#textile conservation

I'm so glad this work is happening, and I hope they'll stay safe. It's so sad to read about the three dresses that were bombed in the Rafah museum, and all the other artifacts purposely bombed by Israel, along with the countless people. I've mostly only thought about people, but many of the people in Palestine had material objects that they cared about so dearly.

1/ Reiche Haube (Silberhaube) currently on the conservation bench (prague)

2/ her cousin in the egerland museum in germany

so i started a new job / internship recently

its in a theatre costume shop so ive been learning basic sewing, alterations and things like that for the most part but the past week theyve had me helping out with the wigs!

i particularly hate working with hair whether real or synthetic, i grew up in a salon with a cosmetologist mother and grandmother and helped out there when i was young. i even went to beauty school myself but for aesthetics rather than cosmo because i refused to work with hair lol.

the goal here is a 1950s pin curl look, first photo is when i first pinned it down and brushed it out before really starting anything, second photo is day two after taking out the curls. they didnt hold on one side so i had to re-roll and pin.

glad im getting the experience and have chances to try out every aspect of working in the shop, i have been interested in fashion and costume design for a while now and have been looking into costuming or textile conservation masters programs so im excited for the next two semesters here figuring out if its the route i really wanna go down :)

Do you have any advice for someone like me who wants to become a dress conservator/historian? I’m a tailor’s apprentice but I’m having a lot of trouble deciding how to continue my education.

Glad you're enjoying it :)

Oooh, big question. Prepare for a lot of words:

Dress history is a weird field to get into. If you want to be a historian, unless you're independently wealthy and can just spend all your time researching and writing, the usual professions are curatorship and professorship. There aren't a lot of either position available - many settle for historical societies, small colleges, etc - and neither make much in the way of money. Definitely consider your options very thoroughly! (Though if you're a tailor's apprentice you probably already know that, lol.)

Conservation is - from my POV - a better choice in the long run, because while institutions can stop hiring people to teach or do research, any place with a collection has to keep conserving it. Conservators also make more money, no question.

I went to a program that specialized generalized in both (FIT). Like you, I was unsure of what I wanted, and the flexibility was attractive. Other programs tend to specialize in one or the other, and now that I've been through FIT's program, I understand exactly why. There was no way to give us both curricula in their entirety in the two years we had, and I ended up feeling like I barely learned anything. However, I was coming from having completed a long conservation internship; I had studied up pretty thoroughly on fashion history before I attended the program at all; and I had already been through a separate MA previously, so I already had research and writing skills on a higher level than FIT even cares about. Given that caveat.. if I were to go back in time with this info, I would attend a different program that specialized in one or the other and therefore provided more comprehensive skills.

If you're interested in conservation, my biggest piece of advice would be to do an internship, preferably with a firm that specializes in it or at a big museum with a dedicated department. That will give you experience and familiarity like nothing else and also help you to understand whether it's the right field for you. But internships like that can be pretty competitive, so the second best option is to volunteer at a local historical society or house museum. Almost all of them are constantly on the lookout for volunteers, especially ones interested in preservation and the more scientific side of collections management. You won't be paid, unfortunately, but the upside is that almost any small institution will happily take helpers because they're desperate and cash-strapped. Reading through online publications like the National Park Service's Conserve-O-Gram is a great way to start building knowledge if nobody there is equipped to give it to you. (Every institution I've worked at has had a copy on hand for reference, lol.)

I volunteered for a small house museum years back and literally on day one they threw me at the clothing collection and told me to dress mannequins and pack textiles. I had very little idea what I was doing, but it was a great learning experience - and one that you're never going to get at a museum internship because they're so much more careful about their objects and access. (Pros and cons, but hey.)

+ As far as I know, you will need an MA to be hired to most conservation positions, but there's no reason you can't get started in the field without it first and make sure that's the degree you want/need. In terms of curatorship/professorship, an MA will get you into small local colleges but for anything larger you'll need a PhD, and that's a big commitment. You have to really like academia to get one of those suckers! As far as I'm aware, there are no stipended MA programs and only one PhD program (Bard) in this specific field that pays, so again, you have to be fiscally comfortable (or willing to go into debt and work two jobs) to get an advanced degree in the subject. It's a vicious cycle that keeps a lot of people out, and institutions can afford to keep it up because it's so competitive. +

All that said, historic sewing is a fantastic way to get into the field because knowledge of construction and technique gives you an excellent understanding of historic dress, and hand sewing techniques are essential for conservation. You're already on the right track!

If you want any book recs, off of the top of my head Refashioning and Redress and The Care and Display of Historic Clothing are two great, readable volumes.

Lovers of costume history, enjoy.

These were worn by the wife of an important government official at Napoleon’s crowning ceremony. Important, but not supremely so. Considering the opulence of this dress and its associated train. we can imagine how magnificent the garments of the top tier of Napoleonic society must have been.