As the Nora E. Vaughan Fashion Costume Curator in the Textile and Costume Section at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Dr Alexandra Palmer found herself in front of many dilemmas while analysing how to display garments from the ROM’s archives at the new Patricia Harris Textiles & Costume Gallery.
One of the most vital issues was how to divide the cathedral-like space with angular walls in which the collection had to be showcased and how to display particular garments.
A dress may indeed look rather different when it is laid down on a table and when it is worn on the body. Besides, the way a garment is exhibited often doesn’t allow visitors to see specific technicalities of vital importance for the overall structure of the design, such as hidden seams and internal details. Despite these initial difficulties Palmer and the Gallery staff succeeded in their attempt, first selecting highlights from the ROM’s collection, comprising 50,000 textiles and costumes, and then exhibiting them in interesting and engaging ways.
Paintings are juxtaposed to costumes to illustrate how some garments and accessories such as lace handkerchiefs or decorative linen pillow covers were used; display cases examine 18th century floral embroidery and the art of English domestic needlework; men’s tailoring from the 17th century is analysed through suits, trousers and elaborate boy’s silk brocade coats.
The approximately 200 pieces displayed date from the 1st millennium BC to the 21st century AD and include Chinese imperial costumes, late Antique and early Islamic textiles from Egypt, early Canadian coverlets and western fashion from the Baroque period to the present day, including pieces by Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Azzedine Alaïa and Comme des Garçons.
Palmer is at present carrying out a very special research on people’s contemporary wardrobes while hoping to organise in a couple of year’s time a new and exciting exhibition on Christian Dior.
According to you, what is the best aspect of your job as museum curator?
Alexandra Palmer: I guess the best aspect is that you can learn so much from researching, touching and handling an object stored in the archives or studying how to mount a costume and make it come alive in a three-dimensional way.
What’s your favourite piece from the collection?
AP: It depends: some pieces interest me on an intellectual level; others reveal themselves amazing only after you start researching and working on them. I think my favourite ones are definitely all those pieces that are maybe not so obvious, but feature some details that reveal why that particular piece was important. For instance, we have dresses in very bad conditions because they have been worn a lot and I think these are fantastic pieces. They are indeed examples of successful fashion because the women they belonged to wore them continuously. Untouched pieces are usually rejects from people’s wardrobes because their museum-quality shows that people didn’t really wear them.
Some garments and accessories are displayed in the gallery next to paintings from the same centuries: is this a way to strike connections between art and fashion?
AP: The ‘painting Vs garment’ link was done more to contextualise the pieces. It can be hard for modern visitors to see these garments in isolation in a museum and understand the point of these things, their economic and social value or why they survived in the first place. But displaying them next to a painting helps understanding how specific garments were worn or how particular accessories were used.
Which criteria do you use to buy contemporary pieces to update the collection?
AP: There used to be a policy by a curator from the 70s that suggested not to collect anything that wasn’t at least 50 years old. Then, in 1957, this curator started a collection of haute couture and asked women to donate their dresses. The donated pieces went from the 19th century to 1957. Contemporary pieces, such as paper dresses from 1965-67, were also added and so the criteria to update the collection changed. While I was doing my PhD on 1950s couture dresses I went back to the women who had donated those pieces and spent hours talking to them, asking them where they got them, when and how they wore them. My main aim was carrying out a sort of research about social history and I’m continuing along these lines. At the moment I’m interested in getting contemporary clothes off people’s backs and talking to them about why they wear them, what they represent for them and how they may be wearing High Street brands with designer clothes. It’s through people’s wardrobes that I want to get certain designers who are historically important such as Prada or Martin Margiela. I’m very interested in menswear at the moment, I find it very fascinating and, when I see something I like, I ask people to save it for me when they stop wearing it.
Before the gallery opened in 2908, you also organised in its spaces a celebratory catwalk show featuring various designers, would you like to do another catwalk event at some point?
AP: At present the gallery is full of displays and objects, but I’d love to use the public spaces in the museum. We had a fantastic show by Giambattista Valli a while back, it was amazing, though it was private, and I’d like to animate the public spaces a little bit more, opening them up to designers and fashion students as well.
You did a long-standing research on Christian Dior, writing catalogue essays about the French designer for many international exhibitions including “Christian Dior et le Monde” (Musée Dior, Granville, 2006) and “The Golden Age: Haute Couture 1947-1957” (Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2007) and recently publishing a book entitled Dior (V & A Publishing, 2009). What fascinates you about Christian Dior?
AP: I could go on and on about Dior forever! 
He was a very smart and sophisticated man and founded a brilliantly organised company, but what fascinates me is the fact that he was a better designer than people think, he really did care about women’s taste, I think he was a technician more than people give him credit for. I have written extensively on Dior in catalogues and in my most recent book for the V&A that focuses on a specific period of time, from 1947 to 1957, and also analysed the designer in connection with Canada in my book Couture & Commerce – The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s. Next time, I’ll hopefully concentrate on Dior’s technique and construction, but, for 2011, depending on the budget, I would like to do an exhibition on a specific period of Dior’s life and career and also look at John Galliano’s work.
Years ago, while studying, you designed hats and dresses under your own label for retail to Capezio, Patricia Fields, Therapy and Masima in New York and Sassafras, Martha’s Vineyard and Robin in Toronto. Do you ever miss working as a designer?
AP: I must admit I’m feeling like sewing again now since I saw great clothes while doing a few lectures in Italy! I never studied pattern making or tailoring, I just learnt from my family and it never came to my mind to go to fashion or design school. Yet I guess that I’m more interested in history and in the technicalities of fashion rather than just in fashion design. Looking at design through technique is important to me and it’s very much a tradition of the Royal Ontario Museum. I find the Japanese designers or Martin Margiela rather interesting for example because their creations are very historically based and I love making historical links between technique and innovative designs.
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Love this interview! Thank you so much for sharing it with us.