THE WOMAN BEHIND THE HEADLINES
New exhibit at The Frick tells story of Katharine Hepburn through costumes
Do you know how Oscar-winning starlet Katharine Hepburn became synonymous with high-waisted trousers? Or that if she liked a costume from a film, she’d buy copies of it for her own wardrobe? If she really liked designers, she’d even recommend them for gigs in other movies.
These are some of the stories that are told through costumes, photos and ephemera from her illustrious career in the exhibition “Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage & Screen.” It opens to the public at The Frick Pittsburgh in Point Breeze on Saturday and will remain on display through Jan. 12.
The exhibition is made up of pieces from the Kent State University Museum, which received in 2008 the actress’s personal collection of film, stage and TV costumes partly because of its noted fashion design school. Hepburn died in 2003 at age 96.
It opened there in 2010 and traveled the U.S. for seven years, until returning to Kent State for an encore presentation in 2018.
“The name Katharine Hepburn has such cultural awareness still and is a fascinating person,” says Sarah Hall, The Frick Pittsburgh’s chief curator and director of collections. The exhibition presents “a nice chunk of the 20th century in terms of the modern woman.”
The show spans her career from about the 1930s through the ’80s and features 37 costumes from the stage productions of “The Philadelphia Story” (1939), “Without Love” (1942) and “Coco” (1969). Also on view will be things Hepburn wore in TV movies such as “Love Among the Ruins” (1975). Photo collages and film stills highlight even more costumes.
“You get a deep dive into her career,” Ms. Hall says. Often times “she selected the costume designers herself or worked closely with them.”
In particular, the exhibition explores Hepburn’s relationship with designer Walter Plunkett. “They were good friends, and she apparently recommended him for ‘Gone With the Wind,’” Ms. Hall says. Several other designers are represented, too, including Howard Greer, Edith Head, Valentina, Muriel King, Jane Greenwood and Ruth Morley.
Visitors also will learn about the woman behind the headlines through personal items, such as her makeup kit (she reportedly wore three pairs of false eyelashes to give her eyes a “butterfly quality”) and seven pairs of her signature trousers.
“She just liked being comfortable, and it was a common-sense thing,” Ms. Hall says. She adds that Hepburn supposedly said, “If I meet a man who says he likes women in skirts, I tell him try a skirt.”
What gives the exhibition its sparkle isn’t just the costumes, she explains. “The personality of Katharine Hepburn is a huge part of the exhibition. She was the right kind of woman at the right time when Hollywood was looking for somone who was attractive because of their energy and independence and personality.”
This is the latest fashion-focused show to find its way to the Point Breeze museum since “Isabelle de Borchgrave: Fashioning Art From Paper” opened
there last fall. It was the last of three fashion exhibitions at The Frick Pittsburgh supported by a $1 million grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The first was “Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe” in 2016, followed by “Undressed: A History of Fashion in Underwear” in 2017.
More fashion-related exhibitions are slated to travel to The Frick Pittsburgh through at least 2021.
“We have the clothing collection here,” Ms. Hall says, referencing the more than 2,000 clothing-related pieces from industrialist Henry Clay Frick, his wife, Adelaide, and their family. “It makes a lot of sense for tying [fashion exhibitions] to our collections and our strengths.”
Sara Bauknecht: sbauknecht@postgazette.com or on Twitter and Instagram @SaraB_PG.