PARSIPPANY, N.J. (AP) — A unique costume exhibition in New Jersey offers visitors an up-close experience of what it might have been like to be female and live in an upper-middle-class household at the turn of the 20th century.
The house, in this case, is the former estate of Gustav Stickley, a major figure in the American Arts and Crafts movement. It’s now the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms in Parsippany.
“Styling an American Family” features 32 female and two male mannequins arranged in groupings throughout the two-story log house depicting happy and celebratory vignettes: a wedding, a party, playing games, readying for a tennis match, packing trunks for a trip, trying on dresses after shopping.
What makes this exhibition special, apart from the beautiful setting and environment of the 1911 house, is that visitors can come right up to the mannequins, all with beautiful natural features and realistic poses that reflect the activities.
No glass displays here. These mannequins inhabit the house as if they were true residents.
And they are not so much representative of Stickley’s five daughters and wife as they are of an upper-middle-class American family and what it might do and wear in the early 1900s. The popular shirtwaist blouse and walking skirt, tailored two-piece suits and white cotton lingerie dresses are among the typically American looks shown.
The museum collaborated on the exhibition with Syracuse University’s Sue Ann Genet Costume Collection, which also provided the mannequins, said exhibit Curator Jeffrey Mayer, the university’s associate professor and program coordinator of fashion design.
The Craftsman Farms exhibition covers the period of 1909-1914, from the year the Stickley family moved into the house from Syracuse to the start of World War I.
The time period was chosen because “it represents a specific ‘look’ in the history of fashion. In 1909, fashion began to take on a more tubular, high-waisted silhouette in protest against the tightly corseted, unnatural S-shaped silhouette seen from 1900 up to 1909,” said Mayer. “Clothing became softer with lowered necklines and oriental cuts to the sleeves; hems also began to rise.”
Jewelry also changed during this period, becoming more organic and simpler in design.
“Small, delicate necklaces, simple dangling earrings and thin gold bangles were all favored and worn sparingly,” he said, a sharp contrast to the pearl and diamond dog-collar chokers and diamond chandelier earrings that were favored between 1900-1908.
Mayer said using realistic-looking mannequins, rather than static or headless versions, for the exhibition was deliberate.
“Once we realized that the goal was to discuss social life at the Farms during this era … it became obvious that we needed realistic mannequins to portray the specific activities which represented the period,” he said.
The mannequins’ features were hand-painted based on period photographs and images from such TV series as “Downton Abbey.”
The show runs through Jan. 6.
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Online:
Stickley Museum: www.stickleymuseum.org
