what was the most Prestigious type of fashion collected was from the so called New World, meaning the Americas. And that really provides compelling information on the type of clothing that was worn by indigenous Americans. At the time of its collection, it was often ceremonial because a lot of the reason that European collectors were looking at fashion from around the world was to get a sense of their culture. And I would say, however, the most popularly collected item across the board, even if it was a tiny collection that had very few examples of fashion, oftentimes they would have a pair or two of shoes. And I found that particularly interesting because I have worked on a couple of exhibitions on shoes. I've written a couple of books on shoes. They are still really fascinating to people. And they also were in the 16th through the 18th centuries. But I think beyond the fact that they're just of general interest and you can really understand how they were worn on the body more easily than many other types of fashion. They were also easy to transport and easy to play. And I think that if a collector was interested in representing a particular culture, shoes were an easy way to do that. And also what's quite fascinating about fashion as it's collected across the cabinets is that it does tend to be non European. And one exception to that is that some collectors in England, for example, would collect chopines which actually came from Italy or Spain, because they weren't the type of fashion that was being worn in other parts of Europe. So that was an interesting exception.
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Cassie Zachary
Just just to insert here very briefly, chopines for some of our listeners who might not know, are these spectacularly tall, kind of like platform creations that particularly Italian women were wearing. And they could be, gosh, what's the tallest pair that you've ever seen?
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Ooh, good question. Inches at least. What Elizabeth Semmelhack, if she's listening to this, will be like, I know the answer. Very tall.
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Cassie Zachary
Yeah. So much so that these were not necessarily practical garments that a lot of these aristocratic women and also courtesans, we must say, were wearing, that they actually had to have assistance when they were wearing them. And that was part of the performance of their femininity in public spaces. So side note there. Yeah.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
And they're very sculptural. And I think that's still is an appeal of shoes and high fashion shoes as we perceive them today. Absolutely.
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Cassie Zachary
Yes. Yes. And I'm sorry I interrupted.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Not at all. Thank you. Yes. I forget that show peens are a specialized thing. I also love the question regarding collectors because I don't think I realized until you ask this question that I do have favorite collectors and what, if anything. And one is, of course, John Truduskin, who I have mentioned already, his collection was based just outside of London, and his son was also a collector who took over his father's work. His father was a botanist and obviously a world traveler as well, and a collector. And so he. Collectively, these men were known as the John Tradescens. And they had an absolutely amazing collection that was so extensive that it was known as the Ark because it was representation. Yeah, it's really charming. And the Tradescans really were quite interested in fashion. A lot of collectors were. And the Tradescans just had such a huge collection that it's not surprising. They had a lot of examples of fashion, but they in particular had a lot of shoes. And there's actually a book by published on this collection from the early 1980s that includes notes from the famed footwear historian June Swan, which was a really fantastic early find for me. But it's also important because, as you might imagine, even though these objects were newly collected, as they were making their way into cabinets of curiosities, they were often poorly attributed. Swann's research really helped to point out that there were shoes from Peru, from Canada, from China, from Japan, Turkey, Spain, Russia. That's just part of the list. They had a really representative collection, and some of these shoes still exist and are actually on view at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Fantastic. Another favorite collector was a there in these nobleman, Lodovico Moscardo, and he was also an academic. And I was particularly interested in his collection early on because another historian described it as the most confused of all of the. Oh, I have to know what this is, because believe me, a lot of these collections were pretty confused. And. But what I loved about his work is that he spent a lot of time on his catalog. And a lot of the catalogs, as I mentioned, could be a little listy. In fact, even the Tradescans has lists of shoes from Portugal or wherever without a lot of description. And Moscardo's text is notably verbose. And one of the things I noticed early on is that it has a lot of images, which is rare because that was expensive. And one of those images is of a shoe, which was fantastic because as important as fashion was to these collections, it wasn't, I believe, as considered as financially valuable as Roman coin, for example. So the fact that he loved this shoe so much says a lot. He describes it as being so beautifully made. He says it's from India very well, maybe. But he describes it as being so Beautifully made that it basically outdoes what any Italian craftsperson could do, which I found quite a spectacular reference. And even more important to me is that Moscardo makes citations in this catalog, which is astounding. And he cites a 15th century text on shoes. And he also references another earlier collector's holdings and says that this collector had a similar pair of shoes, which was just so interesting to me because it was so in line with how scholars work today. And it very clearly evidenced that collectors were looking at each other's catalogs and learning from them.
