Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities Curated by Dr Colleen Hill, exhibition design by Ackert Architecture, graphics by Sarco, lighting design by Eric Steding for Shop Studios.
The Museum at FIT, New York City (Seventh Avenue at 27th Street),
19 February - 20 April 2025
The Centre for Fashion Curation (CfFC) specialises in supervising students undertaking practice-led and practice-based PhD research, sometimes collaborating with museums and their curators. Dr Colleen Hill, Senior Curator of Costume at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT, New York) approached me to work with her to further develop her curatorial strategies and academic research for an exhibition to be staged at MFIT. Colleen’s supervision team comprised myself as Director of Studies, exhibition maker Dr Jeffrey Horsley as second supervisor and psychologist Dr Soljana Çili was third supervisor. We had intensive in person sessions in London and New York and worked remotely. As a team we had to carefully navigate the PhD as a distinct entity, whilst recognising it would feed into a major exhibition.
Colleen’s practice-led PhD was titled Wearing the Wunderkammer: A critical practice-led analysis of cabinets of curiosities, examining the quality of curiosity and applying it to a fashion exhibition. Cabinets of curiosity have often been described as the precursor of the modern museum. The objects displayed can be loosely divided into two categories Naturalia (items such as shells, fossils, bones) and artficialia (human-made objects including religious relics) with the latter also including items of dress.
While visual and spatial references to cabinets of curiosities have coalesced with fashion in recent exhibitions, retail environments and advertising, these have not previously been the subject of critical analysis. This is the first study to examine the specificities of dress within the cabinets and comprised one of her contributions to knowledge. Colleen’s research also involved examining the philosophical concepts and physical characteristics of cabinets of curiosities to determine how they could be applied to the creation of contemporary exhibitions, with specific reference to her own exhibition.
Central to her research was an analysis of what constitutes curiosity and how it is ignited and experienced within exhibition contexts. As such, it provided new connections between psychological theory, museology and fashion display, forming an original research framework that can now be utilised by museum professionals in other disciplines who aim to stimulate visitors’ curiosity. Colleen’s submission comprised a theoretical fashion exhibition that proposed tangible concepts for evoking curiosity, encompassing ideas for exhibition design, object selection, textual interpretation, and public programming. Her external examiner was Dr Christopher Breward, dress historian and Director of National Museums Scotland, and Judy Willcocks, Head of CSM’s Museum and Study Collection.
Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities opened at MFIT on 19 February. The first gallery, painted black, introduces the history of the cabinets, their links to colonialism and the connections between curiosity, creativity and collecting. Under the directorship of Dr Valerie Steele, this museum has actively engaged with equity and confronted problematic histories and this exhibition is no exception. Colleen explores the cabinets in the context of the privileged white, predominantly European, men who ‘collected’, created and viewed the cabinets during the 16th to 18th centuries. Whilst recognising the less well-known activities of female collectors, she also makes explicit the impact of colonialism within museum collections and exhibitions, the portrayal of communities as ‘other’ and, the theft of cultural artefacts.
Colleen has created a visually stunning and intellectually provocative show which invites active participation from visitors. They are asked questions, can open drawers and are invited to take their own journey of discovery.
The exhibition is arranged into ten themes including ‘Vanitas’, ‘Illusions’, ‘Reflections and Refractions’, ‘What is it?’ and ‘Artisanship.’ Within these, clever juxtapositions are made between fashion objects from the museum’s collection (which represent about 95% of exhibits) and ideas, themes and pieces pertaining to each. The cabinets of curiosity also helped expand knowledge of the human body. Some contain human bones and/or wax that had been sculpted and painted to resemble human anatomy as closely as possible. In turn, fashion designers work with the body, take inspiration from bones, organs and musculature and the Surrealist love of illusion, interior and exterior of the body. This is presented in a display of dressed figures called ‘The Anatomical Theatre.’.
Animate ‘specimens’ are also proudly displayed with rare birds of prey being especially prestigious. We are introduced to this by the pairing of a rendering of a macaw with an Alexander McQueen dress and millinery decorated with taxidermy birds. In the main gallery, this theme is amplified in the form of a gigantic aviary housing feathered fashions and a be-feathered table from the 1960s made by photographer Bill Cunningham, who started his career as a milliner.
Scale is a central tenet of collecting and cabinet display. The miniature is communicated by earrings displayed in pharmaceutical style jars, apprentice pieces (reduced scale tailoring) and novelty items (a Chanel-style miniature handbag displayed with a full-size example).
Colleen Hill states that ‘The fashion that survives within museums often memorializes vanities and desires from the past. Much like the vanitas, historic clothing reminds viewers of the progression of time.’ In a cabinet called ‘Specimens,’ a stone-coloured Fortuny pleated silk dress (c. 1930) is coiled to resemble a mollusc or an ammonite, an Elsa Peretti bag (c.1971) is formed like an oyster shell and an 1870s fan is decorated with a butterfly design that resembles a pinned specimen . Fashion, which is so often dismissed as ephemeral, is re-presented as ageless forms.
Dr Colleen Hill’s supervisors and UAL are credited on the Acknowledgements panel and the show has already received very positive reviews that recognise its intellectual rigour, creativity and fun.
Photos by Amy de la Haye