Hidden treasures and stories from our collection
2011/50/1 Tenango (embroidery), made by the Otomi people, Tenango, Hidalgo, Mexico, 2008-2009,gift of Robert Sweica, 2011. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
The vibrant Mexican colours and motifs of the Otomi textiles have not escaped the eye of French fashion house, Hermes, which has translated them into beautiful embroidered scarves.
A bear with fond memories, 86/1053 Leslie Walford's teddy bear, Collection: Powerhouse Museum
In 1986 Leslie Walford donated a flamboyant collection of clothing and memorabilia to the Powerhouse Museum. Including this charming musical teddy bear. It was a gift from his father who died when Walford was two. This little toy has now outlasted its owner and will be fondly associated with Walford’s exuberant and generous personality. Walford remarked – He seems to be a bear of quality and his expressive features indicate his benign character.
The donation included Walford’s Mr Fish psychedelic shirts, Nutters of Saville Row suits, a kangaroo skin coat, an Yves Saint Laurent safari suit and set of Christian Dior ties. The collection tells of a time during the 1960s and 1970s when men’s clothing was exciting and exuberant.
86/1036, 86/1030, back of Mr Fish's psychedelic shirt and Milano trousers. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Leslie Walford’s dramatic aesthetic perfectly suited this time. His perspective on interior design was eclectic and colourful and led to a very distinguished career. After studying in Paris and London he became a prime mover in this field in Australia and served on numerous committees and foundations including the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Powerhouse Museum.
Walford’s Double Bay penthouse was bursting with intriguing stories reflecting his life and objects such as Fortuny silk lanterns and paintings by Jeffrey Smart that he collected through his extensive interests, friends and travels. In 2010 he received the Member of the Order of Australia for service to the performing arts and to the profession of interior design.
Leslie Walford will be sadly missed.
96/305/2 'Cotton Blossom' costume designed, made and worn by Ron Muncaster, for 1994 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Over the next 4 weeks, if the rain abates and the sun shines, the city of Sydney will come to life as 1000s of men and women fly into Sydney from around Australia and the world for the 2012 Sydney Mardi Gras which kicked off last Sunday with the annual Victoria Park Fair Day. This festival follows close on the heels of its New Orleans counterpart.
The Powerhouse Museum‘s collection includes a number of objects related to this internationally significant Sydney event, including David McDiarmid’s iconic poster for the 1988 Mardi Gras which places Australia on top of the world.
95/339/10 Poster designed by David McDiarmid for 1988 Sydney Gay Mardi Gras. Gift of Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Limited, 1995. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
The design of this and other Mardi Gras posters captures something of the exuberance and the spectacular costume and float designs associated with the Mardi Gras parade.
This year Mardi Gras celebrates its 35th anniversary by welcoming the return of Kylie Minogue and singer/songwriter Sam Sparrow. Both will perform at Mardigrasland, the bejewelled party environment set to take over Sydney’s Entertainment Quarter for the final days of the 2012 party season. As part of Mardi Gras’ earlier 20th anniversary celebrations, the Museum mounted an exhibition titled Absolutely Mardi Gras: costume and design of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras (1997).
The 2012 Mardi Gras program is packed with events like the Fair Day, Drag Races, a Youth Festival, Pool Party, etc but its the Mardi Gras Parade (7.45 to 10pm, 3 March) and the After-Parade Party at Mardigrasland (10pm -8am, 3-4 March) which form the key spots on the calendar for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersexed communities to get together to celebrate differences and commonalities with friends, family and community supporters.
95/172/1 Costume designed by Peter Tully, for 1990 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Peter Tully (1947-1992) the designer of the 1995 Mardi Gras costume illustrated above was creative director for Mardi Gras from 1982-1986. Under his tenure, the Mardi Gras workshop was founded and the Sydney Mardi Gras transformed from a political march to a cultural event. Tully and Ron Muncaster (1936- ), were two of Mardi Gras’ most spectacular costume designers. Muncaster’s ‘Cotton Blossom’ costume for the 1994 Parade is illustrated at the top of this post.
98/173/6 and 95/339/3-1, Preparatory collage (on left) by David McDiarmid for the 1990 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras poster (right). Collage, gift of the Estate of the late David McDiarmid, 1998; Poster, gift of Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Limited, 1995. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
The Museum’s collection also includes the original artwork that is a conceptual collage for the 1990 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. This poster was also designed by David McDiarmid (1952-1995).
