Meghan’s 3 Favorite Pieces
October 22nd, 2008Filed under: Collections
After much hemming and hawing I’ve finally narrowed down my favorites among the costume and textile collection to the top three. Guys, this was hard. How to choose THREE from among the tens of thousands of pieces? But in the end, these were the ones I considered the cream of the crop.
In reverse order (so as to appropriately build up suspense):
3. Mrs. Marshall Field’s shoes.
Okay, I totally cheated with this one: it’s actually FOUR pairs of shoes. But they tickle me because it’s exactly the kind of thing I’d love to do — namely, find one pair of shoes I absolutely adore, and then get three identical pairs made in a variety of colors.
2. Buffalo-checked wrapper worn by Mary Todd Lincoln.
This piece fascinates me, not because of any intrinsic beauty (it’s actually quite utilitarian) but because of the process we went through to accurately date it. By dressing it on a mannequin and examining the exact shape of the skirt, Tim and I hypothesized that it was from sometime in during the years of her husband’s presidency; the circular skirts of the late 1850s began to become more oval in shape by the early 1860s, which we saw reflected in the wrapper. Its light color and pattern also make this garment a bit rarer, since it is not a dark color; Mary spent much of the presidency in black and purple, as she was mourning the death of her son Willie.
1. Lobster hat, created by Bes-Ben
Benjamin Green-Field was a milliner from Chicago who grew to international fame because of his whimsical, and yet utterly stylish, hat designs. He was adept at making the silly look chic, and this little hat is, for me, the best of them.
Tags: Bes-Ben, clothes, Costume and Textile, hat, Lobster hat, Mary Todd Lincoln, Meghan Smith, Mrs. Marshall Field, Shoes, wrapper
