Can’t find your favorite pair of earrings; you have a great new dress but can’t find shoes to match; or, you just have to have a pair of those funky new gloves that are ‘in vogue’? The staff at ATHM sympathizes with you and realizes the importance of accessories, so come and see our next special exhibition opening October 23, 2005.
Titled Finishing Touches, the show navigates the territory beyond the suit or dress to look at accessories – the last things a person picks up or puts on – and how they can mark an individual.
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The exhibition looks at accessories in historical terms and as a part of contemporary fashion, from nineteenth-century hats of the properly dressed woman, to early twentieth-century “dusters” designed as protective coverings for automobile driving on unpaved roads, and the latest in twenty-first-century color-coordinated cell phone covers. Reminiscences, current trends, and visitor experiences provide a range of perspectives for looking at what we wear and why, how new technologies have created the need and/or desire for new accessories, how we change what we wear to keep up with fashion, and where the fashion elite look for new ideas.
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Shoes, handbags, hats, capes and coats, gloves, and other pieces from ATHM’s accessories collection will be featured. “Accessories can be practical or decorative—or both,” said ATHM’s co-curator Karen Herbaugh. “They can make or break an ensemble; dub you as someone who is very well ‘put together’ or land you on the pages of a fashion magazine as a ‘fashion faux-pas.’ By definition, they are ‘of secondary or subordinate importance,’ but they can have a dramatic effect. Though not essential, they often make the difference between serviceable and well-designed, between ordinary and exceptional.”