The Museum’s Mardi Gras collection has been developing over a 25 year period, mainly as gifts of the organisers, the artists or their family and friends. These wonderful objects shine a light on the history of Sydney Mardi Gras and the aspirations and concerns of the Mardi Gras organisers and participants. The poster collection includes all Mardi Gras posters from 1981 to 1998, but we are still missing the three earliest posters (1978, 1979 and 1980) and have also not yet acquired the posters from 1999 through to 2012. If readers have copies of any of these missing posters in good condition, especially the earlier designs, and be willing to donate them to the collection, please contact the curator at annem@phm.gov.au or 92170161.
Post by Anne-Marie Van de Ven
89/1346 Thongs, rubber, unknown maker, 1977-1979, Gift of A W Fuller: Collection Powerhouse Museum
Not what you were expecting – tricked you!
Have you bought shoes for 99 cents and got ten years international travel out of them?
Well a Mr Fuller bought these in 1978 and trudged them all around Europe. He mended one toe strap with wire and felt they had a good two more years’ wear left, when his family prized them from him out of sheer embarrassment and gave them to the Powerhouse Museum.
Rubber thongs were a recognised anti-establishment symbol in the 1960s and 1970s, known as bangers and double pluggers, they epitomised an unpretentious and egalitarian society and reached iconic status. Australians embraced them heart and sole! Some men were even seen in them at the Opera! The residue from those subversive days is evident in the banning of thongs from many clubs and restaurants. Provocative fashion statements soften with time and thong sandals have now evolved into a benign unthreatening style of footwear – now the most popular shoe style around the world for both men and women.
Surprisingly much engineering expertise and ingenuity went into the design of thongs – the right rubber formula – the plug must not pull out – harder than you might think. Engineer Jim Merser designed the plug in a cupped shape so that as the toe thong pulled up vertically the round disc holding it into the sole spread sideways, getting wider and it did not pull through. Dunlop patented this design as a ‘device by which central forces are diverted externally.’
Thongs gained ground from the 1950s and from the early 1960s Dunlop often sold over a million pairs a year. China has long overshadowed this, producing 800 million pairs in 2001 – no surprise then that 6 million thongs are floating on our oceans.
Marine biologist Gary Carlos has a theory that the thong’s innate asymmetry separates the right thong from the left on our oceans.
Left thongs veer to the right and end up in Indonesia and right thongs end up on remote Queensland beaches and Pacific Islands.
So get down to the beach and make sure you leave your thongs above the high water mark!
Further reading:
Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, Vol 7
Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands
Joanne B. Eicher, Margaret Maynard, 2011.
Sandals, Japanese Waraji, 19th century. Image: Powerhouse Museum
Warm weather changes the way we dress including what we put on our feet, initially I started thinking about strappy, elegant, contemporary sandals and yet when I looked at our collection I was drawn to a range of 19th century sandals from a variety of cultures and made out of unusual materials. Like the Japanese waraji sandals above, that were made out of vegetable fibre. Traditionally made out of a rope material of rice straw, waraji can be made out of various other materials such as hemp, stalks of myōga, palm fibers, and cotton thread.
The word sandal derives from the Greek word ‘sandalon’ People wear sandals for several reasons, they are cheaper to make (sandals tend to require less material than shoes and are usually easier to construct), are comfortable in warm weather, and as a fashion choice.
Theories on the origins of footwear link the type and material to environmental considerations. Its thought in cold climates people would want to cover the feet up as much a possible for warmth and in hot climates the focus was on protecting the sole of the foot. Its likely sandals developed first in hot climates.
Theses sandals are made from pandanus fibre and were worn by locals in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) to protect their feet when walking over the sharp coral reefs and purchased by the Museum in 1898.
H1851, sandals, pair, pandanus fibre, Reef Islands, Banks Group, New Hebrides, 1895. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
A definition of a sandal is “footwear consisting essentially of a sole which is attached to the foot by straps” 1. It seems a common understanding is that a sandal leaves most of the upper part of the foot exposed, particularly the toes.
H4448-1023 Burmese sandals, maker unknown, late 19th century Collection: Powerhouse Museum
These sandals pictured above was made in Burma in the late 19th century and are part of the Museums significant Joseph Box Collection. They were exhibited in in the Shoe and Leather Fair, Islington, 1895 and the Bethnal Green Museum Shoe Exhibition, London, England in 1897, described as: ‘Sandals, a pair; soles of leather stitched along rows at short intervals through large perforations, the tops of the soles are of thick felt; the feet are held by bands of flannel fastened between the toes to the soles. originally thought to be Armenian, footwear specialist June Swann, attributes the sandals to Burma.
