Newport Coined as a City “En Vogue”

By: Allison Staab
Posted In: Entertainment

Newport does not struggle to attract an elite crowd, and according to Vogue magazine, which has been in publication since 1892, Newport has always been a fashionable city. Showing off its stylish roots, The Preservation Society of Newport is focusing its yearly themed exhibit on just that: Newport in Vogue. In Vogue: Newport and the American Fashion Press 1880-1914 is overseen by Rebecca Kelly, the Research Associate and Dress Historian for the Preservation Society. Beginning in April and running through the beginning of November, Kelly is eager to see the final result. Showing men’s, women’s, and children’s wear, the exhibit will display the cultural and social mandates of the Gilded Age on fashion in Newport during what many consider to have been the city’s hay day.

Can you tell me a bit about what the exhibit entails?

It’s going to be at Rosecliff and will open April 7, 2007. It is drawn from the preservation society’s textile and fashion art collection, which encompasses about 10,000 clothing, textile, and related objects. We do a themed exhibit every year in [the Lesley Bogart Crawford] gallery space so it always changes but we try to use it as a window for people to see into the past by putting together interesting clothing from different aspects of 19th century life.

Who is the exhibit about?

This year it isn’t about anyone specific. We’ve looked widely at fashion periodicals from the turn of the century, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar were both in publication by then and there were a lot of society papers like Town and Country, and we’ve used the writings of these fashion editors to really narrate our show. They talk a lot about Newport: what people were wearing and doing in Newport, what type of eveningwear was fashionable, and what type of sports wear was fashionable and of course these sort of pre-date the era of photography so it’s a lot of illustrations.

So has that made the search a little harder?

It’s been interesting, but there’s really been a flood of really good illustrations that are fairly representative and actually pair up quite nicely with costumes that we had in our collection.

Where did the idea of the exhibit come from?

It was really when I was working on another exhibit at URI on Microfilm; they have all these old editions of Vogue so you can actually flip through it and really look. I just started noticing a lot of articles about Newport and that’s sort of how the two ideas were brought together.

What is involved with putting on In Vogue?

We really start over a year ahead of time. We’ve really been working on this for two years because as we have one show going up we’re already starting the planning and the research for the show that’s coming the next year. We have to start doing conservation work on a lot of things about a year ahead of time and it can range from something that’s in fairly poor condition that we put a lot of time in and really bring it back to life where we spend maybe 80-100 hours but there’s a full range of stuff. Some things are in really good condition maybe just a button is missing or there’s a small tear along the seam. Each year we’ll have one or two things that are getting fairly complex treatments and everything else is in fairly good condition.

What will be in the exhibit?

Bathing suits, equestrian costumes, coats, special gear women had for riding in automobiles. They were all sort of open top so you needed what they call a duster and that covered your whole outfit like a cape or a coat, and you would wear driving goggles and crazy hats.

What do you think is the most interesting item that is going to be displayed?

We’re showing a really interesting men’s bathing suit that is not to miss.

What is the admission charge for the exhibit?

It’s included in the price of the mansion tour. I think it’s $10.

Has this exhibit been put on at any other locations?

No, all of our exhibits are original and generated usually completely from our own collection of things.

What exhibits have you done in the past?

One year we focused particularly on Kingscote and that was because we had a very large collection of things that were left in the attic of that house so we knew a great deal about them. We’ve had exhibits that have been focused around just evening wear for example or also during the 19th century. We had at least one exhibit that had a lot of clothing called fancy dress or what we would consider a costume ball.

How is the funding for the exhibits handled?

Right now we are funded pretty much in house. We have a small budget, and we also receive funding from RICH, Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities. They give us a small grant to help with the printing of our interpretive panels and what the panels will do is display text explaining the costume and quotes from the fashion periodicals and also images of the illustrations that will match up with each costume.

Why so much with fashion?

We have a really large collection that we want to utilize. It lives primarily in storage where our other collections almost are always in the limelight. It makes sense, you have rooms you need to have furnishing. I think that clothing is so special because it’s the most personal of the objects that we have left behind by these former residents of Newport, and I think that it tells a really personal story. Everyone can identify with clothing.

What are people seeing and learning from the exhibits?

I think that clothing was really indicative of some of the cultural and social changes that were going on during this time period. Especially for women, it was a time period where clothing was starting to become a little bit less restrictive.

Are the exhibits always about local people or the way that Newport was a long time ago?

That’s our niche. We try to make everything as Newport focused as possible.

Finally, if you could have any one article from an exhibit, what would it have been and why?

There’s this really great red and white stripped blouse it’s what they called a “shirt waist” in the period but you would have worn it with a separate skirt and it was very light weight, cotton. A lot like a cotton shirt that we would wear today but it’s just really well tailored and really well made.