The Museum of the City of New York is opening its closets to the public in a series of behind-the-scenes videos, showing the inner workings of its costumes and textiles collection.
Viewers get a sneak peek inside a closet full of ornate dresses and fashion pieces made and worn in New York City in the mid-20th Century, like an ostrich feather coat and a bright pink dress once featured in Vogue, according to Phyllis Magidson, the Elizabeth Farran Tozer Curator of Costumes and Textiles.
Special debutante dresses crafted by Ann Lowe, the first prominent African-American designer, are carefully preserved but unveiled in the video, along with a slew of chic outfits, as they are photographed for the museum's digital collection.
Other videos show time lapses of museum staffers molding mannequins to fit into these beautiful gowns in the Dressing Room, which is a pop-up photo studio on the museum's first floor.
Jenny Shalant, the museum's director of digital marketing, said the Dressing Room series, filmed and edited by the museum's multi-media producer, Josephine Decker, has reached more than 750,000 people and been viewed more than 200,000 times since the end of February.
"We’ve been getting responses from fashion history and costume enthusiasts and peer institutions around the world — Brazil, Israel, France, Mexico, Canada, and Spain, to name a few," she said. "Since Dressing Room is such a unique museum experience, we figured that a video series would help us tell the story and help answer questions that visitors may have. It also gives us another angle to explore a lesser known aspect of the City Museum’s mission — to document the city’s history through a vast collection of images and objects. Plus, who doesn’t love 60s fashion! It’s total eye candy — and perfect for social media."
The digital collection itself will feature 400 major pieces, including the "Rosie the Riveter" jumpsuit from 1942, the Chantilly-lace cocktail gown from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" in 1958, and the Halston mink-trimmed evening gown and mask that was worn by Candice Bergen to Truman Capote's storied 1966 Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel.
You can follow the museum's archival work on its website.
Shalant said more videos are on the way, including interviews with authors, activists, historians, performers, and a new video series featuring the voices and objects of the museum's curatorial team for a new exhibition called "New York at its Core" that will open this fall.
If you want to see the archival work being done first-hand, the Dressing Room is open to the public Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
