Upcoming Lecture Series: The Social History of Dress in 19th Century Canada

Do you have some old family photographs but don’t know when they were taken? Do you know some of the major fashion innovations and stylistic changes in the 19th century that can be of help in dating old photographs?

If you want to learn more, please join me for this two-part lecture series at the North York Central Library branch in Toronto. This course is intended as a primer on the social history of dress seen in 19th century photographs from the Victorian age to the Edwardian age, with a special emphasis on Canadian history.

Victorian photography offers a glimpse into another time. Not long after photography was invented in 1839, the medium allowed families and individuals to preserve their likeness in a matter of minutes. For the first time in history, all classes of society could stop time, preserving the reflected light of their image for generations to come. These images are embedded with clues related to codes of dress and behaviour marking them as mirrors of their age.

The lectures will be illustrated and there will be handouts.  Weather permitting, I hope to bring in a small selection of 19th century artifacts, such as fashion journals, garments and accessories, as well as examples of Victorian photographs including a daguerreotype, tintype, carte des visites, and cabinet cards. To close, there will be a discussion on best practices for the care of old photographs and extant garments to assist with preserving precious family artifacts.

The lectures will be held on Tuesday, February 18th and 25th from 2-4 pm.

Advance registration is required. For further information, email courses@torontofamilyhistory.org or visit the Ontario Geneological Society website.

What's on the December Fashion Exhibition Calendar

With the holiday season in full swing, stepping into a museum can bring a dose of beauty and grace into an otherwise busy schedule. Here are my top three picks of museum exhibitions for December 2013.

A Queer History of Fashion at FIT Museum in New York

A Queer History of Fashion, FIT Museum

This exhibition celebrates the influence of gay and lesbian designers on fashion and traces the origins of cross-dressing to its historical roots. This exhibit, co-curated by Valerie Steele and Fred Dennis, literally blew me away by its originality and the depth of research that underpinned its creation. Since I had expected a show that was contemporary in focus, I was surprised to learn that there is a 300 year history to consider, going back to the 18th century when cross-dressing “mollies,” foppish “macaronis,” and “men milliners” challenged gender roles. "This is about honoring the gay and lesbian designers of the past and present. By acknowledging their contributions to fashion, we want to encourage people to embrace diversity," said Dennis on the FIT Museum site. With an innovative presentation format that I had not seen in the FIT gallery before which moved the focus to the centre of the gallery away from the walls, the exhibit is also visually stunning. The show closes on January 4, 2013, but is also accessible through an exhibition website. 

On Winning Awards

When this post goes live, I will be at Holt Renfrew about to deliver my speech at the Ryerson University School of Fashion Awards Night. I am not winning an award, but I am the guest speaker, which is typically chosen from the pool of alumni. I assumed it was my job to say some inspirational words, so I decided to share a bit of my own story.

I am not intending to read my remarks, so it might not come out exactly like this. I pre-cleared my speech with the Awards Committee and one of them suggested that maybe I should read it so I wouldn't "miss a syllable". Let's just hope that this is one of those times that my words sound golden.

Ingrid Mida with the Lanvin gown
Photo courtesy of the National Post

Here goes:

I already had a graduate degree when I signed up to do the Master of Arts degree at Ryerson.  But this is the degree I had to work the hardest for. For my MA in Fashion, I juggled the needs of my husband and two teenage boys, the responsibility for my elderly frail mother, work and many other commitments. I also had to deal with my insecurities and doubts about going back to school as a mature student. If truth be told, I almost dropped out at the end of first term, not because I couldn’t handle it, but because I wasn’t sure that it would make any difference in the end. With the encouragement of Dr. Kimberly Wahl, I stuck with it and earned a cumulative GPA of 4.220.  

Perhaps the best part of my story began on February 12, 2012 when Dr. Alison Matthews David opened an unmarked door for me on the seventh floor of the library. Behind that door was a dusty room, packed with boxes, bins, cupboards, and racks of clothing, accessories and fashion ephemera. While most of the other students were reviled by what they saw -- the dust, the mess and the smell -- I saw opportunity. I stepped forward and took on a project that was far bigger, messier, and more difficult than I ever imagined. 

