Professor Amy de la Haye, Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Dress History and Curatorship and lecturer on the MA Fashion Curation, has been in New York this week lecturing at the Sue Ann Genet Costume Collection at Syracuse University.
Amy’s first lecture is ‘on Chanel’s butterflies: the corsets, crinolines and bustles’, and her second is ‘Objects of a Passion: Fashion in the context of the Museum.’ She says ‘Chanel is said to have pronounced that a woman should be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly at night. To date, curators and historians have tended to privilege the modernity and functionalism of her designs – the caterpillars. My talk focuses upon her lesser known romantic evening wear – her corseted, crinoline and bustled gowns’.
We at LCF News invited Amy to be our ‘Curator-at-Large’ in the big apple, giving us sneak peeks into what happens on the other side of the pond. Today she has met with Jeffrey Meyer in the Costume Collection, who collects Rootstein mannequins and American Patina mannequins, including the extremely rare seminal ‘Twiggy’ mannequin.
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- A 1940s Patina mannequin
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- A rare 1966 Rootstein Twiggy Mannequin from the Sue Ann Genet Costume Collection at Syracuse University
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- Professor Jeffrey Mayer with the dressed mannequins
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- A mannequin in a 1950s Chanel suit
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- Detail of Chanel dress and jacket
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- Amy is reviewing the collection
