Museum to exhibit Victorian sustainable fashion
Bridgerton and Dickinson fans might want to visit the Lockwood-Matthews Mansion Museum this summer. The museum will open a new exhibit titled “Making It Last: Sustainable Fashion in Victorian America” starting May 19. The exhibit will showcase sustainability, clothing care and hazardous practices of 19th century fashion, according to a press release.
“This exhibition promises to be beautiful and thought-provoking,” said Lynne Zacek Bassett, curator of the exhibit, in a press release.
The exhibit will also discuss the use of chemicals and metals, such as arsenic and mercury in the manufacturing of textiles, hats and fake flowers, according to the museum. The exhibit will run until Nov. 6, 2022.
“What lessons can we learn from people in the Victorian era, who took measures to make a garment last as long as possible? And how were garments recycled once they were beyond salvaging for their original use? I hope that visitors are encouraged to think about what they can do to combat the environmental and human impact of ‘fast fashion’,” said Bassett, who was the curator of textiles and fine arts at Old Sturbridge in Massachusetts in the late 1990s.
In recent years, with documentaries such as The True Cost, there has been an interest in the downside of fast fashion. This type of fashion focuses on developing trendy clothing that is affordable but is not meant to last a long time. In the European Union, for example, textile consumption for every person requires nine cubic metres of water, 400 square metres of land, 391kg of raw materials, and causes a carbon footprint of about 270kg, according to the BBC.
In the United Kingdom, politicians are asking the government to create a law that mandates fashion retailers to comply with environmental standards, reported the BBC.