Category: exhibitions

Oh, if only I lived in Europe!  Another fabulous sounding exhibition:  Paniers, Baleines, et Jabots: la Mode au 18e Siecle at the Musee du Costume et de la Dentelle, in Brussels.  That being said… I visited this museum back in 2005 and wasn’t thrilled.  It’s relatively small, and what I mostly remember was cluttered exhibits and dim lighting.  Of course, it’s possible they’ve improved their set-up in the past seven years!  If anyone sees this exhibit, or just has been to the Museum in the past few years, I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Side note:  apart from this museum, Brussels has some AMAZING museums.  The Royal Museums of Fine Art, in particular, have some incredible collections.  If you’re interested, I took a bunch of pictures of costume-related art when I was there in 2005.  It’s mixed into a larger set — if you start with this picture and work left, you can see about 30 pictures that I took there.

If you can get to Scotland, check out the Catherine the Great exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland.  It looks fabulous for those interested in the 18th century in general, plus looking through the image gallery, it includes at least four costumes:  one of Catherine’s uniform dresses, two men’s suits, and a 1780s Russian court ensemble.  For those of us who can’t go in person, the museum has some interesting-sounding podcasts on Catherine herself and as a collector.

Kent State University Museum has an exhibition on Civil War women’s fashions (On the Home Front: Civil War Fashions and Domestic Life — September 30, 2011 – August 26, 2012), and the exhibition webpage has a nice HD video with an interview with the curator plus a lot of shots (including some nice close-ups!) of the various pieces.

Montpelier is exhibiting costumes from the recent PBS “American Experience” production on Dolley Madison (Dolley Madison’s Life through Fashion: Dressing the Part — June 15, 2011 — March 31, 2012), and the exhibition webpage has another nice HD video interviewing the costume designer, with lots of shots of the various costumes and fittings with the lead actress.

The Rijksmuseum, in the Netherlands, has put together an amazing online exhibition on accessories.  Called Accessorize, it covers 1550-1950.

It’s a Flash-based site that’s SLOW to load, but worth it.  You can browse by period, object, color, material, and topic, and then look at individual items with the ability to do an level of AMAZING zoom.