Cleaning Day

At the moment, my semester is in a bit of a lull. Midterms are over and final projects are just now being assigned. I have one week of light homework and then the following week is our (ridiculously late) Spring Break. There will undoubtedly be an end of semester crunch, but today I don't have anything pressing to work on.

It is lucky that my light work load fell on this weekend, because yesterday was cleaning day at Menno House. This twice yearly event requires that every resident washes, scrubs and paints from 10am to 6pm on Saturday. We each had a schedule and a list of tasks, and while there were some specific instructions, the general idea was "if it has a surface that can be cleaned, clean it." In the morning I cleaned a utility closet and helped with the kitchen. In the afternoon I swept, washed, and painted the front steps. The best part of that was that after I painted a step I was supposed to watch and pick out any dirt or debris that blew in and stuck to the paint--which proved to be nearly impossible. After that I took apart one of the fridges and wiped down every surface, and the day ended with cleaning the baseboards in the hallways and scrubbing between the bars of the railings.

It was completely exhausting, and this morning I woke up pretty sore (I think most of that was from bending down to paint the steps, but probably also because I am pathetic and weak). However, it is sort of amazing that the house gets cleaned that deeply twice a year. With eleven residents, a constant stream of guests and friends, and the general pollution in New York, a place can get pretty filthy in six months. But then again, how often do most people scrub out their kitchen drawers, wash the shelves in their refrigerator, and dust the tops of their door frames? It felt kind of good. Once it was over I put in some time sprawled lifelessly on the couch, and then I roused myself to go out to dinner for a plate of curly fries.

Inspiring The Children

Yesterday was the last day of the Vivienne Westwood exhibition, and while it is sad to realize it will now exist only in memory, we couldn't have hoped for things to have gone any better. We got lots of press coverage (way more than any previous graduate exhibition), the gallery was always full, and all the events we planned were rousingly successful.

That includes the event that I was dreading the most-- our Saturday presentation for 90 high school students. FIT has a pre-college program for middle and high school students who are interested in fashion, and for the last few years they had graduate students come in to do a presentation about their exhibition. Since my pre-exhibition duties were tapering off, I signed up to be on the team to plan the presentation. When the head of pre-college programs at FIT came to visit our class, we were shocked to have her say bluntly, "This presentation has not gone well in the past. We are giving it one last try with you guys, but if it doesn't go well we probably won't partner with grad studies again." *Gulp*

It sounded like part of the problem had been that the presentations in the past had sort of been thrown together at the last minute (not surprising considering the pressures of the exhibition), but it also sort of sounded like the thing was cursed. Past disasters had included 1) the main presenter getting horribly ill and someone who was unprepared taking over, 2) the one person with the correct power point getting horribly ill and not showing up, and 3) loss of power to the entire building. Despite having a designated back-up speaker and preparing three different back-up formats of the presentation, I didn't sleep very well the night before.

In the end, it all ran pretty smoothly. It took us a while to set up the projector, but since we had arrived two hours early, we figured it out in good time. We all dressed up 80s (we were told the kids would love that), energetically gave our presentation, divided them into groups, gave three rotations of three different tours, and then sent them on their way. I was sweating through my polyester lace top the whole time. The thing was, the kids were totally hard to read. They sort of just stared at us and didn't really react with excitement or annoyance with anything we said. Their blank faces could have been hiding any emotion from seething hatred to blissful enjoyment. Everything went according to plan, but we were left asking each other, "that went well right? Do you think that went well?" At the end of the day we went to pick our bags up in the Pre-college programs office, a few of the staff members asked, "how do you think it went?" I think we all wanted to scream, I DON'T KNOW YOU TELL US.

A few weeks later we got a glowing e-mail from the program head saying we had broken the curse and it was a great success. Ah, teenagers.

Yet even more exhibition stuff...

The exhibition continues to be a dominating factor in my life. This week there were tours to lead and a major presentation for 90 high schoolers to plan and present--not to mention keeping up with all the press coverage we have gotten! So far I think the most exciting ones have been Vogue Italia, Elle.com, The New York Times, and the Racked article in which they finally mentioned our grad program.

Yesterday, after we finished our giant presentation for FIT's pre-college program, I had my classmates over for a potluck. It was a wonderful time to laugh and vent about various things, and it occurred to me that no one among my family and friends (even my housemate) have actually met all of the women with whom I have been spending all of my time. I've spent a year and a half in an incredibly tight-knit community, yet if I showed any of you a picture of my class you probably wouldn't be able to name anyone!