- [25:03]
Cassie Zachary
As you mentioned, a lot of these collectors were world travelers. And so they were the ones venturing out into the world and bringing back these objects. But that wasn't necessarily always the case. Right. Sometimes they were purchasing them from other people. And that's one of those things that makes that veracity of the information so important and sometimes questionable.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Exactly. And I think what's really important to note about these cabinets of curiosities, and I mentioned this, of course, in my dissertation, but also in the exhibition, is that these really were products of colonialism. And that's not something that should be overlooked. So even though a lot of collectors loved these objects that they were collecting, and sometimes there are these stories about trade and these positive exchanges of information between Europeans and other cultures, we can't be certain of that. And oftentimes these more positive exchanges were the ones that were documented. And so we know there was a lot of colonizing and unfair and unethical ways of collecting these things. So it's certainly something to keep in mind. As much as we may admire these collections, they have this dark underlying history.
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Cassie Zachary
Yeah. And also that history of colonialism follows them as many of these items addressed were eventually incorporated into museum collections. Would you tell us a little bit about this kind of historic dichotomy that's inherent in museums dress collecting practices? And I'm talking about what is considered an anthropological object versus something that is positioned within the museum as being, quote, unquote, fine art.
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Absolutely. One of the things that begins to happen with some of these cabinets of curiosities collections really as early as the 17th century, but really picking up space speed in the 18th century, is that they are becoming the founding collections for public museums. And as we move into the 19th century, we're really starting to see the concept of the public or modern museum more as more closely to what we think of today. And as this happened, a lot of those items of dress ended up in anthropological museums or collections. And some of your listeners may already be familiar with the history of fashion within fine arts or even decorative arts museum collections. And that is a slow history. It took quite a while for a lot of these museums to accept fashion as an element of this world of fine art. And when that begins to take place during the later 19th century and certainly into the 20th, what is considered appropriate for a fine arts museum is not these beautiful things that were collected from around the world that ended up in the cabinets of curiosities, but more often clothing that was made in Europe and North America, usually, again, by white men. And we are still living with that legacy. And so that's something that although many 21st century fashion collections are attempting to improve that and be more inclusive in the ways that they're collecting and displaying information. I actually quote the fashion curator Christine Ticinska in my exhibition because she very astutely states that you can't undo 100 years of miscategorization and undervaluation overnight. And very true. So having these conversations and acknowledging these severe oversights in fashion collections is really important.
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Cassie Zachary
And just generally speaking, what was happening historically is that these items of quote, unquote, western dress, Euro American fashion, were being considered as more fine art objects, whereas quote, unquote, non Western dress was being filtered into anthropological categories and designations. And we still see this within the museum collections like you just referenced.
- [29:28]
Dr. Colleen Hill
Absolutely. And there are some notable exceptions to that. The early fashion collection of the Brooklyn Museum in the early 20th century was notably diverse and people loved it. So it really gives you a sense that this was still admired. But yes, it was. This dress from the Global north was considered to be, quote, unquote, superior. And that really is something that persisted for quite a long time.
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Cassie Zachary
Okay, we have to turn our attention to the exhibition itself. We haven't even gotten to that part quite yet. Would you tell us a little bit about the show's premise and how is the exhibition structured?
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Dr. Colleen Hill
Sure. Well, I'll try to make this brief because as you mentioned, it was the product of five years of work. As I mentioned, I began by really digging into the types of fashion that were collected within the cabinets of curiosities. And although there have been references to cabinets in other fashion exhibitions, Judith Clark Spector's exhibition is a great example. And of course, the Alexander McQueen exhibitions, Costume Institute in the V and A. But no one had really structured an entire exhibition around this concept, both conceptually and visually. So initially my concept, because I was working at this on a very surface level, was to make these sort of one to one comparison shells were collected in the cabinet. So here's an object with shells on it. And I do still absolutely do some of that. I think that easy comparison, if you will, is very important. And I actually start the exhibition with some of those pairings, some beautiful illustrations or engravings from the cabinets, and then some fashion that very visually relates to to that. But as I started to dig deeper into the psychology of curiosity and also the cabinets more generally, I started to think about different categories that I could relate to fashion, but that weren't centered on the fashions that were collected in the historic cabinets. So I started to think about the use of things like illusion, optical illusions, and also of course, natural specimens and how fashion has related to that and artwork and even a little bit of the sensorial and the way that people interacted with objects in the early cabinets. And that immediately opened up my mind to different types of objects and different ways of display that always relate back to the cabinets and the collecting categories within them. But also have a little bit, I hope, of a more creative approach to the topic.
