KINGSTON, R.I. — Though plenty of clothing designers have become household names — Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior, for example — the average person may not know much about the people themselves or their work.
But anyone who wants to learn more is in luck, as an exhibit exploring designer-labeled fashion in the 1900s is currently on display at the University of Rhode Island’s Quinn Hall Textile Gallery.
Titled “What’s in a [Designer’s] Name? An Investigation of Twentieth-Century Fashion Labels,” the exhibit was researched, curated and installed by graduate students in URI’s Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design program.
It’s made up of about 30 pieces of clothing from the university’s Historic Textile and Costume Collection, all of which are designer-labeled. In addition to Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, visitors can expect to see clothing designed by Hubert de Givenchy, Issey Miyake and more.
The students analyzed five pieces each for a class they took in spring 2021 — researching the designers, donors, materials used and quality of their design and construction — then took another class last fall, which was focused on creating the show.
“We had to look collectively at the body of research and pick out common themes from the individual research process, and put together an exhibition to serve a larger audience,” said Rebecca Kelly, who taught the fall 2021 class (the spring 2021 class was taught by Dr. Linda Welters).
Kelly said the show includes works by both well-known and lesser-known designers, and that it touches on the economic, social and political landscapes of the times in which the pieces were created.
“It’s just a really lovely, kind of retrospective look at so many different things,” Kelly said. “Fashion is just such a great window into social history, and economic history, political history, so all of these different things get kind of intertwined with our exhibition.”
The show also explores the origins of branding and licensing in the fashion industry, as well as the transition from individual designers and fashion houses to brands, said Alyssa Opishinski, a graduate student specializing in historic costume and textiles.
Opishinski, who took both the spring and fall 2021 classes, said the students in the spring class sat down at the end of the semester to find common themes among the pieces they researched, with the goal of curating the show.
Eventually, they found a common theme: The stories behind the labels themselves.
“There were all these labels over the 20th century and it really reflected how the business of fashion works, and how complex that is, and innovative — or how much it can drive innovation,” she said.
That theme, she said, was interesting to the graduate fashion and textile students, and also the undergraduate students taking the class who were more interested in the business side of fashion, as opposed to the historic side.
“I think we kind of ended up marrying those two together, and saying, ‘Let’s look at the history of branding,’” Opishinski said.
The next step was to create the show itself. Kelly said the students chose which pieces to include in the show among the dozens they researched, then they wrote short descriptions of each work.
Now that the show has opened, those pieces and descriptions are on display. The gallery space is a circular room containing a large panel that explains the show, as well as the pieces and their descriptions, Kelly said.
The pieces are arranged in “somewhat of a chronology,” Kelly said, allowing visitors to see how fashion has evolved over the years.
“We really think of the gallery space as being an opportunity to educate people about the history of fashion,” Kelly said. “Anyone who’s interested in fashion, I think, (will) find an interesting angle if they come visit our exhibition.”
“What’s in a [Designer’s] Name? An Investigation of Twentieth-Century Fashion Labels” runs through December at the Quinn Hall Textile Gallery (55 Lower College Road, Kingston). It’s free and open to the public from Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
