Sunday, March 14, 2010: Fashions for Amazons: Sports Clothing for Women, 1850s to 1950s
As the Olympic spirit continues, the world sees women competing in many sporting events, but being excluded from others (like ski jumping). It is interesting to remember a time when women were expected not to participate in any sport that required serious physical effort. Sports were seen as manly and far too rugged for the delicacy of a woman’s constitution. Other than riding habits, which were usually inspired by men’s riding clothing, women had few garments designed specifically for athletic pastimes until the 1860s, when walking costumes first appeared. In the following decades costumes for swimming, skating, tennis, golf, and other sports came into popular use. Join fashion historian Ivan Sayers as he presents a display and slide show about Victorian sports costumes for women,which will be followed by a historical fashion show of original women’s sportswear of the twentieth century.
Location: Hycroft, 1489 McRae Avenue, Vancouver Time: 2:00 pm
Tickets: $20 per person; $18 per OCMS adult member; $10 per OCMS student member.
Tickets are available at the door (general admission).
Sunday, April 18, 2010: European Haute Couture: Traditions of Excellence
The haute couture industry was begun by Charles Frederick Worth in mid-nineteenth century Paris. Worth promoted the use of the finest fabrics in the world that were cut with technical precision and then sewn and decorated by experts. Each garment was one-of-a-kind and created to the highest standards of workmanship. Twentieth-century haute couture maintained those high expectations, but politics and economics forced the industry to broaden its market by creating ready-made garments and even by selling design rights to mass manufacturers. The best of the ready-to-wear products formed what came to be known as “confection.” Claus Jahnke and Ivan Sayers, avid collectors and historians of fashion, will present a history of European haute couture. Using original garments by Worth, Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga, and others, they will illustrate haute couture’s intensive construction techniques, which make the inside of a garment as beautiful as the outside.
Location: Hycroft, 1489 McRae Avenue, Vancouver Time: 2:00 pm
Tickets: $20 per person; $18 per OCMS adult member; $10 per OCMS student member.
Tickets are available at the door (general admission).
Sunday, May 16, 2010: Zonda Nellis: Vancouver’s Weaver of Fashion
Zonda Nellis, the iconic designer who helped put Vancouver on the international fashion map, recounts the history of her fashion design house and her thoughts on the aesthetics of dress. Her devotion to weaving superior fabrics, her creation of simple, elegant garments that display her hand-woven textiles to their best advantage, and the application of special treatments to ready-made fabrics that give the cloth a recognizably “Zonda Nellis touch” have all contributed to her rise to fashion design stardom. Ms. Nellis’s talk will be augmented with a slide presentation and a display of original garments that reveal the designer’s love of weaving and her respect for woven cloth.
Location: Hycroft, 1489 McRae Avenue, Vancouver Time: 2:00 pm
Tickets: $20 per person; $18 per OCMS adult member; $10 per OCMS student member.
Tickets are available at the door (general admission).