- [32:25]
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- [32:58]
Dr. Colleen Hill
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- [33:03]
Dr. Colleen Hill
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- [33:29]
Cassie Zachary
One of the really special parts of the exhibition for me was this section that you title what is it? I thought this is so inventive. What is the aim of this portion of the show?
- [33:43]
Dr. Colleen Hill
One of the fun parts of being a visitor to a cabinet of curiosities was that you didn't necessarily know what things were. And sometimes having that knowledge of an unusual object was a way to assert your scholarship or authority. But it really was intended to be an amusing and enlightening experience. And to be honest, I found an object in our collection. I should back up a little bit by saying that I have worked at the museum at FIT for nearly 20 years. And there were still some boxes of accessories and smaller objects that I hadn't looked at in a very long time. And so I just looked through everything and started to think outside of, you know, well known designers or even objects that we had a lot of information on and just pique my own curiosity in that collection. And so I found an object that frankly I didn't know what it was. That's fun. So I selected, I believe it's 13 objects total. They're all accessories and they're all in one section of the exhibition in which we have included them in these wall mounted cases. And visitors are encouraged to examine the objects, think about what they might be, how they may have been worn, what they might be made from. And then we have the label copy and a corresponding image hidden under a little panel. So you actually have to lift a panel to read about the object. And I just thought that was a fun way to think about how these cabinets were often featuring objects that didn't have any kind of interpretation at all. They were just objects on a shelf or in drawers. And you just walked up to them and engaged with them without any real knowledge of where they came from or what they were.
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Cassie Zachary
And there are more than a few quirky objects in this section. Their usage or meaning has been lost to time. Do you have a couple favorites that you might want to tell our listeners about?
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Dr. Colleen Hill
I do, yes. The one that fooled me was a posy holder. It's the only posy holder that we have in our collection. And essentially these were small wearable vases. They were particularly fashionable during the Victorian era. They could be pinned to the body. They had little rings so you could string them along your finger. Some of them had small stands so you could actually place them next to you on a table. And they were primarily intended to hold nose gaze so they didn't diminish foul odors. And they were also really beautiful objects in themselves that were often made by jewelers. So when I looked at our little beautiful silver filigree piece in the box, I was like, what? What is this thing? And someone must have had the same question, because many years ago they'd added a little paper tag that said flower vase or something like that. And I was like, oh, okay, I know what this is. And then another thing I'll mention, because it was actually very important to my research, my understanding of the cabinets is that I was able to speak to about 30 people about the exhibition a couple of years ago. And I had a Number of questions for them and about what they knew about the cabinets, what they might expect in an exhibition on cabinets of curiosities, if they had any existing knowledge of them. And at the end, I showed each volunteer 10 images. Unfortunately, I couldn't have everyone physically in our space, but I showed images of objects that I thought were curious in some way. And one of them was a wire bustle from the 1880s. And of course, anyone who has worked in a fashion collection is familiar with the many different ways that bustles were made and the many materials that comprise them. And of course, I knew what this one was. It was not like the holder that initially fooled me, but I just really love that it looked so industrial to people. They could tell it was old, but because it has this really industrial look, it tended to be quite confusing. And then when I would tell them what it was, they'd be like, oh, yes, I. I understand it's meant to be lightweight, but it can also hold a lot of fabric. But as an object on its own, it, out of context, it can be quite confusing.
- [38:20]
Cassie Zachary
Yeah. You include this quote in, in your exhibition text from Julian Spalding. He wrote a book, the Poetic Museum, that I really loved. I've made a note of it. And he theorizes that, quote, objects from the distant past are often immediately interesting simply because they are out of place. And so it's that kind of slippage or disconnect that perks our curiosity about them.
- [38:44]
Dr. Colleen Hill
It is, and I think that's a really interesting point because as we move into the 19th century in particular, there's just so much more knowledge in the world. So that's where we start to see the idea of these curiosities slow slipping away. And, for example, a lot of the natural specimens that people were in awe of had either been debunked in the case of these fake mermaids, there was just more information about them. And you really start to see now that it's these kind of obscure or obsolete things that tend to be curiosity peaking.
- [39:19]
Cassie Zachary
Yeah. One of them in that section that I loved, and I've been obsessed with them since I first learned about them, were 19th century dress clips, which were a common object at that day. And the point of them was you're wearing these very long skirts during the Victorian era, and they were these little, almost like. I would equate them to almost like little jewelry pieces that were clips that you could raise and lower your skirt hem with. So just so fun. Well, you did just mention the natural world. And this really is a main Point of investigation in the cabinets of curiosities. How is the interest or a interest in nature reflected in the exhibition itself?
