History of Object #3 Exercise

Object Exercise #3

            This object exercise dealt with the historical context of the article. I was unfortunately unable to get in contact with Clare to find out about the donor card which I was unable to learn more about during my first meeting with the object due to time constraint.  Yet, I was still able to develop a great of information about the family the dress belonged to as well as the history of the Trousseau dress in the late 19^th century.  Therefore, my object exercise #3 will begin with my exploration of the Creese Family and The Cresse Student Center at Drexel University and will finish with exploration of the 2^nd bustle period which is the period Trousseau dress designed from.

            The donor of my object was Mrs. James Creese who lived in Philadelphia. Mrs. James Creese is the wife of former Drexel University President Mr. James Creese. Therefore I choose to take the subway over to Drexel University because the dress is directly linked to Drexel University. Therefore James Creese was the 6^th university president at Drexel University. James served from as the university president from 1945 to 1963. James had a very extensive educational background; he was born in 1896 in Pittsburg, PA. James ended up attending Princeton University in 1914 and graduated in 1918. While at Princeton University, James focused his studies on humanities and poetry. An important historical note to mention was that while James was at Princeton World War I was occurring and James enlisted in the military and served as a second lieutenant in the artillery division. Following the war James returned to Princeton and completed his Master’s work and graduated with a Master’s degree in 1920. Following his Master’s degree Creese became the president of the American-Scandinavian Foundation where Creese spent most of his time traveling in Sweden. While in Sweden, Creese married a fellow Pennsylvanian native Margaret Villiers Morton in 1925. In 1928 Creese was name Vice-President and Treasurer of Steven’s Institute of Technology in New Jersey.  While the Vice-President at Steven’s Institute Creese focused on developing funding and public relations with the community.

            Following his time at Steven’s Institute Creese became the President at Drexel Institute, which is now known as Drexel University, in 1945. World War II was coming to an end and many colleges and universities begun to see an increase in student attendance. Creese saw the need to immediately update the facilities at Drexel as many universities in the country saw the demand for as well.  Creese desired to develop Drexel into an institute that mimicked MIT however it also offered a strong humanities department as well, which I am sure was influenced by his humanities background from Princeton. Creese served as the president from 1945 to 1963. While as president Creese expanded the undergraduate studies at Drexel and encouraged female enrollment to the University.   Creese also offered an evening school at Drexel University which allowed many working individuals to complete a degree and take advantage of the education surge that was occurring in the United States. Creese was popular among the students at Drexel because many students believed that Creese made many positive contributions and developments to Drexel that were geared to improve the experience and life of the students at Drexel University. The picture above is Creese at the ceremony of the student center being built on Drexel’s campus. An interesting connection that I found between Creese and I was that from 1956-1959 Creese was a member of the Board of Trustee of the Baldwin School. I attended the Baldwin school from Kindergarten through 5^th grade. The Baldwin School is an elite private school for girls and is well known in the area. This supports Creese efforts that he made while at Drexel with promoting and encouraging education for females.

            I believe that my Trousseau dress would either worn by either James or Margaret mother. The timeline of the dress and age of James would suggest and support the thought that the dress was worn by either one of their parents. The dress was donated in 1957 and was dated to be from 1888. With the dress being dated back to 1888, means that the dress is from the 3^rd and final Bustle period. The third bustle period used wiring, padding, or a combination of both to emphasis the posterior of the woman. The first bustle period emphasized extremely large padding on the posterior, the 2^nd bustle period went in the opposite direction and was more tightly fitted on the women’s hips and had little padding on the back side, and the third and final bustle period had the posterior padding yet it was not as extreme and wide.  My Trousseau dress accurately describes and fights the description of the third bustle period, which is another clue supporting that this dress was worn by either James or Margaret’s mother.  On the posterior side of the dress there is a beautiful silk cream ribbon as well as fabric that are meant to be filled in with the posterior padding that would be placed in the women’s underskirt.