So here is a little ode to my classmates. This is the group of 11 of us who worked on the exhibition and are on track to graduate in May (there are four part-time students who we consider as part of our class but who won't be done with coursework this year).

From left to right: Rebecca (my partner for a menswear project where we compared the work of Michael Kors to John Varvators), Sarah (we have worked on a couple of projects together and both interned at the Met last summer), Me (if you didn't know that, get off this blog), Audrey (One of the curators of the show who I sometimes rode the subway with when I lived in Brooklyn), Emma (the other curator, who invited me to my first party when I moved to New York), Laura (who is always fabulously dressed and here is wearing an actual Vivienne Westwood), Miriam (who went out to lunch with me on that first terrifying first day of orientation), Jessica (who once journeyed all the way from her apartment at the north tip of Manhattan to visit me in Brooklyn), [lower row] Tatiana (another group project collaborator who is always ready with advice and pointers), Cassidy (possibly even more obsessed with British movies and TV than me), and Ariele (who invited me over for hors d'oeuvres and prosecco on my birthday). Our class generally gets along very well, and I feel blessed to be part of such a great group.

Opening Week!

Finally, my class exhibition—which we have been toiling over since August—opened this past week. Since most of you won’t be able to see it, I feel I should avoid waxing rhapsodic about how wonderful it is, but I have to admit it is a pretty good show. Because I wasn’t one of the curators (or even someone with one of the larger jobs) I assumed I wouldn’t feel that emotionally attached to it, but the experience of seeing it complete has been almost magical.

To top it all off, the response we have gotten has been overwhelming. The museum staff they had never seen so many members of the press show up for a preview of a student show, and when the doors opened to the public there were people outside waiting eagerly. By Thursday all the gallery guides we had printed had disappeared, and every day we get an e-mail about the show being mentioned in another blog or magazine.

The opening reception for friends and family was fun, but the press preview was more exciting for me. Basically, members of the press checked in at a table and then were free to walk through on their own, get a tour or interview with the curators, and take photos or videos of the gallery. There were several people from the Museum as well as the media office for the college, but I was one of only four from my class. The curators were there, of course, and then otherwise it was just me and the project manager. As I mentioned, the turnout from was really good. I don’t think the curators ever got a break from interviews, and at one point there was a line of people waiting to talk to them. As a result I ended up answering a lot of questions and even gave a short tour to a woman from Forbes.

My big moment came with a news crew from China (we have gotten a lot of international coverage—don’t ask me why). They filmed an interview with the curators and then I ended up chatting with one of the reporters about the project. They hadn’t understood that there were many people working on the exhibition, and were fascinated by what I told them about the process. Eventually she turned to me and said, “we want to film you saying this.” So before I knew it I had a microphone clipped to my dress and a camera pointed at me. I think I spoke relatively intelligently, but I can’t be sure. Once I was done they wanted some background shots so they asked me to walk slowing down the hallway and look like I was looking at the exhibition. Then they had me talk to one of my classmates and point at things on the wall. I’m pretty sure that is the part that will be embarrassing when I finally see the video. They promised to send me a link when it is finally posted, so we call all look forward to that.

Vivienne Westwood has launched!

We had our opening party on Monday night, the press preview Tuesday morning, and it was open to the public at noon on Tuesday! The website also launched this week so be sure to check that out. More dish on opening week coming soon...

Little Black Dreck

This week in my symposium class (the one where we are writing papers that de-bunk fashion myths) we watched a short documentary about the Little Black Dress. The show was actually part of a series called Love/Lust currently showing on the Sundance channel, and the episode about the LBD was the first to air. I was particularly interested to see it because the research team for the show had come to Special Collections many times and spent hours going through sketches and making scans. They seemed like nice people but we did have one moment of suspicion when they asked to see a 1926 issue of Vogue because it supposedly showed the "first ever" little black dress (designed by Chanel, of course). I brought the volume out for them but tried to gently suggest that while this may have been an important little black dress, this was certainly far from the first black dress of moderate size in the history of fashion. As a response, they literally stuck their fingers in their ears and said they didn't want to hear it.