This was not the first time I’d taken on a challenging project, and I’ll admit there have been more bumps in the road than I like to remember. I did not do it for thanks, for an award or for press. What drove me forward was the knowledge that most students do not have the curatorial connections that I do, or the financial means to go anywhere else to do object-based research. Behind that door in the library, there were gowns by Balenciaga, Balmain, Dior, Nina Ricci, Valentino and other designers. There were also Canadian success stories like Ruth Dukas, Claire Haddad, Alfred Sung, Marilyn Brooks and Canadian labels like Holt Renfrew, Eaton's Simpson's, and Morgan's. All of these items had been neglected and forgotten for several years. 

I think I’ve helped ensure that it will be forgotten no more. And, I’m pleased to say that the collection is now safely stored in renovated facilities in Kerr Hall West. The images that you see on the posters behind me are examples of some of my favourite pieces in the collection and I would like to acknowledge that these lovely photographs were taken by Jazmin Welch with the help of Kate O’Reilly. 

There are many more beautiful garments that were not photographed - including a stunning ruby red silk velvet jacket by Christian Dior that just today I matched to a photograph in Harper's Bazaar from September 1949.  - and I want to invite you to come and visit the Fashion Research Centre if you would like to see more. Or if you don’t have time to come in, check out the collection blog and Pinterest sites. Or follow me on twitter. My aim is to be the antithesis of the cranky curator – to make the Fashion Research Centre a welcoming and friendly place where there is no such thing as a stupid question. 

I would like to close by congratulating all of you for your achievements and awards. You should savour this moment and be proud of yourself. Celebrate and enjoy tonight.  I hope you will continue to follow your dreams and live your passions. Make your mark. 

Book Review: The Wedding Dress, 300 Years of Bridal Fashion by Edwina Ehrman

Cover image of The Wedding Dress by Edwina Ehrman

Museum collections often receive many offers of evening or bridal wear, since these garments are emblems of the emotional ties that such special event clothing can have for the wearer. Wedding dresses, in particular, are loaded with symbolism and embody memories of that special day. In present times, a wedding gown is typically white and only worn once, but this wasn't always so. Unpacking the complex history of the wedding gown is a book by Edwina Ehrman, Curator of Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum called: The Wedding Dress, 300 Years of Bridal Fashions.

This meticulously researched book draws on the extensive collection of wedding gowns in the Victoria & Albert Museum collection, as well as paintings, fashion plates, photographs, letters, memoirs, newspaper accounts and genealogical records. Not only does this book consider the history of the white wedding dress from 1700 to the present day, it addresses the cultural factors that have influenced and refreshed the stylistic changes over time.

On this and that...

Dress Collection of the Lousiana State Museum
Photo by Ingrid Mida 2013

I don't usually ramble, but have not written on this blog in over two weeks. It feels like no time and a lifetime all in one. People often ask me how I get so much done, and yet I often wonder where does the time go?

If you missed it, there was an article written by Nathalie Atkinson of the National Post about my work in editing the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection called "Lanvin in the Library". My elderly mother, who was once a librarian, loved the title, and finally understood what it is that I do - to her, I'm like a librarian for old clothes! I've also had lots of questions about whether I ever try on clothes in the collection, and that is something that is strictly forbidden by International Committee of Museums Practice Guidelines. Doing so would be considered highly unethical. I cannot say that I haven't been tempted to do so - who can resist a Dior after all - but I must resist and I do. I've never, ever done so and shudder with horror and yell out "THAT IS NOT ALLOWED" when someone looks like they are going to....

I couldn't be more pleased with the coverage for the Collection. A very generous and kind donor (who prefers to remain anonymous) offered to cover the cost of the cataloguing software for the collection. This the first step in helping to ensure its longevity. Funding at the university is very, very tight, and since all fundraising efforts must be co-ordinated by the Development Office, technically I am not even allowed to ask for money.... But, I believe so very passionately in what I do and just love to help students, and hope and pray that a generous donor will step forward to help ensure this collection lives on.

