Blog post by Eileen Keating. In 1923, at the age of 58, Martha Van Rensselaer was selected by the National League of Women Voters as one of America’s twelve most influential women. This honor was in recognition of her twenty-three years of pioneering work at Cornell in the new field of home economics. Home economics […]
20th Century Fashion History
Paper Fashion in the 1960s: The Genesis of Fast Fashion
Blog post by Livia Caligor ’21 As my fingers skimmed through the funky, pattern-clad dresses hanging from the 1960s aisle in the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection, they suddenly halted when landing upon a rough metallic material. Perplexed by the unexpected texture in a sea of neon, geometric patterns and retro silhouettes, I pulled out […]
The Cornell Fashion Collective & The Cornell Costume and Textile Collection: An Ongoing History
Blog post by Katie Williams ’20 From folding tables taped together to make a runway to a professional production and staged show, the Cornell Fashion Collective has transformed over the past 34 years. The Cornell Fashion Collective, formerly the Cornell Design League, is a student-run organization that was founded to provide members of the Cornell […]
The Power of a Winter Coat
Blog post by Amanda Dubin ’18 As all Cornell students and alumni know, surviving a harsh Ithaca winter is challenging. The streets are constantly covered in snow, which soon turns to slush and eventually freezes over into ice. Going to school in Ithaca, NY, it is no surprise that students pile on layers just to […]
Envisioning the Future Through the Past: The Ongoing History of the Cornell Costume & Textile Collection
Blog post by Dr. Denise N. Green ’07 Believe it or not, my career was sparked by the First Ladies of Texas. I attended high school in a Dallas suburb and during my senior year I went on a field trip to the Texas First Ladies Historic Costume Collection. While I had visited every possible […]
Concert T Hall of Fame
Blog post by Rachel Doran ‘19. From childhood onward it is engrained in our minds that music is an outlet for self-expression; not only for the musicians, but for listeners as well. For every mood, for every phase of our lives, there is a genre or an artist or a song that we gravitate towards. […]
Mission to Myanmar: An Exploration of Traditional Kachin Dress
Blog post by Rachel Doran (’19) On March 29, 1930 Miss Charity Carman embarked on her journey to Burma, now Myanmar, as a missionary for the American Baptist Church. Miss Carman came from a family of missionaries. Her brother, John S. Carman, a graduate of Cornell University’s medical school, served as a medical missionary in […]