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Concord Museum to showcase historic clothing in ‘Fresh Goods’

February 20, 2018 | In the Press

From Wicked Local - Concord (http://concord.wickedlocal.com/news/20180220/concord-museum-to-showcase-historic-clothing-in-fresh-goods)

From March 2 through July 8, Concord Museum, 200 Lexington Road, will unveil a portion of its extensive historic clothing collection for the first time, along with textiles and decorative arts, in a new exhibition, “Fresh Goods: Shopping for Clothing in a New England Town, 1750-1900.”

How did Concordians in the 18th and 19th centuries acquire their clothes? Who were the style-setters? “Fresh Goods” examines these questions about the sources and context of small-town New England fashion and documents the answers drawing upon its collection. As the first exhibition in a year-long Mass Fashion collaborative with eight leading cultural institutions, Fresh Goods also draws on account books, advertisements, photographs, letters and diaries of the period.

“The real stars of the show are a dozen 18th- and 19th-century examples of women’s, men’s and children’s clothing,” said curator David Wood. “Most have Concord histories, and few have been on view in recent past.”

On the museum’s runway, “Fresh Goods” fashions range from a Parisian dinner dress to shoes made from silk brocade to a handmade everyday dress made with cotton milled in New England.

In addition to seeing how people shopped hundreds of years ago, visitors will also have an opportunity to virtually shop a cross-section of the museum’s clothing collection through an interactive experience that uses a modern online shopping platform. The online site allows visitors to select fans, bags, shoes and clothing for their ideal 18th- or 19th-century wardrobe.

“A novel and engaging element of ‘Fresh Goods’ is the online shopping experience, with the objects of desire being examples from Concord Museum’s outstanding collection of clothing and accessories,” said Wood. “An entertaining exercise in its own right, it is also a user-friendly portal into the wealth of information we have on these historic Concord objects.”

When Louisa May Alcott wrote in a letter, “I’ve got a new dress, gray silk, costing 90 cents per yard, thick, silvery, and very pretty in the piece,” she refers not to the dress, but the cloth it was made from. Before the age of ready-to-wear, it was the fabric one shopped for, not the garment. Pieces of cloth then might be taken to a dressmaker to be made into a garment, or the dress might be made at home.

Clothing conveys information about the wearer’s gender, age, rank and wealth, as well as clues about subtler categories, such as taste, education, marital status and aspiration. Through 14 documented outfits, the exhibition will consider the shopping habits of Concordians in the 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibit includes pieces made at home with fabric purchased at shops on Concord’s main streets or made at the local workplaces of seamstresses, tailors and milliners. Clothing and accessories may have been purchased in Boston, New York, London or Paris. Looking closely at these artifacts, visitors will be encouraged to compare their current conventions for choosing and buying clothing to people’s practices in the past.

The title of the exhibition, “Fresh Goods,” is taken from an 1818 newspaper ad for the Concord Shop of Josiah Davis announcing the sale of fabrics such as figured flannels, crimson, bombazettes and white and black cambricks.

Jane Nylander, president emerita, Historic New England, and Richard Nylander, curator emeritus, Historic New England, are the consulting curators for “Fresh Goods.” They also served as consulting curators for the museum’s “Behind Closed Doors” exhibition.

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