- [40:00]
Dr. Colleen Hill
I have two sections, in fact, that are related to this interest in nature. One is actually called Specimens, and the other is called the Aviary. And Specimens was a really, in some ways, straightforward. Because I think a lot of people, as you mentioned, are familiar with the idea of natural specimens being part of these cabinets. I started to think of the ways that fashion has referenced nature and animal life. For example, there's a really beautiful Tom Ford dress that's very heavily embellished to look like a zebra skin. And then my favorite part is that it has this horse hair trim that runs all the way down the center back. So it really does look like a zebra's mane. It's absolutely fantastic. So there were these kind of obvious references to the natural world. There were also things I previously mentioned, the mermaid. So I'll just dig into that a little bit. There were these kind of faux or constructed natural specimens that were part of some of the cabinets, and mermaids were something that people wanted to collect and did collect. But of course, the mermaids themselves were usually a monkey's head stitched to a fish's tail. And in fact, one of the things people always ask when you are putting together an exhibition is what inspired this topic? And for me, it's usually a confluence of ideas. But the mermaid bit definitely was inspiring because there's a gallery at the V and A that I was in many years ago, and it has this kind of very beautifully done, but this kind of board game. And it is a gallery that is related to cabinets of curiosities and collecting. And I played the game and landed on this spot that said something like, oh, drats, you bought a mermaid. But it was just, he said, stitched to a fish's tail. And I just thought that was so funny because I was playing the game as someone on my journey of collecting. And so honestly, that little bit inspired me because we have these dresses in the collection that are inspired by mermaids, including this really rodarte piece that I collected for my fairy tale fashion exhibition a number of years ago. So we've got some of those pieces. But I also wanted to represent the natural world in more creative ways. So because I have this topic on my mind for so long, I would go into the collections at MFIT and just think about how I could display things differently. And I think one of the great examples that many listeners may be familiar with is that the very finely pleated silk Gowns by Fortuni, the early to mid 20th century were stored, or the consumers were asked then to store these pieces by first twisting them and then coiling them and to preserve the.
- [43:09]
Cassie Zachary
The very highly guarded secret cleaning techniques.
- [43:13]
Dr. Colleen Hill
Exactly. And we still in museum, store these Fortuny gowns in the way that they were initially meant to be stored. As I was looking at things, of course, again having this on my mind, I was looking through the collections and found a sort of beige or light green Fortuny gown that was all beautifully coiled. And I thought, that looks like some kind of mollusk. So that's actually how we're displaying. So we're being a little bit creative about how modes of display can create this idea of the specimen rather than the design itself.
- [43:53]
Cassie Zachary
Interesting, huh? Will you tell us a little bit about the aviary section? Because feathers, of course.
- [44:01]
Dr. Colleen Hill
Yes, lots of feathers. The apiary was really fascinating. I'll first say that, design wise, one of the things that came up in my research on the psychology of curiosity was that people are very interested in extreme scale. So either things that are very small or very large attract attention. And of course, we have some outsized fashion objects. But my brilliant architecture and design team thought of this huge bird cage that's literally in the center of the gallery. And that, of course, really draws the eye as you're walking in, even with all of these other amazing cabinets positioned around it. So that was a really fun way to play with scale. But I've also, of course, put a number of feathered garments in there. And the apiary was quite fascinating because one of the things people may not be aware of within the cabinets is that live animals were often part of these larger collections. And those animals also came from around the world. And birds were particularly tricky to acquire and they required a lot of maintenance. So if you had birds from some global place, it was considered to be quite prestigious. And of course, fashion has also been obsessed with feathers. So I have a lot of really beautiful feathered pieces, mostly from the mid 20th century.
- [45:31]
Cassie Zachary
I was rather thrilled to see. I did not know about this until very recently, that the museum acquired a piece by Jeante Calm, who is a past dress guest. Actually, Cassidy and I ran into him in 2022. He was still an undergrad fashion design student, and he was displaying some of his work in the lobby of the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, which was part of the hundredth annual Indian Market. And literally, we rounded the corner, walked into the museum, and Cassidy and I just stopped in our tracks and we're like, what is that? And who designed that? And this is an interesting connection between two different sections within your show, because Jonte is Native American and he does use feathers quite a bit in his work. But you decided to include his work in this other section of the show, which is about craftsmanship and technical artistry. Could you tell us maybe about John Tay's piece for the museum? And he's still in grad school, right? He's still a student, and he's already being collected in museums.
