The Tulsa Historical Museum has a variety of exhibits and changes these exhibits frequently. While they had displays on everything from the Tulsa Race Riots to Native American ballerinas when we visited, we found some especially interesting information about clothing. What can we learn about clothes in our lives — and what can we learn about our lives from clothes?
Ordinary clothes
The first special items we saw were the clothes from the 1920s, including these amazing handmade dresses. These dresses would have been worn to dances or cocktail parties in the 1920s. Not only would it have taken hundreds of hours to make the dresses, but they would also have been very heavy to wear. You can see close-ups below. This is hand-made lace with hand-sewn beads. Very few people know how to do this work nowadays.
The beaded dresses are very special, but there were other examples that would have involved almost as much work. The collar and cuffs below are hand-embroidered. Clothes like these, with lots of fancy handwork, were not only very difficult to make, but also very difficult to wash. While a woman could have made garments like these for herself, most people who wore this kind of clothing would have dressmakers to produce them and servants to wash them.
There are also clothes in the museum that show a different kind of person. The outfit below is a nurse’s uniform. The collar and cuffs are simple and the dress is made of simple, practical cloth, but this outfit tells the story of the person who wore it just as well as the fancier garments above.
What do the hat and shoes below tell you about the people who wore them?
Costumes
Upstairs, we found an exhibit of costumes. These clothes were made with the intention of saying something about characters in plays. They were not made during the time in history which they represent, and probably weren’t made in just the same way as authentic clothing of the period. They still show the meticulous handwork, lace, beads, and sumptuous fabrics used for the fancy clothes from the ’20s.
This exhibit included displays showing how the costumes were designed. The designer made plans and drawings.
Fabric was draped and pinned on mannequins.
Then those shapes were used to make patterns, which were then used to cut the cloth for the costumes.
The costume below was shown in a photo above with the actor wearing it in full costume for his character. It looks different without the special makeup!
Think about clothing design
The upstairs exhibit was about theatrical costume design: the job of creating costumes for a play or film. Visitors were encouraged to design their own costumes. There were some very interesting questions to help us think about designing a costume.
What about the clothes at the top of the page — the things worn by real people in 1920s Oklahoma? Did they tell a story about their owners the same way a costume does in a play? What kinds of choices do you make about your own clothing? You may not design a garment, but do you design your own look using clothes?
When you choose your clothes, do you think about the materials they’re made from? What would it mean to choose a piece of clothing with lace, embroidery, silk, and beading? What would it mean to choose something black or white or bright colored?
Finally, think about people who make clothes. Do you know anyone who sews or knits clothing for their family, their dog, their dolls, or themselves? Have you thought about learning how?
We saw some other examples of clothing in other museums in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Look through our slideshow and see if you have any ideas about the people who wore these garments or the people who made them.
Books
- MindWare Fashion Designer Kit
- Fashion Design School for Kids and Teens
- Time Travel History – Fashion Dreams 1800 – 2030: Creative Fun-Schooling Curriculum
- Fashion Design for Kids
Online resources
- Check out PBS Day with a Fashion Designer virtual field trip.
- The Fashion Institute of Technology has free educational resources about costumes and daily clothing.
