I’m looking for suggestions for textbooks for a new intro to non-western costume history course.
I have this page of non-western costume resources: https://libguides.library.ohio.edu/costumehistory/nonwestern and would also appreciate any recommendations for resources I can add here to buy or link to. (I can’t afford Bloomsbury online, though)
Thanks for sharing your expertise. I will write a summary of suggestions if there are enough to share back.
Jules Pelta Feldman Conservation and Restoration Department, Bern Academy of the Arts, Bern Technical University, Bern, Switzerland
Jules Pelta Feldman (25 Sep 2023): Conserving Performance, Performing Conservation: Kim Kardashian x Marilyn Monroe, Studies in Conservation, DOI: 10.1080/00393630.2023.2260628
Abstract: After May 2, 2022, heritage conservation briefly became a hot topic in the world of celebrity gossip. That evening, Kim Kardashian, a reality TV star and entrepreneur, wore a 60-year-old dress that had belonged to Marilyn Monroe to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Gala. In wearing Monroe’s dress, Kardashian sought to channel the glamor and celebrity of the mid-century star. She also summoned the ire of museum professionals, who considered her choice to wear a fragile historical garment a flagrant violation of conservation ethics. Yet increasingly, the discipline of conservation has come to recognize that an object’s ‘integrity’ does not rest solely in its physical materials – and the discourse of performance conservation, informed by research into the conservation of contemporary art as well as intangible cultural heritage, emphasizes the active lives of what I call ‘performative objects’ over their physical form and static appearance. Here, I posit that Kardashian’s wearing of Monroe’s dress may be understood as a form of conservation – perhaps not of the dress itself, but of the performance of which that dress was an integral part, and without which, I argue, the dress has little significance. To make this argument, I will also draw on innovative approaches to the conservation of Indigenous heritage that recognize the preservation value of reanimating objects from the past. Establishing Monroe’s dress as a ‘performative object,’ an item inextricably linked to the body in motion, I endeavor to show how performance itself preserves the past.
Header image: Cecil W. Stoughton / Official White House photo.
According to their website, The Stratford Festival, located in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, is North America’s largest classical repertory theatre company. Info about the festival’s archives can be found here.
Last Sunday I went to the ballet. The program was a sublime triple billing that began with George Balanchine’s Chaconne, a ballet he choreographed for the New York City Ballet in 1973 to Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice with an added pas de deux for muses Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins. In Chaconne, the dancers go from heaven to earth after Euridice is restored to life by Cupid and reunited with her husband Orfeo. It depends on the production, but typically there is no change in the set design as the dancers move between worlds—the location change is signalled solely by the costumes and styling. The dancers start with their hair down (a look particularly becoming on Suzanne Farrell), wearing simple skirted leotards that ripple on stage as they move through Balanchine’s slow, elegeic choreography. When Orfeo and Euridice are restored to their earthly court, the mood is celebratory, the hair is neatly pinned, and the garments are stiff and brilliant, literally sparkling thanks to jeweled satin bodices. The audience knows instantly that they’ve been transported. The architect of this deft effect is the one and only costume designer Barbara Karinska.
Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine to a textile manufacturing family, Karinska was trained from an early age in the art of Ukrainian embroidery. She married and moved to Moscow in 1916, where she would eventually found a couturier and embroidery school, dressing the wives of the Soviet elite in haute couture and teaching needlework to the proletariat. After the death of Lenin, Karinska’s school was seized and nationalized by the state, and Karinska grew concerned authorities would arrest her out-of-work husband. In 1924 she devised a madcap scheme to emigrate to Europe under the guise of a tour showcasing Soviet student embroidery in the West. With their visas secured, the family successfully escaped to Europe, jewels sewn into their clothes and dollar bills purchased on the black market hidden between the leaves of their books. Settled in Paris, Karinska met founder of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo René Blum, and her career in costuming began.
Karinska would go on to costume productions for the Ballet Russe and Balanchine in Paris and collaborate with Cecil Beaton in London, but her career as costumière par excellence was founded in the United States. Established in a studio on West 44th street near New York’s theatres, Karinska built an empire, costuming for theatre, ballet, and even Hollywood productions. In 1948 she won the Oscar for her Joan of Arc costumes, and in 1952 was nominated for her work on Hans Christian Andersen. However, it is for her partnership with George Balanchine she is most remembered. She costumed over 75 of his productions during his tenure at the New York City Ballet. He would later generously ascribe half of his success to her costumes and claim, “there is Shakespeare for literature, Karinska for costumes.”
