Ask a Curator

Hi, my name is Shannon Meyer. I’m the senior curator at the Missouri History Museum, and my area of specialty is clothing and textiles. The exhibit that I am most excited about working on right now is an exhibit called “Underneath It All”, which is about the history of women’s underwear. The exhibit is going to start around 1800, which is really the earliest part of our collection for the most part, and work its way up to the present, and talk about the foundations that were needed to create the silhouettes that changed pretty much by decade. The idea is to show a dressed mannequin, such as this, and then show the foundation that would have been necessary to create that silhouette. So these are just some of the examples of some mannequins and undergarments that we are currently working with to try to make it all fit together using the appropriate time periods, the appropriate pieces to make it correct. So just some of the examples that are here—this mannequin has some pieces that are late 1820s into the 1830s, with a corset, a chemise and a pocket. She’ll need some additional petticoats to make her fuller, to complete her silhouette. And then we also have this mannequin, which is 1870s-1880s, showing the bustle, drawers, stockings, corset, and chemise. There are different styles of bustles of various sizes and various shapes. So we have a lot to work with, a lot to figure out—the exhibit opens in late June and will be up for roughly nine months, and I hope everyone comes to see it.

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