Engaging Students with Objects

Black silk parasol with cream cordwork embroidery, c.1900-1910.
FRC 1989.02.001

The weather looks lovely in New Orleans for this coming week. I'll be flying down south on Tuesday afternoon to speak at the ITAA Conference on the topic of Engaging Students with Objects: Preliminary Experiments in Reviving a Dormant Fashion Research Collection.

Thanks to the support of Dr. Lu Ann Lafrenz,  a grant from the Learning & Teaching Office at Ryerson University, and the work of two very talented students - Jazmin Welch and Kate O'Reilly - (who worked together to photograph 160 garments, accessories and other artifacts that I selected for this project), I have lots of beautiful images to chose from to illustrate my talk.

Here is the abstract:

Balenciaga Evening Gown, c.1957-1962
FRC1992.01.019 A

Seeing a dress in a photo is a very different experience than feeling the weight of the fabric in hand, examining the details of cut, construction and embellishment, considering the relationship of the garment to the body or searching for evidence of how the garment was worn, used or altered over time. Study collections offer students the opportunity to engage with actual objects, offering physical specimens for design inspiration and material culture studies. Susan Pearce conveyed the narrative power of artifacts when she wrote: “Objects hang before the eyes of the imagination, continuously representing ourselves to ourselves and telling the stories of our lives in ways which would be impossible otherwise”(1992).

120 Years of French Lingerie at the Design Exchange

Our mothers used to spend a lot of time and money on lingerie and I think they were right. Real elegance is everywhere, especially in the things that don't show. 

Christian Dior 

19th century corset
Carolle Patrimony
Photo by Ingrid Mida 2013

Lingerie shapes a woman's body, creating curves or flattening them depending on the fashionable silhouette of the time. In the exhibit of French lingerie at the Design Exchange, curator Catherine Orman combed the archives of French lingerie manufacturers to create a display that traces the history of women's undergarments from the later part of the 19th century to the present day.  

Fashionable Lingerie and the Lingerie Française Exhibit at the Design Exchange

"Your frocks cannot hang perfectly unless your lingerie is cut to fit you perfectly underneath. Lovely lingerie is the basis for good dressing."

Christian Dior

Toronto's Design Exchange hosts Lingerie Française, a retrospective covering over 100 years of French lingerie  from eleven renowned French lingerie manufacturers — Aubade, Barbara, Chantelle, Empreinte, Implicite, Lise Charmel, Lou, Maison Lejaby, Passionata, Princesse tam.tam and Simone Pérèle. Presented chronologially, the exhibit includes 125 artifacts of luxurious lingerie from corsets to matched bras and pantysets.

This travelling exhibition, which has included stops in Paris, London, Shanghai, Dubai, Berlin and New York, is intended to convey  the influence lingerie products have been exerting on society from the late nineteenth century up to the present day. The exhibition is sponsored by French association PROMINCOR and Défi-La Mode de France.

 Catherine Orman examining the Balmain gown
(That's my hand and hair just visible on the left)
Photo by Robert Ott, 2013

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of having the curator of this exhibit Catherine Orman come to visit the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection. Although I was so tired (from several very late nights working on my book proposal) that I was barely coherent, we chatted about two recent corset acquisitions for the Collection, as well as some of my favourite gowns, including a Pierre Balmain couture gown called Marie Antoinette from 1955-1959 as well as a Lanvin wedding gown from c.1925-35.

The exhibit at the Design Exchange is on now until October 13, 2013. Admission is free. 

Design Exchange, 234 Bay Street, Toronto. 

Memories of a Dress

From London to Chicago.... it feels like a whirlwind. This weekend, I will be attending the Costume Society of America Mid-west conference in order to present my project: Memories of a Dress. 