One of the greatest marks left on ballet during her time with Balanchine was the invention of a new tutu. Before Karinska (B.K.), there was the pancake tutu; after Karinska (A.K.) there was the powder puff tutu. The pancake tutu was stiff, wired and wide, which caused it to reverberate long after the dancing had stopped. Karinska’s powder puff tutu was shorter and heavily layered with netting, resulting in a fluffy tutu that not only supported itself sans wire, but also moved fluidly with its wearer.1 It is now used widely across the ballet world, though Karinska allegedly made costume designers who trained under her sign a literal blood oath before divulging its exact design.
Of her tutu invention, ardent fan of Balanchine’s NYCB Edward Gorey wrote: “Legend here conjures up an unlikely picture of Karinska; a thin, elegant lady with blue hair, wielding a giant pair of shears, attacks clouds of tartan with enormous energy, and after God knows how many attempts, triumphantly cuts out the Perfect Tutu.”2
2 Foreward by Edward Gorey in Costumes by Karinska by Toni Bentley, Harry N. Abrams Publishing, 1995.
Header image: Photograph of Karinska at fitting for "Don Quixote," choreography by George Balanchine (New York) by Martha Swope, 1965.The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/eb467550-4834-0133-252b-00505686a51c
Reprinted with permission from Luxe LibrisMarch 2022.
The purpose of the Doxsee Collection is to be both a teaching tool for the university and the community and a museum collection to preserve historic dress.
Ohio University’s Mary C. Doxsee Historic Clothing and Textiles Collection was begun by Home Economics Professor Mary Doxsee, /dock’ – see/ who wanted her students to see examples of international and historic dress. A generation later, it has its own storage and display space in Patton College of Education room 123 and holds over 2,500 items.
Detail from Ada O’Bleness graduation gown from Ohio U 1903
The current curator, Trina Gannon, cares for the collection, creates the displays, and manages the webpage and catalog. She got her master’s degree in Apparel and Textile Merchandising at Ohio University, (Historic Costume track (no longer offered)). She apprenticed with Dr. Sky Cone, the second curator, and in 2017 her curatorship became official as part of her FT instructional faculty capacity.
The purpose of the Doxsee Collection is to be both a teaching tool for the university and the community and a museum collection to preserve historic dress. Some deaccessioned pieces have been set aside for “kinetic education” that students can touch and investigate.
The oldest piece is a dress from the 1820’s. Representative pieces from almost every fashion era up through the late 20th C cover the story of dress. “For as small as we are I think the collection is very wide,” says Gannon. “It’s a pretty comprehensive costume collection.”
Some examples that stand out:
· A late 1800’s Charles Frederick Worth black silk dress
· Flapper dresses from the 1920’s
· A wedding dress made of silk from a WW2 parachute
· Military uniforms from WWII and Viet Nam
· A furry hippie coat and a funky Oleg Cassini dress from the 60’s
· A 1980 ‘s Yves St Laurent black and red polka dot dress.
USES
The collection has seen many uses, made many connections, and served to delight and inform the campus and the region.
The pieces are used in classes and assignments in Human and Consumer Sciences Education, Theater Costume, Museum Studies, and History classes, and have been displayed at Alden Library, the Southeast Ohio Historical Society, and Athens County Public Library.
HCSE program faculty and Ohio Libraries’ librarians have collaborated on assignments. For example, in Color Theory students chose one item and researched its origins in order to create a pop-up store with complementary décor and designs. Sherri Saines, librarian for HCSE, created a costume history resource guide and has taught research workshops for the course.
When Assistant Professor of Instruction Gannon needs a new idea for the ever-changing Patton display space, she gets ideas by browsing the collection. She works to present a story and provide context. Her videos on the website flesh out the information. As she notes, “Everyone can relate to clothing.”
Gannon expresses contentment with her work: “I think that anyone who’s lucky enough to have a job that they love is, well, lucky. It’s the best of both worlds. I love teaching and I always wanted to work in a museum collection.”
The collection is available to Ohio university and the community. Researchers can contact Trina (Gannont@ohio.edu) with inquiries.
Highlight of a few of the outfits displayed in a previous exhibit, Textiles of the World.
Fashion, Textile & Costume Librarians 