Bonnets to Bikinis: The Evolution of Pratt’s Fashion Department
by Staff Pratt Institute Archives on 2020-04-06T14:31:00-04:00 in Archives, Fashion, Pratt Institute Archives | 0 CommentsPost submitted by Miranda Siler, Pratt Institute School of Information '21 and Archives Graduate Assistant Spring 2020.
At the beginning of the 2020 Spring Semester semester, the Archives received a donation from the Pratt fashion department with a wide assortment of materials varying in shape, size, and media. Throughout the semester I have been sorting through them, organizing, and finding a space for them within our collection. This is known as archival processing. I started processing by creating an inventory and general summary of the items, which was documented through what is called an accession record in our database, ArchivesSpace. This step is important since different pieces from the donation will ultimately be placed in different places within the Archives collections. We want to make sure there is a record of everything together, which we can then link via ArchivesSpace to the various collections that house the material, allowing one to create connections across the Archives.
The donation included a mixture of fashion-related items from a number of different sources, documentation of student work, and general Pratt items. Some examples include:
- Copies of Pratt commencement programs
- A set of postcards related to French costume history
- Slides of student work
- VHS’s of Pratt Fashion Shows
- Promotional material sent by fabric and pattern companies
- Photographs of exhibits and events
After inventorying everything, I started sorting the photographs. Some were clearly connected to a single even as they were in binders or had contact sheets that I could use to match photographs. Others were completely loose and disorganized. I did my best to organize them into piles based on their content. I then assigned each photograph a number based on those content categories and entered that information into ArchivesSpace.
The vast majority of the photos had to do with the Pratt Fashion Shows. It was a ton of fun looking through all of the various outfits throughout the years. Here are some of my favorites:
Images from Pratt Fashion Shows, undated. Records of the School of Art and Design, Pratt Institute Archives.
Pratt Fashion Show 1971. Records of the School of Art and Design, Pratt Institute Archives.
Fashion Show, circa 2000. Records of the School of Arts and Design, Pratt Institute Archives.
Fashion Show, circa 2000. Records of the School of Arts and Design, Pratt Institute Archives.
The donation had more than just fashion show material, however. There were candid shots of students in class, photos of special events and exhibits, and even a few more formal photo shoots. Here are my favorites from those files:
Department event with student work, undated. Records of the School of Arts and Design, Pratt Institute Archives.
Exhibit of student work, 1970. Records of the School of Arts and Design, Pratt Institute Archives.
All of the above can be found in the Fashion Series within the Records of the School of Arts and Design collection at the Archives. That said, not all of the photographs from the donation ended up here. To understand why, we need to look at a little bit of Pratt History. From its inception Pratt had departments devoted to Domestic Arts and Domestic Sciences, teaching people of all races and genders how to lead careers in cooking, cleaning, home nursing, and other forms of household management. This also included dressmaking and millinery (hat-making). A consolidation and a couple of name changes later (check out this blogpost for more information on that), these departments became the School of Home Economics in 1941, which had a robust costume design program. When the School of Home Economics was dissolved in 1961, the program migrated over to the School of Continuing and Professional Studies and eventually to the School of Arts and Design where it became the Fashion department that exists today.
The donation we received contained a handful of photos that seemed to be pre-1961, so the Records of the School of Arts and Design was not the appropriate place to house them. For the moment, we have cataloged them in the Pratt Institute Archives Photograph Collection. While none of the photographs from the donation have been scanned, there are some similar photographs within our Digital Image Collection in Artstor of the dressmaking and costume design programs. Here are a few examples:
Students at work in dressmaking class, ca. 1900, Conrad Milster Glass Plate Negative Collection.
While processing the rest of the donation is on hold for the moment, it has been a lot of fun looking through all of these materials, exploring both practical and experimental fashion through the years, and learning about Pratt’s history as well. Thank you to the Pratt Fashion Department for giving us so much cool stuff. I can’t wait to work with the rest of it!
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