            From my research I have learned that a Trousseau dress was purchased and used as a honeymoon and newlywed out. The dress was a status symbol to show society that the young women just married and is now settling into their new place. Research stated that it was normal for the young women to wear their Trousseau dress during their first hosting event in their new home. The Trousseau dress that I was assigned to was a high end dress, which was represented by the large amount of manufactured lace and silk that was present on the dress. The dress also had a ribbon label on the inside of the top of the dress with the designer’s name on “Mme. Barbelet, Paris”.   I researched the Mme. Barbelet however I was unable to find any information on the designer, which leads me to believe that this was not a mass produce dress. The female that bought this dress traveled to Paris and had the dress made specifically for her, which reflects that the woman belonged to a very affluent family.

            My final important aspect of the dress is that the Trousseau dress I have been assigned was one that would have been worn in the afternoon. As we learned from Perrot, the way women dress differed throughout the day. It was considered to be inappropriate if a woman was showing cleavage and her arm during the morning portion of the day. As the day would continue it was acceptable for women to have the cut of their dress begin to get lower and reveal more cleavage and are allowed to shorten their sleeves and show more of their forearm. The top front of my dress has a cut of a V and revealed more cleavage of the woman. Also the sleeves of the dress were ¾ sleeves and had lace attached to the bottom of it.

            In conclusion, I am still very excited to have my Trousseau dress. I am still looking forward to read the donor card that came along with my dress. However, with the information that I have found about the Creese family, the family that donated this dress was an important and well-loved educator in the Drexel Family.  Creese was responsible for the development of Drexel post World War II and help Drexel become one of the strongest schools in the Mid-Atlantic region. I believe that the information that I will learn from the donor card will only allow add to the information about the family and will hopefully give me a better idea of the Creese family and which side of the family the dress belonged to. 

Hurricanes and Clothes

            In this week’s blog I choose to focus the concept of clothing as a language as well as the concept of fashion as a commodity. The piece written by McCraken gave great insight about clothing and how it is a form of language which I felt had some interesting points that correlated with my trousseau dress. Also the Stallybrass article that looked at fashion and its relationship to the capitalist society spoke about fashion as a commodity and fetish which also is related to the trousseau dress.

            The McCraken article was interesting because it touched upon many numerous points however the overall theme of clothing as a form of language and how clothing communicates the language and culture of the time. McCraken states that clothing can be used as a means to study the cultural principles at the time. When looking at my trousseau dress I believe that the dress represents the etiquette that was expected from young women in the 19^th century following their wedding. The Trousseau dress was worn by women during the honeymoon and newlywed phase of the marriage. The women were expected to have the dress and in my research I found that the women were expected to wear the trousseau dress during their first hosting event in their new home. This cultural piece demonstrates how much emphasis was placed on the etiquette associated with the bride and what was expected of her after the wedding.

            The Stallybrass article hint many great points however a theme that I believed was the most important was that fashion was a commodity in culture. We see that this is present in our culture today in which there are tons of fashion shows, fashion magazines, and fashion districts all that are specifically designed to share the fashion culture with others. I believe that my trousseau dress was viewed as a commodity and many believed that in order to step out correctly in society following your marriage the woman needs to be in her trousseau dress. Fashion was a commodity in the 19^th century because it was a visual classification of social class and construction. The theme of Stallybrass’s article was that fashion is a commodity in culture and thus we should continue to pay attention to fashion in the past because they can teach us many lessons such as what was important at that moment in time. 

- Hope everyone is safe during the storm!

Corset or no Corset?

             After reading Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century by Philippe Perrot I walked away with a greater understanding of my Trousseau Dress and look forward to Clare coming into our class tomorrow to continue the discussion on dress’s in the 19^th century. A very interesting point that I drew from the book was that fashion was an indicator of class. Perrot states “clothes became organized as significative differences within a code and as status symbols with hierarchy”.  Thus the choice of dress was determined based on your class and what was expected from your class when it came to style.  The reason why the relationship between fashion and class are important because in our society today we do not use fashion as a determining factor as to whether or not one is wealthy, we use cars and electronics to show off affluence. Thus, I believe that clothes hold the same symbolic meaning as electronics and cars do today in which an individual was able to be identified as to which class they belonged to base on their outfit and the materials used for the dress.