- [46:35]
Dr. Colleen Hill
Amazing. Yes. Yeah, he is at Parsons. And yes, we saw some of his work on the COVID of Women's Wear Daily, and I was familiar with him and his work, thanks to you. Another press coverage, which he's gotten quite a lot of. And he is Plains Cree, and this particular garment is beaded and also embroidered with jingle cones. And so it's very beautifully constructed and just really fantastic. It took him about three weeks to make it, and it shows. And I just think there is so much passion that is evident in his work. And he has been lauded as the next Alexander McQueen, and I see that a lot, particularly feathered pieces, because McQueen also loved those sorts of motifs. But we just think his work is spectacular. And the. In this instance, the dense embellishment really gives a sense of what I was looking for in that artisanship case. And just to back up a little bit, this artisanship case was not. Or cabinet, I should say, was not something that I had initially thought of for the exhibition. And it wasn't until I spoke to those volunteers who I mentioned earlier that I realized how important that was, because one of the things I asked was, what do you love to see in fashion exhibitions? And I want to say more than 20 of those volunteers, without any other prompt, said that they love to look at craftsmanship and how things were made, and they wanted to see fashion that had an interesting design and embellishment and techniques. And I realized after hearing this a number of times and taking note, I was taking keywords as I was going along, that this was something that was also really important to cabinets, this idea of virtuosity and that things were really beautifully and astoundingly made. And so I added this cabinet to. To speak to that idea.
- [48:45]
April Callahan
Colleen, thank you so much for cracking open the cabinet doors and giving us a peek into your incredible exhibition with more than 200 objects included in the exhibit. Dress listeners, we are just getting started started today. Colleen's going to join us again on Friday to chat further with us about more of the wondrous and curious items in her exhibition, including something that I am always quite keen to learn more about and that is of course everyone should know this. My love of miniature fashion objects.
- [49:14]
Cassie Zachary
Yeah, when Colleen and I were chatting I actually mentioned to her that you are quasi obsessed with miniature objects, Cass. So there might also be a chatelaine in the exhibition as well.
- [49:26]
April Callahan
Oh her and I have been going back and forth on Instagram because she just posted a miniature shop in New York that I will be visiting and she bought a miniature Barbie.
- [49:34]
Cassie Zachary
So yes, yeah listeners, we have lots more in store for you, but I think that does it for us today. May you consider the role of curiosity in your closet next time you get dressed.
- [49:47]
April Callahan
Dresshistory.com is where you will find information about everything else we have up our slides sleeves, including our in person tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which April conducts twice a week. And then I have an upcoming fashion history class, what Women Wore to the Revolution, which I did teach in 2024. I guess I taught it last year, I'm teaching it again. So if you want to learn about the evolution and revolution of women's fashion from the 1850s to the 1920s, join me in May. You can also write to us. We always love hearing from you@hellorusthist.com and of course DM us on Instagram at Dressed Podcast, which is where we post images to accompany our episodes. If you like to search for Instagram content connected to this week's episode, you can search the hashtag dressed532 and dressed533.
- [50:35]
Cassie Zachary
Love dress but want to skip the ads. We are so excited to now be part of Airwave History Plus, a premium History plus subscription on Apple Podcasts featuring 27 popular history podcasts including ours without the ads for just $5.99 a month. More information is available at the link in our bio and more Dressed coming your way soon. Dressed the History of Fashion is a part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. You can listen and subscribe to other podcasts and their vast catalog@airwavemedia.com the history of fashion is a production of Dressed Media.
- [51:16]
Dan Souza
Hey everyone, it's Dan Souza from America's Test Kitchen. I'm super excited to let you all know that we're launching a new video podcast that takes you behind the scenes into the messy, imperfect but riveting day to day life right here in our Test kitchen. Not only do I get to talk to my colleagues about the latest taste.
- [51:31]
April Callahan
Test they attended, I just came from a test tasting of salted Caramel apple pie bars and then roasted garlic. So I apologize.
- [51:39]
Dan Souza
Or about a recipe they're developing.
- [51:41]
Dr. Colleen Hill
The thing about this recipe is it's a secret. The restaurateur refuses to tell people what.
- [51:45]
Cassie Zachary
Her secret ingredients are.
- [51:47]
Dan Souza
We also chat with amazing guests from the culinary world and beyond. The lamest joke I've ever said, I said to Marie Manford.
- [51:53]
Cassie Zachary
Great.
- [51:53]
Fashion Enthusiast
It's the workout.
- [51:55]
Dan Souza
Thanks. Make sure to subscribe to in the Test Kitchen so you don't miss an episode. You can watch in the Test Kitchen on YouTube and Spotify and listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. Can't wait to see you in the Test Kitchen.