“Historic garments should not be worn by anybody, public or private figures,” stated the International Council of Museums (ICOM) Costume Committee in 2022. Kim Kardashian had just worn, and appeared to damage, Marilyn Monroe’s dress as part of a publicity stunt for the Met Gala, honoring an exhibition of American fashion.
Yet, many curators would argue that this is an outdated stance. These include Sarah Scaturro, who worked as the head conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City for eight years before joining the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2020 as Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator.
Scaturro, who’s writing her dissertation on the history of fashion conservation for the Bard Graduate Center, has studied fashion’s long road to being taken seriously by institutions like the Met. In a recent paper, “Towards a New Consideration for the Wearing of Historic Costume,” she delves into this history and addresses how it gave rise to ICOM Costume’s guidelines that are now being reconsidered.
With the upcoming Met Gala opening a Costume Institute exhibition of pieces that are too fragile to be worn called Sleeping Beauties, the idea of costume preservation is destined to remain in the zeitgeist a while longer. I called Scaturro to talk to her about why historic costume isn’t as straightforward as the Kardashian debacle led many to believe.
You spoke publicly about Kim Kardashian wearing the Marilyn Monroe dress to the Met Gala in 2022. How much did that incident figure into your desire to write this paper at this time?
I felt the discourse that occurred in the press was overly simplistic. I had been interviewed, and while I tried to bring nuance into my answers, it didn't seem that so many people were interested in nuance, they really wanted to position museum professionals against Kim Kardashian.
At that same time, ICOM Costume issued a statement that was completely anti the wearing of historic dress held in collections. They said, under no circumstances should this happen, reflecting on the guidelines that they had issued in the 1980s. What was really interesting is that that position no longer holds true for a lot of museums.
ICOM Costume was actually called out by a curator at Te Papa Museum [in New Zealand, Puawai Cairns,] and ICOM Costume ended up apologizing and stating, you're right, this is a really Eurocentric perspective, and we'll do better, we'll rewrite our guidelines.
What nuance do you think was lost in the Kim Kardashian story?
The statement that ICOM Costume and Costume Society of America put out in the eighties prohibiting dress were really geared towards preserving the material integrity of the clothing. And what it failed to acknowledge is intangible or conceptual integrity of objects as well.
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In 2007, there was the United Nations Declaration of the Rights for Indigenous Peoples, UNDRIP. That declaration states that indigenous peoples have the right to control their material and intangible cultural heritage. For a long time, the conservation field was focused on preserving the materiality of objects, leaving off the fact that we're preserving objects for people.
Maybe Kardashian wearing this dress was not the wisest choice. However, there are instances where conservators will facilitate access to historic dress so that it can be activated and worn and performed. In a Western fashion collection, that doesn't really happen, and there's not really great reasons for it to happen. However, with collections that have a lot of indigenous clothing or, say, religious clothing, those specific communities that created those garments might actually have a really great ethical claim to wear them. And who am I to get in the way?
So, it's a part of working with communities, facilitating thoughtful access — that is where conservators are really positioning themselves. But where the media puts us is that we're like the gatekeepers. We're definitely not trying to block access.
What changed in the eighties that we had all these guidelines set out? I was surprised to read in your paper that it had to be explicitly stated that people shouldn’t eat and drink while wearing these garments.
Fashion exists in a really uneasy place within museums. Because of its commercial overtones and its ties to the feminine, it might be seen as frivolous. Fashion curators and conservators have had a really tough time legitimizing the field.
By the eighties, the field was really in a good spot. Practitioners were gaining a lot of confidence, they had developed a core set of practices for how clothing was interpreted and stored and treated. In the sixties and seventies, professional organizations and graduate training programs emerged, so there was a lot of professionalization in the field
Yet, this practice of museum administrators or donors wanting to borrow clothing or to show clothing for runway shows or galas kept happening. Curators and conservators were seeing damage to collections by the fifties. It was well known that this practice caused damage, so they started to band together and just say this is not an acceptable practice.
Basically what you're saying is clothing is not like other museum artifacts — you don't put it on the wall like a painting or erect it like a statue and just leave it there. It's created to interact with humans, and that affects how it must be preserved and cared for in a museum setting. What would you want the public to know about what goes into a museum costume collection?
It is one of the most expensive and labor-intensive types of objects to collect and store appropriately, primarily because of its extreme fragility. In order to really store a collection well, you have to have a lot of people involved — conservators, curators, collections managers, technicians, registrars, facility engineers. The space that holds the collection has to be very clean, very secure, and have highly purified air. The temperature and relative humidity needs to be precisely held at a stable level. Clothing is susceptible to mold infestation, so it needs to have enough air circulation. The clothes shouldn't be packed too tightly. It's also really susceptible to pest infestation so you have to have a detailed integrated pest management policy.
