Vintage Vision

The Art of Gazette du Bon Ton

Summer's Yield

Projects from the Summer Graduate Fellowship in Digital Humanities

Each summer Cornell's Olin Library offers a fellowship program focused on preparing humanists with digital expertise enhancing their abilities to analyze information … and engage new audiences in their research. As a result of this fellowship, the fellows generate digitally-based projects using techniques developed throughout the summer fellowship. This exhibition highlights a selection of the projects from the previous four summers.

Union-Made: Fashioning America in the Twentieth Century

This exhibit focuses on the role played by two major American clothing workers’ unions, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated … Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) in defending the standards of living and the job security of their members through the use of the union label and the promotion of the fashion industry in collaboration with prominent American designers. Sewn into every union-made garment, the label signaled to consumers that the goods they were buying were produced by American workers who enjoyed “fair labor standards and the American way of life.”

Films, Mills, and Poets: Mid-Century Bombay

Films, Mills, and Poets: Mid-Century Bombay was an exhibit that was shown at the Carl A. Kroch Library's Asia Collections between September and November 2017, in … conjunction with 'The Archive and the City of Bombay', a symposium held September 15. This online version highlights the major areas of the physical exhibit, while also showing a selection of the objects from the collection that were on display.

Go Figure: The Fashion Silhouette and the Female Form

Go Figure explores perceptions and representations of Euro-American beauty ideals across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Through outerwear and undergarments, this … historical costume exhibition shows how women’s bodies have been manipulated and shaped to fit fashionable silhouettes at different moments in time. From corsetry and girdles to diet and exercise, shaping the human body is critical to fashion change and illustrates the fluctuating and dynamic nature of socio-cultural conceptions of “beauty.”

Apples to Cider

An Old Industry Takes New Root

Cider - the alcoholic or "hard" variety - was long the favorite drink of the United States, but a variety of factors relegated it to the background for many years. … Now, this age-old beverage has returned to the forefront with New York and Cornell University leading the charge.

Texture

An eclectic exhibition, indeed. It grew out of a simple and (intentionally) vague prompt: texture. What resulted was a group of students and staff members selecting … some of the most visually stunning and beloved items hidden in the corners of our costume and textile collection. TEXTURE is about how fashion and textile objects can ask questions beyond their selvedges and seams.

The Biggest Little Fashion City

Ithaca & Silent Film Style

The Biggest Little Fashion City explored Ithaca’s silent film history through the lens of costume, style, and fashion by chronicling the influence of the actors and … actresses who lived and worked in Ithaca during the heyday of film production. Secondly, the exhibit highlighted the ways in which the new medium of moving pictures more broadly transformed fashion trends from the 1910s through the late 1920s.

Unturned Leaves

Early Women in Botanical Illustration

Prior to the 20th century, one of the few paths to scientific relevance for women was the pursuit of botany; a number of women achieved success and recognition through … illustrating scientific works on plant life with accuracy, skill, and beauty. This exhibit celebrates the art and achievements of several woman illustrators of the 19th and early 20th centuries whose works are held by Albert R. Mann Library.

CHOCOLATE: Food of the Gods

Chocolate has been described as being more than a food, less than a drug. This description points to the singular position this wildly popular confection plays in our … lives. Popular to the tune of $74 billion annually, chocolate begins as a tiny blossom on a small tropical tree. Only three out of a thousand of these will produce the cacao pods that after a labor intensive and lengthy journey, with several chemically and technically complex steps along the way, will end up in your hand as a candy bar.