Looking forward to “Costume Accessories from Head to Toe”

Later this year, Colonial Williamsburg’s “Quilted Fashions” exhibit, currently on display at the DeWitt Wallace Museum, will make way for “Costume Accessories from Head to Toe.” The exhibition will feature a timeline of fashion accessories spanning the period between the mid-seventeenth century and the mid-nineteenth, and will include not only the artifacts themselves, but also illustrations of their period use and function. Included in the exhibit will be an eighteenth-century print made reality by the skilled hands of the staff of CW’s Margaret Hunter shop. While visiting the shop recently, we found mantua maker and milliner Doris Warren hard at work on one of the caps represented in "Spruce Sportsman or Beauty the Best Shot" (which you can see here).  As she stitched, she animatedly explained the project.

The ladies of the shop have been offering tantalizing glimpses of their progress via their Facebook page. Needless to say, this promises to be yet another exciting and meticulously researched exhibit that both Ashley and I are eagerly anticipating.

As an added bonus, CW is organizing a coordinating symposium, scheduled for the 13th to the 16th of March 2011. With two and a half days of lectures and a day of workshops and specially organized behind-the-scenes tours, the event will provide a unique and invaluable chance to hear some of the best in the field discuss the historic role and (perhaps more importantly) the modern-day significance of the types of trend-making items on display. This will be immediately followed by a two-day academic conference, "A Reconstructed Visitable Past: Recreated Period Attire at Heritage Sites," on the reproduction, use, and function of historic costumes in a museum setting. I, for one, will not be passing up this rare and exciting opportunity!