These and many others were featured in the Museums 1997 exhibition ‘Stepping out: three centuries of shoes’ and documented in its accompanying publication.
1/ The feet of ingenuity: a catalogue of footwear, Horniman Museum, UK, 1993
Many fashion blogs and sites at the moment are focusing on what to wear for Christmas. This year, women’s fashions include dresses heavily embellished with sequins, lace and shiny fabrics. Interesting when I am sure, most Australians will just end up in T-shirts playing some sort of sport in the backyard.
Never-the-less it’s often the tradition around Christmas time to buy a new dress or outfit. With this in mind, I’d like to share with you some of the more festive dresses in the Museums collection.
Dresses ( left to right) Top row Mariano Fortuny, Beril Jents, 1870s Evening dress
Middle Row (left to right) Yoshiki Hishinuma, Akira Isogowa, Akira Isogawa,
Bottom Row (left to right) David Jones Pty Ltd , Angus Strathie for ‘Strictly Ballroom’,
Christian Dior.
Rebecca Evans with vintage dresses from the Museum's collection.
Image: Sotha Bourn
What is your name?
Rebecca Evans
What is your speciality area?
Isn’t specialisation code for ‘things I like best’?
I have made and loved clothing and textiles for as long as I can remember. My Mum and Nan taught me to sew and with this passion I eventually completed a Creative Arts degree majoring in Textiles at Wollongong University. A romantic at heart, I am also obsessed with vintage clothing from the 1940s and 1950s. I love how a historic garment can tell a story. This may be a waistline that was let out for pregnancy or the economic use of materials; you don’t get much closer to the bodies of history than historic dress!
I am also fascinated with the manufacture of textiles and dress through time.
It goes against our current understanding of human ingenuity. We are so rapt up with the future that we forget that the past produced designs (especially in fashion and textiles) that we can no longer make due to lost knowledge and materials. We have much to learn from the past. For example, the way clothing was repaired and re-used can help with environment issues in the future.
How long have you been working at the museum? Since 2009
Individual favourite object in the collection?
In 2010 I worked with Glynis Jones on Frock Stars. For this I acquired the Iced VoVo dress by fashion design label Romance Was Born. This dress is a great example of contemporary Australian design and is fun and playful. It is also reflects the personalities of the designers, Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales.
The Museum has an incredible collection of fashion and textiles and it used as a resource for fashion designers, artists, and historians. Some of my favourite pieces include:
1957 evening dress by Christian Dior, the Annette Kellerman collection, Ann Marsden’s ball gown, a men’s patchwork dressing gown from the 1830s, an evening dress by Toni Maticevski, a maternity dress from 1825 and our collection of Indigenous Australian batiks.
What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career in the Museum?
I have just finished working on the Love Lace exhibition with Lindie Ward. I am still in awe of the creativity of the artists and makers in this show! If you have not seen it yet, you should definitely go and see it!
I am also really proud of working on the Australian Dress Register, first as a volunteer and then an Assistant Curator. It has been exciting to see regional museums and galleries re-consider their dress collections as significant in telling Australian history.
Love Lace will be open until April 2012.
You can follow Rebecca on twitter @rebeccajoyevans
Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Museum collections are inspiring.
They spark the desire to create. Sometimes inspiration ignites your imagination and sends it soaring off out into the stratosphere and back. Sometimes inspiration is the slow quiet kind which subtly seeps into daily life.
As the desire to create became more important in my life, so grew the desire to create my own sewing box. The years spent working with our collection had unconsciously shaped my ideas of this – a plastic box could never suffice.
There are many sewing boxes at the Powerhouse – fancy wooden cabinets with elegant shell inlays, small carved ivory cases, rough wicker baskets with bright fabric interiors.
Dolls house sewing kit. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
They are all so evocative. Personal, intimate containers of family history. They hold the fragments of off-cut material and scraps of trim too gorgeous to throw away. There is the spool of thread which brings to mind a favourite dress. There are the buttons, which despite good intentions were never sewn back on. Finally, somewhere there, under the tangle are the only pair of sewing scissors which ever feel just right. Those same special scissors you swore (and lied) to your mother that you hadn’t used to cut the cardboard for the school project
With such an influence my sewing box could never just be a box. It need to be something timeless. Something crafted with care. Something which would insinuate itself into my children’s childhood stories.
The inspiration for the materials and look was again the collection. Hours of my life have been spent in the textile store. I have stored away countless quantities of haberdashery items – cards of buttons, wooden spools with coloured thread and swatch books. I love these objects. I wanted the subdued elegance of men’s suiting samples with that quiet beauty of muted colours and obvious weave.
