Dr. Alexandra Palmer: Material Remains: Design, Technology and History
Senior Curator
Royal Ontario Museum, Ontario, Canada
Materials are at the heart of museum collections. Curatorial work includes not only collecting, but also the visualization of the histories of fashion and textiles. Yet, what and whose histories these are, how they are gathered and reinterpreted is largely undisclosed. After textiles and costumes are accessioned into museum collections they become objects that continue to morph in a contained museum world or afterlife, where they are constantly re-dressed and re-interpreted. They are presented in methods that mask signs of wear, alterations or histories that are currently considered “unfashionable”. The materials even continue to live on and degrade. This paper will discuss and analyze the in between spaces of the private (donor) and public (museum) dressing rooms where fashion history is constructed. This is the site where materials are re-styled to create new fashionable understandings of the past for the present.