New Hampshire puts fashion history in context with towns and gowns - Examiner

When Project Runway celebrity designer Austin Scarlett introduced the Passion For Fashion runway show at Strawbery Banke Museum, he noted that the beauty of the “Thread” exhibit that the runway show celebrated was that historical garments are displayed in the context of the houses where they were worn. The Mabel Decatur wedding dress that inspired his own gold satin gown displayed next to it in the front parlor of the Goodwin Mansion at Strawbery Banke was worn by the granddaughter of Governor Ichabod Goodwin who owned the mansion. The pink sprigged cotton day dress upstairs that inspired fellow-Project Runway designer Epperson, was worn by Mrs. Goodwin and the fabric was manufactured at the Portsmouth Steam Factory her husband owned.

Scarlett suggested that unlike other fashion exhibits at places like the Metropolitan Museum, when you can see the clothes people wore in the places they wore them that makes a difference in understanding their lives.

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Several sites around Portsmouth and beyond are hosting exhibits that entice vacationing fashionistas by asking whether clothes do indeed make the man or woman who wears them. Exhibits including "Thread: Stories of Fashion at Strawbery Banke, 1740-2012," "The Height of Propriety" at the Portsmouth Atheaneum, "People, Places and Pantloon"s at the Counting House Museum across the river in South Berwick, Maine and "New Threads: An American Quilt Story" focusing on African cloth and the fabric of the lives of recent African immigrants at the Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampshire all examine the role of fashion through the lens of towns and their gowns.

Next: Three hundred years of fashion at Strawbery Banke