March 1, 1929
An exhibition demonstrating the practical use of the Museum has just been arranged in the Decorative Arts Department on the 2nd floor of the Brooklyn Museum. It is composed of the work of students of Pratt Institute and the Traphagen School of Fashion, as well as other contributors.
The exhibition is the direct outgrowth of a series of lectures on fashion given by Mme. Hélène Volka at the Museum last fall. One of the lectures was on the subject of "Extracting Fashion through Museums". Her recommendations along this line have been most interestingly, intelligently and attractively carried out in this show.
The method has been to make a drawing of one of the Museum's old dresses and then color it. The next step is to put the dress on a figure of a woman of the period, showing how she wore it. The third step is to show a dress in the modern mode which is directly adapted from the old dress.
Mme. Volka claimed in her lectures that there are really no new costume designs and that everything is adaptation of old ideas. This exhibition proves that former ideas have practical use to-day without in any way copying the old designs.
The exhibition is made up of about 100 drawings and will be on view for six weeks. It consists of delightfully colored drawings of dresses on figures or scenes of people in costume which could be used for posters or advertising purposes.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1916 - 1930. 01-03/1929, 029. View Original
