There are countless books, exhibitions, and documentaries examining the extravagant, the glamorous, and the showstopping looks in fashion’s history. The Costume Institute, for example, fills its halls every year with one-of-a-kind pieces—sparkling Dior gowns and Iris Van Herpen works of art that only a select few ever get to actually wear—for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And while those pieces are worth celebrating, they represent only a sliver of the enduring relationship between clothes and the people who wear them. If you want a more universal story, you’ll have to head across the park.
Last week, the New-York Historical Society opened “Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore,” the first showcase of the expansive Smith College Historic Clothing Collection. These aren’t the most fabulous dresses—in fact, many of them could be described as downright unappealing with their clashing colors and potato-sack structure—but they’re important remnants of women’s history in the United States. Each thread, each stain, each sewn-on patch tells the story of how women’s roles have changed over the last two centuries, and how they’ve reacted to the world around them.
Split into five sections, the exhibition first explores clothing worn for housework and service work, defined by pieces boasting large pockets and printed fabric to easily hide stains. An “invisible dress” from 1930 earns its name, as the cotton yellow gingham house dress (sold at the time for under a dollar) could easily be passed over. Sections on clothing worn socially and those marking female rites of passage add a bit more flair to the collection, with a red, rhinestone-covered quinceañera dress from 2019 shining among its more unadorned peers. Finally, a display of pieces that pushed gender boundaries is marked by androgynous suits, overalls, and a mini dress.
The show is comprised of about 30 pieces, much reduced from the Smith Collection’s 4,000 garments and accessories in the archive. Starting with polka-dotted smocks and ending on a waist-defining floral wrap dress, “Real Clothes, Real Lives” takes the viewer on a journey in just a handful of glass cases, proving just how far we have come over the past 200 years.
At a discussion on Tuesday, October 1, exhibition organizers and curators came together to celebrate the new show. Kiki Smith, director of the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection—who curated the show along with Rebecca Shea, also of the Smith collection—as well as associate director of the Center for Women’s History at NYHS Anna Danziger Halperin and curatorial scholar at the Center for Women’s History at NYHS Keren Ben-Horin were all on hand.
Also in attendance was Diane von Furstenberg, who created the famed wrap dress in the show. She spoke to the audience on Tuesday about her role in putting on the exhibition, as well as aiding in the publication of a Rizzoli book on the collection, now in its second printing. Furstenberg learned of the Smith collection through the New York Times’s Vanessa Friedman, who wrote an article about it in 2019. Furstenberg immediately felt a connection to Smith and Shea’s work, and put the women in touch with Rizzoli.
The collection’s emphasis on women’s uniforms especially interested the designer. “I love uniforms,” she said, standing at a podium on the fourth floor of the NYHS. “I always say that, as a designer, I design the uniform for the women in charge. Art is about emotion, but design is about utility and function.”
“Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore, the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection” is on display at the New-York Historical Society from September 27, 2024 — June 22, 2025.
