Dress your best
Fund-raiser is a night out -- of the dresser -- for historic textiles

By Anita Martin

Fashion revolves relentlessly. As campus warms up, pleated miniskirts drop to billowy ankle lengths and hike back up without warning. Trends rage, recede and recycle, according to consumer caprice. But looking back, the perpetual hunt for the hot new look forms a cultural chronology, often defined by decades and indicating social change.

Mary Doxsee, associate professor emerita of home economics and textile connoisseur, understood the anthropological value of vogue.

Arriving at Ohio University in 1953, she found a university-owned collection of about a dozen pieces of historical clothing. Over the years, she expanded what is now called the Mary C. Doxsee Historical Costume and Textiles Collection to more than 2,000 items through a combination of world travels and local donations.

On Feb. 4, Sky Cone, curator of Doxsee's collection and assistant professor of retail merchandising, together with Diana Manchester, assistant professor of food, nutrition and hospitality, hosted an event in the Walter Hall Rotunda to raise money for the collection.

"Mary Doxsee's primary goal was to educate students," says Cone, who will use the proceeds for costume conservation and to develop a Web-based catalogue of collection items. "The digital catalogue we create will be used as an educational tool."

For the event, titled "Cycles of Fashion: Dress Your Best," Cone's history of costume  students prepared a display and fashion show using items from the Doxsee Collection. Manchester's students from beverage management provided three rounds of wine tasting -- white, red and dessert -- with food pairings. Topping off the event, the Ohio University Jitterbug Club performed the Charleston, lindy hop and balboa, and reviewed the history of American swing dance.

Attendees arrived in style, including Danette Pratt and Lindy Poland, who wore homemade costumes evoking the Viking expansion era and 14th century Europe, respectively.

"Our invitations said 'dress your best,' so we thought we would dress as our favorite fashion eras," says Pratt, a textile and ceramic artist with Starbrick Clay gallery in Nelsonville.

The event display featured locally donated wedding dresses, from the lacey extravagance of the late 1800s to the long-tailed 1930s, as well as military attire, including uniforms from both the lady Marine Corps of World War II and the Vietnam Air Force.

Between such treats as polenta-stuffed mushrooms with chardonnay and salmon-smoked dill bites with pinot noir, a full century of fashion encircled the rotunda. The Doxsee collection fashion show presented a beaded mint green gown from the 1930s, art deco design of the 1970s and bold fuchsia shoulder pads straight out of the 1980s, among many others.

For Ellen Goldsbury, MSHE '64, "Cycles of Fashion" revived fond memories from her days as a student in Doxsee's history of costume class. "She really made history come alive," Goldbury says. "She taught us how the details of dress all reveal something about the social roles and identities of the people who wore it."

Though she retired in 1982, Doxsee loved the history of fashion so much she continued to teach "Cycles of Fashion" for seven more years. Today, she lives at the Hickory Creek Nursing Center in The Plains, Ohio, where she is treated for Alzheimer's disease.

Along with the Doxsee collection, Cone inherited the history of costume class, which examines the cultural significance of clothing trends from prehistory through the 19th century. Cone's ultimate dream for the Doxsee collection is to someday create a center for textile conservation and preservation.

Anita Martin, BSJ ’05, is a writer for University Communications and Marketing.

Posted 5-19-06