In the years, months, and days that led up to the opening of
Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700 – 1915, there
was a steady increase of activity in the Costume and Textiles
Department as we prepared nearly 100 historic garments for
exhibition. The process of dressing historic garments on
mannequins is exacting and time-consuming. Not only must the
final presentation accurately portray the fashionable silhouette
of the period, the art object must be safely supported for the
duration of the exhibition. In doing so, the costume cannot be
altered to fit the mannequin; rather it is the mannequin which
is padded out to the shape of the garment. This detailed process
begins with the curatorial team researching the date of each
piece. Next, the fashionable silhouette for that era is
determined and an appropriate mannequin assigned. I say
“appropriate mannequin” because we have male and female
mannequins that were built to represent each dramatic change in
the fashionable silhouette from the eighteenth