Photograph by Nicky Balmer
My sewing box pays homage to these. I chose a wool suit fabric from Tessuti’s off-cut bin and lined it with a man’s shirt salvaged from the markets. There are compartments for those scissors and buttons, a pocket for ‘notions’ and a sleeve in the back for the pattern of the moment. It is modest, quiet and bit wonky – it feels just right for me.
Photograph by Nicky Balmer
Finally, I must point out the pin cushion. Surely it is star item of any sewing box, so I thought carefully about this item too. Inspiration comes from many sources and I must admit that my pin cushion does not derive from our collection, but instead is very deliberately crafted after one on the craft blog I find the most inspirational - 6.5st. But that is another story…
Bessie Rouse's black bodice, 1885-86. Collection: Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Photograph: © Alex Kershaw
Black clothing has become a ubiquitous choice for the twentieth century adult. Yet in the nineteenth century black clothing had specific associations and uses. The black garments on the Australian Dress Register show both the versatility of black and how its use in fashion gradually changed during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
Black has many, often contradictory, connotations. Over time it has been a symbol of grief, wickedness, humility, the Devil, seduction, austerity and glamour. It is the dramatic and grown-up opposite to white.
Before synthetic dyes were available blackish fabric was made by dying and re-dying fabric to produce extremely dark tones. This was time consuming and therefore black fabric was expensive. Ironically, the coloured fabric which symbolised austerity was relatively pricey. The destructive nature of the dying process meant that black fabrics were particularly unstable and pre-eighteenth century black dress is rare today.
During the course of the nineteenth century black became especially prominent in the form of menswear and mourning dress. With the industrial revolution and increased urbanisation, black became the dominant colour in urban menswear. Black was also a sensible colour choice, easily disguising the grime of the city and manual labour.
The 1882-1884 morning suit, entered onto the Australian Dress Register by the Grenfell Historical Society, is a classic example of a man’s black formal suit.
The Victorian era gave great significance to the outward display of mourning. Queen Victoria only wore black following the death of her husband in 1861, endorsing lengthy displays of mourning, particularly for widows. Mourning dress was typically of the same cut as contemporary fashions, but made from black lustreless fabric such as crepe. Gradually, as time passed from the bereavement, the woman could wear more luxurious fabrics and accents of lighter tones of grey and lilac.
Black mourning wear could be reused or altered for other purposes. On the Australian Dress Register, Bessie Rouse’s black bodice from 1885-1886 shows signs of alteration and could have been a mourning garment transformed into an elegant evening bodice. In the late nineteenth century black became a daring choice for evening wear and by the early twentieth century intricate, and expensive, mourning practices had begun to wain.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, black and dark colours were often favoured by mature women. There are two examples of such dresses from the early twentieth century on the Register.
Beaded lace overpiece worn by Mrs Jane Crain, 1902 – 1910. Collection: The Museum of the Riverina
The black dress and beaded lace overpiece worn by Mrs Jane Crain in the early twentieth century, held at the Museum of the Riverina, and Hilda Smith’s black silk satin and lace dress, owned by the Griffith Pioneer Park Museum. The ADR entry for Hilda Smith’s dress quotes The Girls Own Annual of 1909 as stating that ‘black dresses are to be very fashionable.’
Hilda Smith's black silk satin and lace dress, 1908 – 1912. Collection: Griffith Pioneer Park Museum
In the early twentieth century the first incarnations of ‘the little black dress’ appeared and following World War I black became a cosmopolitan choice. Coco Chanel was noted for her use of black in the 1920s, and her ‘little black dress’
Black became a colour of style for all manner of occasions, for women and men. For example, Miss Mather’s black crepe de chine dress from the 1930s, now in the care of the Manning Valley Historical Society, is an elegant example of black daywear from the 1930s.
Ladies black crepe de chine dress, 1930 – 1940. Collection: The Manning Valley Historical Society
With all its mixed associations black has become a style staple – at once modern and timeless, sensible and glamorous.
Rosie Cullen-Volunteer, Australian Dress Register
Further reading:
R. Clark; Hatches, matches and dispatches (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1987).
D. Ludot; The little black dress: vintage treasure (Thames and Hudson, London, 2001).
J.R. Harvey; Men in black (University of Chicago Press, 1995).