Peach and cream silk evening gown c.1910-1915
Ryerson Fashion Research Collection
Photo by Ingrid Mida 2012

Here is the abstract for my talk:

Clothing is material memory, carrying the imprints of our body, absorbing sweat and stains, and straining with the stress of wear, especially at seams, hems and closure points. Although museums and study collections generally seek to collect items in near-perfect condition, there are stories hidden in the marks and stains of living. In a poetic essay, Peter Stallybrass describes how the clothes of his late colleague Allon White triggered sensory memories. “He was there in the wrinkles of the elbows, wrinkles that in the technical jargon of sewing are called ‘memory’; he was there in the stains at the very bottom of the jacket; he was there in the smell of the armpits” .

The Ryerson University Fashion Research Collection is a repository of several thousand garments and accessories acquired by donation, with the oldest garments dating back to 1860. For several years, this collection was dormant and largely unknown by the student body, and in editing the collection I examined each and every item within the storage facility. It was during the process of handling of each piece that I was haunted by the traces of the makers in the hand-stitching and the turns of the hem, and by the traces of the owners in the faint sweat stains under the arms and the worn patches at the elbows. There is such poignancy in these pieces, because they are still beautiful, but not to a pristine, museum-like standard. Some of these garments are in an advanced stage of decomposition, literally crumbling into dust due to the presence of weighted silk, and embody a duality of beauty and decay, life and death, emptiness and nostalgia, memory and transience. These fragments, which mirror the fragmentary nature of the records, became the source of my curatorial obsession.

In this project called Memories of a Dress, I created a series of photographs focusing on the rare historic garments in the Collection, and manipulated those images to suggest narratives that evoke the concepts of memory, fragility and transience. Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida defined photography as an artistic medium that was intimately linked with death as “a witness of something that is no more”, and this project fixes the process of decomposition in time, marking a moment that has already passed as the items continue on their trajectory into dust. 

Introducing the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection Blog

CN Tower Jumpsuit, c.1970s
Ryerson Fashion Research Collection
FRC2013.99.003

As you may know, I am the Acting Curator/Collection Co-ordinator for the Ryerson Fashion Research Collection and recently started a Collection blog. This new blog at www.ryerson-fashion-research-collection.com is part of the effort to create a digital portal into the Collection and was supported by a grant from the Learning and Teaching Office at Ryerson University. I invite you to visit the blog and subscribe by email if you wish to receive the posts that way. I'll be rolling out the 100 key artifacts over the course of the year. Here are some of my favourite dresses, although truth be told there are many more....

Fashion Postcards

18th Century Gowns in Store from the Museum of Costume in Bath

When I visit an exhibition of fashion in the museum, I am often tempted to buy the exhibition catalogue, but sometimes they are so heavy that I know that it will tip my luggage into the overweight category. At those moments, I often will buy a handful of postcards - just to remember the highlights. I have a box full of them and I also occasionally get one in the mail (like the beautiful one from the Museum of Costume in Bath, which I have yet to visit).

Here are some of my favourite fashion postcards.

YSL from YSL Foundation in Paris

The House of VIktor&Rolf, Barbican Gallery in London

A Summary of Fashion Exhibitions

Oyster Dress
Alexander McQueen, Savage Beauty
Photo by Solve Sunsbo Studio courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

I recently wrote an essay on Fashion + Curatorial Practice for an upcoming book called Fashion + X - The Medial Interactions of Clothing edited by Dr. Rainer Wenrich. In attempting to figure out how to approach the topic of fashion in the museum, I looked back at the many fashion exhibitions that I've visited and written about since 2008. I thought it would be fun to revisit those here. The links are active and will take you back to my review and more pictures!

Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective, 1962-2002

Montreal Museum of Fine Art, May 28 - September 28, 2008. 

Flowerbomb Gallery, The House of Viktor&Rolf
Installation Shot by Ingrid Mida 2008

The House of Viktor & Rolf

Barbican Art Gallery, London. June 18 - September 21, 2008.

Costume of the Court and Royal Ceremonies in Europe 1650-1800

Palace of Versailles, March 31, 2009-June 28, 2009.

Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out.

FIT Museum, June 17 - September 26, 2009.

On a Pedestal

Bata Shoe Museum, April - September 20, 2010. 

The Concise Dictionary of Dress.

Blythe House, London. April 28 - June 27, 2010.