Highlights From the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection’ review

‘The immortal beauty which Athens and Florence have bequeathed to the world will be made to sweeten the daily toil of the bread-winner.”
So said James MacAlister at the 1891 dedication of the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry, now known as Drexel University. Mr. MacAlister, president of the Institute, was referring to the importance of the Drexel Collection, a museum of art and artifacts that the Institute’s founder, financier Anthony J. Drexel, endowed with $1 million (the equivalent of $26 million today). Such high-flown rhetoric suggests a stress on classical antiquity, but in 1898, with remarkable prescience, the museum began to acquire garments, accessories and textiles. Over 14,000 pieces and 117 years later, Drexel is now home to a world-class collection of fashion and textiles, recently renamed the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC).
That the museum was understaffed in recent decades and therefore inaccessible to fashion scholars and fellow curators has only added to its cachet. “It was whispered about in the costume-history field,” says Clare Sauro, the collection’s curator for the past seven years. Upon her first peek into the archives she identified not one but three dresses by the couture house of Callot Soeurs, a favorite of the cognoscenti. Like the kiss that awakens Sleeping Beauty, the exhibition “Immortal Beauty” is reintroducing the FHCC to the world.
“Highlights” shows don’t have a thematic DNA from which to generate a form; they’re more of a défilé, the French word for “narrow pass, parade, procession.” Ms. Sauro wanted to created a harmonious introduction to the collection, and “Immortal Beauty”—on display in the university’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, an airy industrial space—proceeds chronologically with 45 articles of clothing arranged on six platforms (plus accessories in glass cases). The collection has especially strong holdings from the late 1800s and the opening item, appropriately, is a mantle from 1883 by Charles Frederick Worth, the founding father of the Paris couture. Aubergine with a Medieval pattern of cream pomegranates (symbol of prosperity), long in front and short in back (to accommodate the bustles of the era), this piece, redolent of old Philadelphia wealth, summons up those Age of Innocence trips to Paris.
The show hits its stride, however, in the 20th century. This platform includes a Jacques Doucet walking suit of claret velvet (1916) that looks straight out of an illustration by Georges Lepape. And the pieces from Callot Soeurs—yes, three—show a fashion house evolving from full-length Edwardian (a candlelit lamé circa 1910), to tea-length Ballets Russes ornamentation (1919), to a flapper sheath in turquoise, magnificently delineated with Moorish motifs (1926).
(Photo:vintage prom dresses) Further down, front and center, stands a bolt from the blue—a bias-cut wrap gown from Elsa Schiaparelli’s fabled Zodiac Collection of 1938-39. “Schiap” was famous for her fabrics, and this one is stunning, a giant gingham of gold lamé with stars of lilac and persimmon woven in. We’ve been seeing the same two or three Zodiac pieces for years now, so it’s extraordinary to make the acquaintance of this super-fresh survivor. In a very smart bit of positioning, Ms. Sauro has placed Adrian’s sleight-of-hand suit of black-and-white gingham (1947) just beyond the Schiaparelli. As chief costume designer at MGM, Adrian often dressed the actresses in designs a la Schiaparelli.
Moving midcentury, standouts include a 1948 gown by Charles James for Babe Paley that ranks among the most graceful of his aggressive, often tortured creations. Norman Norell, the easeful opposite of James, is represented by a cocktail shirtwaist from 1951—a black wool jersey bodice with a white cloud of skirt. This look, in fact, was behind Edith Head’s opening number for Grace Kelly in the movie “Rear Window.” Speaking of which, the dress that Ms. Sauro calls “the most beloved object in the FHCC due to its royal provenance” is a coral A-line gown from 1964 that was owned and donated by Princess Grace of Monaco. The design is Givenchy, but Grace got permission to have it executed, less expensively, by Marie Therese of Nice. “She was a practical princess,” says Ms. Sauro. Embroidered with real coral branches, it evokes the coastal principality over which the former Philadelphian presided.

Iconic pieces abound. Halston’s party pajamas of 1978, cheetah-print jersey shimmering with translucent paillettes, are thrillingly luxe and lean. A Madame Grès column of 1980, Grecian pleating in ivory silk, is design as Delphic Oracle. The show culminates—and is strangely contained—in a dusk-black gown from 2006 by couturier Ralph Rucci, a native Philadelphian. The silhouette is simple—a princess line flowing wide at the hem—but four layers of black tulle contain a Klimt-like pattern of black fabric rectangles, ripped by hand, fault-lines revealing a nude silk lining. Mr. Rucci has said he was channeling sculptor Louise Nevelson, but he seems to have created a deepening world in one dress: the land of fashion history.Read more at:mermaid prom dresses