M. Trudgeon; Black in fashion: morning to night (Council of Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2008).
V. D. Mendes; Black in fashion (V&A Publications, London, 1999).
William Charles Wentworths court costume, 1855-1865. Collection: Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Photograph: © Alex Kershaw
Most cultures differentiate between male and female dress – in fabric, colour, style and accessories. In western culture, gender differentiation in dress has gradually changed. Many entries on the Australian Dress Register reflect the evolution of distinctions between men, women and children’s dress in the 19th century and into the 20th century.
During the 19th century, the differences between men and women’s clothing became more pronounced. Men abandoned the coloured silks and satins, embroideries and lace that they had worn for centuries.
Elements of decoration persisted into the 19th century, as can be seen on William Charles Wentworth’s mid-19th century court costume, which belongs to the Historic Houses Trust and is decoratively embroidered in bright colours. Overall, in the 19th century, the trouser suit, typically in muted colours, became the ubiquitous male outfit.
Mourning suit , 1882-1884, Collection: Grenfell Historical Society
Thomas Rolls’ morning suit bought in England in the early 1880s, and now held by the Grenfell Historical Society, exemplifies this style.
Women’s dress became more androgenous in the 1920s, after World War I. It was fashionable for women to take on a boyish appearance, cutting their hair short, flattening their chests and wearing calf length, shift dresses.
2008/8/1 Evening dress made for May Camille McDonald (Dezarnaulds), David Jones, 1923. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
On the Register, the David Jones dress from the Powerhouse Museum, and the Museum of the Riverina’s beaded dress made by Miss Una Simpson, are both from the early 1920s and show the simple shape of women’s dress in this period.
Beaded dress mde by Una Simpson, 1925-26. Collection: Museum of the Riverina
Trousers, previously only male attire, very gradually became acceptable for women.
It is not only in overall style and colour that gender distinctions can be found, but also in the details of a garment. The way men’s coats and jackets button left over right is inherited from the days when a man drew his sword with his right hand from his left side. The buttons were placed on the right-hand side so that the fabric didn’t catch as he drew his sword. In contrast, a woman’s jacket, coat or bodice fastens on the other side, i.e. her right side over left.
Pockets are another garment feature which historically reflected gender. In the 19th century externally visible pockets on men’s clothing were widespread and could be accentuated, for example, by a handkerchief or watch chain in a breast pocket. In contrast, women’s pockets in the 19th century were generally hidden from view in the seams and folds of their clothing.
The black dress from the Museum of the Riverina worn by Mrs Jane Crain in the early 20th century has a pocket hidden within its cotton petticoat.
Wedding dress, 1877. Collection: Quirindi and District Historical Society
The Quirindi and District Historical Society’s 1877 wedding dress features one decorative pocket, but also has a hidden pocket on the inside of the garment. Discrete pockets were considered more feminine and therefore appropriate for ladies.
While gender distinctions were quite pronounced in adult clothing in the 19th century, such differentiation was not considered important at an early age. In general, infants wore long white dresses until they could walk and toddlers wore shorter loose fitting dresses. Until the age of five or six, children wore pinafores, dresses or suits with short skirts. Gender was marked by the parting of the child’s hair, on the right for boys and in the centre for girls, as well as slight differences in garment material and trim.
James Somerville's pelisse, 1880-1890. Collection: The Cavalcade of History and Fashion
Boy’s dresses buttoned up the front and girls up the back. James Somerville’s pelisse of broidery anglaise from the early 1880s, belonging to The Cavalcade of History and Fashion, is an example of a male child’s dress which buttons up at the front. Between the ages of five and seven, at the discretion of their mothers, boys were dressed in short trousers and given their first short haircut, marking their first step towards independence.
Boy’s black velveteen suit, 1928-1930. Collection: Griffith Pioneer Park Museum
Between 1890 and 1920 children’s clothing became more gender specific. Around the end of the 19th century boys began to be put directly into trouser suits, such as the black velveteen suit held by the Griffith Pioneer Park Museum, rather than skirted suits. Colour coding children’s dress according to gender, such as blue for boys and pink for girls, was not common prior to the 1920s.
Today women wear many styles of dress traditionally reserved for men. Yet this loss of gender distinction has not been mirrored in male attire and children’s clothing is more gender specific than it has been historically. Similarly, some garment details, such as pockets, have lost their gender associations, while other distinctions remain. Evidently, the relationship between dress and gender is continuously evolving.
Rosie Cullen-Volunteer, Australian Dress Register
While our digitisation project is well underway, with 80% of collection objects currently listed online, there is much more work to be done. Your donation will assist the Powerhouse to add high quality photographs and full background information for the 50% of online objects with incomplete listings.