So in class we decided to watch the show with the expectation it would include a few myths that we could discuss. But what we witnessed was awful beyond our expectations. We spent the whole hour alternately laughing, gasping, and groaning at the sheer number of flat-out incorrect statements. They didn't imply untruths, they made made statements that were just flat-out wrong, wrong, wrong. It was quite appalling actually. The core issue was that it was fashion history as told in a VH1 "I love the 80's!" kind of way. They interviewed "experts" tha were really just photogenic people with some connection to fashion who were willing to make statements like "F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were totally the Brad and Angelina of the 1920s!"

The show kicked off by not only claiming that Chanel had invented the first ever little black dress, but she was the first woman (besides nuns) to ever wear black, and that in 1926 she saved the world from Victorian fashion (which actually ended circa 1901) which included bustles (last gasp 1892) and crinolines (R.I.P. cage crinoline 1868). But lest you think this is nothing more than the rants of a picky fashion stickler, there were plenty of groans for everyone else.

For the Historian / People over 55

-By the early 1960s, the tensions of the Cold War were basically over

-The Kennedy Presidency co-existed with the height of the hippie movement.

For the Feminist:

-The LBD is a great way to show the world you are an empowered woman! In fact, Kate Middleton got her man by wearing an LBD in a fashion show Prince William attended. Now she is going to be a princess!! Girlpower!

For people with a basic understanding of size:

-A floor-length evening gown counts as a little black dress

For Humanity:

-Miley Cyrus is the perfect example of class and style today.

The final insult was that the images that they used from Special Collections were literally on screen for about a second. They scrolled through about 10 images from our Bergdorf Goodman archives in rapid fire for one moment at the end. But as my professor pointed out, it was probably good that we were barely associated with that train wreck. It has been thrilling to help people who are working on documentaries or films, but this would be one case in which seeing "Special Thanks to Clara Berg!!" would have been a downright embarrassment.

Next week we plan to see what they have to say about the high heel shoe.

Historical Buddies

Coco Chanel once said that we are only dead when others stop thinking about us. Whether or not we heard it from her, most of us seem to believe that. When we talk about seeking “immortality,” what we really mean is leaving behind a legacy that will be memorable long after we are gone. It occurred to me recently, that as a historian, I seem obsessed with creating immortality for others. Whether it be a research project for school or a mystery collection at work, I love researching the history of someone largely unknown to the public. I like the idea that I am somehow bringing them back to life, and I imagine that if they could thank me, they would.

Perhaps this is why I wouldn’t have been a good curator for the Vivienne Westwood show. She is a respected living designer whose history and fame is already well recorded. In fact, she already had a big retrospective at the V&A a few years ago. What new insight could I possibly add?

Obviously, one of the reasons I am so excited about my John Doyle Bishop project is that I feel like I’m rescuing him from the historical dustbin. Here is someone who was a big deal in his own time, but has nearly slipped into oblivion because no one has kept his memory alive by writing about him. And he isn’t the first. I now have a little running list of dead people whose legacy I feel a personal connection to. One is Nina Hyde, the Washington Post writer whose collection of papers I organized when I was an intern in Special Collections. Another is Richard Bennett, a fantastic artist from the Seattle area whose sister donated a large collection of his stuff to MOHAI. I was the first person to process the material, and have excitedly looked on as the collection was fully accessioned into the collection, written about, and eventually exhibited. I feel like John Doyle Bishop, Nina Hyde, and Richard Bennett are like my historical buddies whom only I understand.

But sometimes I get a dose of reality. When I was researching Nina Hyde I came across recent newspaper article about one of her daughters. Oh right. She might be my historical mascot, but for someone else she was real—she was Mom. I also can’t take credit for Richard Bennett’s recent success as the subject of an exhibition and a book—it was his sister Helen who pushed for these things in the hope of keeping her brother’s memory alive. I often wonder what John Doyle Bishop’s niece thinks of me. I’m sure she is charmed that this student is so excited about her uncle, but for her he was real and for me he is a school project. How can I think that I really “know” him?

In the end, I think I imagine that this is all a game of historical karma. If I do a good job rescuing people from being forgotten, someday someone will do the same for me. They might not have any real idea of what I was like, but they will create some idea of me in their head, and the will decide that that person must have been pretty cool.

P.S. If you live in Seattle and you haven’t checked out the Richard Bennett exhibition at MOHAI, you really should. Buy the catalog too.