            Another point that I found interesting from the book was that women wore numerous outfits throughout the day. I found this point to be important because the Trousseau dress that I was assigned was an evening dress. Throughout the day women were expected to have a certain amount of skin covered up, thus one would have to have a breakfast dress in which they could wear the dress throughout the morning. Then the woman would have to plan on changing into an afternoon dress in which it was appropriate for a lady to show off a bit more skin.  Finally, the female had an evening dress which showed off the most amount of skin. Perrot stated that even on special occasions women would change their outfits, thus it was normal for a female to make anywhere between 5-8 outfit changes. These changes occurred because it was necessary! The corset still amazes me, the young lady that wore my dress had to wear a corset underneath because the design of the dress was to show off a small waist and emphasize the posterior bust. Perrot stated that even though corsets were the trendy and women wore them in order to make themselves appear more attractive the corsets “threatened the body” and gave women a higher chance of becoming infected with “sickness”.

On pg. 153 Perrot stated that over a 40 year period of observation of the corset out of 100 women; 25 “succumbed to diseases of the chest, 15 died after their first delivery, 15 remained infirm after delivery, 15 became deformed. The most interesting thing about these numbers were that as these negative health issues occurred as a result of the corset women still wore the corset.  I then thought back to my first point that fashion was a way to classify you with a social class. Thus many women of the upper class knew that by wearing a corset it not only made them look more attractive however it also showed everyone else that they belonged to the wealthy class. 

I am really excited to hear the discussion in class tomorrow and especially from my classmates that had dresses as their objects. I wonder if they were able to determine what class potentially their object would fall under. 

The exciting process of creating an exhibit

            After reading the articles from this past week the whole exhibit became real to me. Alice Parman’s article “Exhibit Makeovers: Do-It-Yourself Exhibit Planning” had a wonderful  lay out of a step by step process to use to get the juices flowing with the exhibit one is planning to put on.  However, before Parman went into the step-by-step process she drew from the concept of Romance being an essential component of your exhibit, this element I completely agreed with. Parman stated that in order to have visitors enjoy your exhibit they need to fall in love with it. I understood this as being that in order for the visitor to enjoy the exhibit they need to fall in love with an object being exhibited. I related this to my dress, which is beautiful in itself. However, how can I make the visitors fall in love with my dress? I believe that my label that I associate with the dress will be my key to making the visitor fall in love, which I will touch upon in a bit.

            The step-by-step planning that Parman spoke about I believe is the strongest information that I read this past week. The first step is the Mission Statement, in this step our group decides what our goal of the exhibit it and what we hope the visitors will take away from the exhibit. Additionally, in the mission statement phase we need to develop a story line that will draw the visitors in and keep them interested in the objects throughout the exhibit.  Second Step is when we organize our story line into “galleries of thought”. Parman states that it is important to organize our concepts either based on category, chronology, analogy, observation/deduction, comparison/contrast, theme, and watchword.  All of these organizational concepts are important and we have the ability to choose how we would like to organize our exhibit, I could see us using a couple of these ideas so it will be exciting to see what we will choose. The third step is the inventory which Clare has already chosen what objects she felt were the most important to be displayed. The fourth step is to find a way to motivate and engage your visitors, in which we have to take into account that we will have multiple perspectives and opinions attending the exhibit so we need to take into account all of these experiences and motivate our visitors. The fifth step is when we would plan the “look and feel” of our exhibit where we take into account the color of lighting we would choose to use and the dimensions of the display of the cases being used. The sixth and final step is the production and installation of the exhibit which is essentially the blueprint of our idea and then making it become a reality.

            A point that I connected with in Parman’s section about Romance was that it is important to make the visitors feel like they are learning in their own desirable way. When students visit our exhibit it would be wonderful if the student would pick a piece of clothing or object and immerse themselves in the time and history that surrounds the object. This would allow the student to learn feel as if they are learning but without having to fill out hand-outs or take notes. The label would play a key role in this concept and development of learning. The title of the label needs to draw my visitor in and have them want to learn more about my dress. Which got me thinking about some ideas already yet I need to keep in mind that the label would need to match the overall theme of the exhibit.