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Each year, the Chicago History Museum exhibits an average of about 50 costumes and textiles from its permanent collection. This year because of Chic Chicago, we’re lucky enough to be displaying much more than that—but even so, that means the general public doesn’t even see one percent of the 50,000 costume and textile pieces in the collection.

So far you’ve heard a bit about the high-fashion end of our collection, but there’s a lot more to it. We have quilts, cross-stitch samplers, shoes, jewelry, children’s play clothes, canes, and football uniforms. There are linens from 19th-century hope chests, t-shirts worn at civil rights protests, scarves and hats knitted by Chicago mothers for cold winter days. In short: a little bit of everything that you can think of, and a whole lot of things you probably can’t.

This week Tim and I will be highlighting our favorite pieces from the collection, so come back soon for pictures and descriptions of some of the museum’s most interesting costumes and textiles.

Meghan

Tags: Costume and Textile, Meghan Smith

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Collections, Multimedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.