‘Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore,’ Showcased at New-York Historical Society

By Bonnie Eissner

Diane von Furstenberg never set foot in the New-York Historical Society before last Tuesday night, when she arrived sporting a print pantsuit with flared legs and signature black heels.The fashion designer and icon had come to celebrate the opening of Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore, the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, a new exhibition that highlights classics of women’s clothing – including von Furstenberg’s wrap dress, a timeless “uniform” for working women first introduced in the 1970s. 

“I love uniforms,” von Furstenberg said in her remarks at the museum’s packed reception for the exhibition’s opening. “I design uniforms for the women in charge.”

Some 30 outfits on display at the museum were chosen from over 4,000 objects in the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, which Kiki Smith, a theater professor at the school in Northampton, Massachusetts, has curated since the 1970s. 

Starting from a stock of costumes donated to the Smith College theater department, Smith has built an unusual collection of the everyday clothes women wore for domestic and paid labor, for leisure, rites of passage, and protest. A costume designer with intimate knowledge of fashion norms and clothing construction, she deciphers a dress the way a historian would a diary, fashioning stories of women’s lives from the garments they wore.

Von Furstenberg first learned about the Smith collection in 2019. As she described in her remarks, she quickly realized that the collection of everyday clothes — uniforms — that American women wore over two centuries deserved a book and an exhibition. She connected Kiki Smith with her publishing contacts at Rizzoli New York. The book debuted last year and inspired the exhibition.

The centuries-spanning clothes are displayed in glass cases grouped by themes: domestic work, service jobs, rites of passage, public dress, and rebellion. The clothes range from a full-skirted cotton black-and-white 1860s work dress, worn by a woman who was likely widowed, to a 1971 vest made from the pull-tabs of hundreds of Tab diet cola cans. Other objects, such as a 19th-century sewing box and photos from the museum’s collection (including two by Upper West Sider John Elari) augment the clothes on display.

A free audio guide provides additional information about the clothes and the experiences of the women who made and wore them. Some lives were full of hard labor and frugality. Others had more liberation and lightheartedness. The evidence lies in stains, patches, patterns, materials, and designs. 

These four pieces stood out for their style and the stories they told: 

Recycling, 19th-century style. A display case near the front of the exhibition holds a short cotton top, worn by a woman of modest means in the late 19th century whose days were filled with physical labor. Such tops, known as “sacks” or “Josies,” made movement easier than more fashionable tight-fitting bodices. The wearer may have been a homesteader in the West, and the patchwork of the garment indicates she was a recycler. The dark blue printed fabric dates from the early 19th century and may have been taken from another garment. The interior of the splayed open top reveals two differently colored, frayed calico linings made, most likely, from children’s dresses. 

A subversive 1920s suit. Women in the 1920s wore elements of men’s suits, such as matching jackets and skirts, but never trousers. This 1920s suit of a double-breasted jacket and matching pants pushes the boundaries of acceptability. Made of thick, charcoal gray wool with subtle pinstripes, the suit is modeled on one made for a man, but it’s tailored for a petite woman. The garment was custom-designed for someone who wanted to present as a man. Its wearer made a statement and maybe even attracted some scorn by bucking convention.

DVF’s take on power dressing. Young women in the 1970s had greater freedom to pursue their professional ambitions and received plenty of advice on what to wear. John T. Molloy, author of The Women’s Dress for Success Book (1977), displayed in the exhibition, popularized power dressing. Sexually suggestive styles, he wrote, undermined businesswomen’s success. Rather, he asserted, his testing indicated that professional women should don skirt suits in drab, solid colors with minimal adornment. 

A Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress patterned in daisy-yellow flowers from 1977 stands in opposition to that guidance. Von Furstenberg, whose dress sold in the millions, celebrated the female form and freed women from restrictive buttons, zippers, and shoulder pads. The wrap dress has proven to be a timeless and practical uniform, as the designer intended. 

A Gen Z twist on tradition. Near the wrap dress, in the Rites of Passage section, is a garnet dress with a fitted bodice bejeweled in rhinestones and a short, flared skirt. One visitor, before reading the text, mistook the shimmering garment for a ballet costume. In fact, it’s a dress from a 2019 quinceañera, the Latin American celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday, when the honoree typically wears a long white or pastel dress. The owner of this dress, Lis Vazquez, bucked tradition by selecting a short dress to pair with her white Converse Chuck Taylors. The sartorial choice speaks of youthful style and subtle rebellion. In a nearby photo taken at the celebration, she beams. The story of her dress vividly illustrates how clothes shape and signify lives. 

Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore, the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection is on view at the New-York Historical Society through June 22, 2025. Many garments will rotate out in January for new items, including Sylvia Plath’s Girl Scout uniform. Museum admission is pay-as-you-wish on Fridays from 5 to 8 p.m.

Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here.