Historical fashions for museum members only
Carefully curated collection spanning decades going on display next Saturday
Old and seldom seen hats, shoes, dresses and suits will be available for inspection and admiration at a special museum event next week.
A behind-the-scenes peek will be offered Nov. 18 of the museum's textile collection, which includes hundreds of distinctive and historically significant items of clothing.
Dresses worn by Italian countesses, wedding gowns from the 1920s, equestrian riding habits from 1900, and Victorian-era skirts and trains are among the items in the collection, started by former museum director Ursula Surtees.
“I always had an affinity for fabrics of all kinds,” Surtees recalled Tuesday. “But, really, I thought it was important to start a textile collection because clothes can tell you a lot about different periods of history.”
As with all items offered to museums, Surtees, director of the museum from its inception in 1969 until her retirement in 1999, had to be discerning about which to accept and which to politely decline.
There might not have been anything particularly remarkable about a pair of boots from the 1960s, for example, but perfectly preserved beaded dresses from the Roaring Twenties were something else entirely.
Occasionally, Surtees would venture outside Kelowna to fetch items she thought would be interesting additions to the collection.
One time in the ’70s, she went to Vancouver to buy richly embroidered robes being sold by a Chinese opera society.
“They wanted the robes to go to someone who’d care for them, not be worn by hippies on Halloween,” Surtees said. “After a little discussion, they agreed to sell them to us for $17.50 each.”
On the other hand, Surtees realized there would be public interest in seeing the old clothes, so she once organized a fashion show at Orchard Park mall featuring some of the more exotic items.
She convinced Wayne Wilson, a then-junior museum employee who would eventually succeed Surtees as museum director, to model an extremely modest bathing costume from the early 1900s.
“It had horizontal stripes, and came down below his knees and below his elbows,” Surtees recalled. “Don't ever ask Wayne about that. He’s probably still trying to forget.”
No such wearing of the old textiles will be permitted at next Saturday’s museum event.
“The clothes are so old and fragile, most of them would fall apart if they were worn,” museum conservationist Nikki Bose says. “And body shapes have changed so much, they wouldn’t fit anyway.”
Next Saturday’s event is open only to museum members, the 70 or so people who’ve paid a yearly fee of $30 to support the institution's conservation work.
“We put on occasional special events like this to create a value-added benefit for our members,” says Linda Digby, the museum’s current director, adding that people can buy a membership the day of the textile exhibition.
For her part, Surtees plans on attending the show, even though she isn’t sure if she’s actually a member of the museum’s society.
They’ll probably let her in, though. After all, the museum’s conservation lab is named after her.