Then you have how they're stored. Are they hanging? You want padded archival hangers. If it's flat, it needs to be properly stuffed and not have too many things piled on top of it. Some objects are so difficult to store that they have to be stored on surrogate bodies. I did a big project when I was at the Costume Institute to rehouse a bunch of Charles James forms.
It could take two to four people to retrieve an object. Every time an object is packed into an archival box, it could take several hours.
All surfaces have to be clean. Even the person who's handling should probably be wearing gloves or have very clean hands. No fingernail polish, filed nails, hair pulled back, not a lot of makeup — all to protect this incredibly fragile type of object.
Fashion exhibits are so popular, but of course we don’t see everything that occurs behind the scenes before the dresses make their way to the museum floor. I think a lot of people have no idea what it takes.
That's just to store — dressing is a whole other issue. The key to dressing a garment is first to make sure it's strong enough to withstand the dressing process. A lot of garments cannot withstand actually being manipulated and put onto a mannequin. Your mannequin or dress form must be smaller than the garment. You would be surprised at how many people don't think about this. You need to build out a body that matches the garment shape, both so that the garment reads as a garment of its kind, but also, from a conservation perspective, so that it's completely supported in all aspects. So as it is on display, it's not going to tear or sag or pull. Dressing can easily take a few days. It’s really hard.
That would also point to why wearing some of this stuff would not be the best idea. Do you think there's an increasing demand in the celebrity realm for these kinds of pieces? Or in the realm of maybe wealthy people who are not famous but might want to collect them to wear?
Yeah. Some of that comes with wanting to have something unique that nobody else has. Or being sustainability-minded, using things that are already in circulation.
I love seeing vintage on the red carpet, it's extraordinary. I think what's challenging is when it doesn't fit so well. That's part of the problem with haute couture, which is made for a specific person's body. It's not easy to recycle those.
When does it make sense to wear historic pieces?
If it's still being circulated as vintage, then whoever owns it, I think, has the authority to wear it. And then in collections, it makes sense most when it makes sense for the collection itself. What is the the mission of the collection? What is the meaning and importance of the object being considered? Was it ethically obtained? What's the condition? What will be gained if it is worn? What will be lost? Under what circumstances would it be worn?
When would you not advise someone wear a historic piece?
There are definitely instances where we would never want something to be worn. Say, clothes that came from burial settings. So the fabulous Medici costumes — they're spectacular, but they came from a burial setting. Why would we ever want somebody to wear that? Or Jackie Kennedy's pink Chanel suit [which she wore when President Kennedy was shot] that remains locked within the National Archives — of course we wouldn't want somebody to wear that. Or clothing that has specific spiritual value for a specific community — nobody outside of that community should ever wear that.
And then you have the kinds of clothes that are just simply too fragile that would split and fall apart or powder to dust if they were to be put on a body — of course you shouldn't wear that.
Also, clothing that was just made for other bodies, not your body. I think for me, that was the most problematic thing with the Marilyn Monroe dress — it was made for a completely different body and a completely different skin tone. What I found troubling was that the conceptual integrity of the garment, which was all about Monroe appearing naked with shimmering diamonds was totally denied by it being put on a body that it didn't fit and that was the wrong skin tone.
Wait — what garments would turn to dust by being worn?
Silks that were weighted with metal salts, often tins. That has caused a lot of the silk garments from the end of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century to just powder to dust. It shatters. They're so fragile that you can't even put a needle through it.
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How does your work at the Cleveland Museum differ from what you were doing at the Costume Institute?
At the Costume Institute, I was just focused on the preservation of a fashion collection. The opportunity I had at Cleveland was to head up an entire conservation department — Asian paintings, objects, textiles, Western paintings, paper, frames, and science. A lot of my work now is cultural heritage management. What does it mean to preserve an encyclopedic collection and what all is needed?
We have a fledgling fashion program. One of our first fashion exhibitions is Egyptomania: Fashion's Conflict Obsession. We're currently preparing for another fashion exhibition that'll open up in the spring on Korean couture. And we've hired our first fashion curator, Darnell-Jamal Lisby.
When I was reporting my book on Anna Wintour, I heard all about the battle to getting fashion taken seriously in museums. So it’s nice to see the field expand.
The thing is, fashion attracts people. So I think that's why you're seeing more and more and more of it, because it does entice the public.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Follow Sarah Scaturro on Instagram, read her latest paper, and check her work out at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Love the interview. I hope you bring the subject more often (fashion in museums & fashion exhibitions ).
Thanks
Loved this interview - really fascinating to think about the cultural ethics of it and the logistics behind the scenes.