Welcome to Lancaster, Ohio, home of the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio,
and this summer, the home of visiting Costume Designer, Edith Head.
First, let me clarify: Edith Head passed away in 1981, so "she" wasn't actually in Lancaster, but a museum there hosted a fabulous exhibit of some of her work. For those of you who don't know her, she was the main costume designer at Paramount Pictures from 1924-1967, and she won 8 Academy Awards for her work.
Edith had a BA from UC Berkeley, and an MA from Stanford, but she never studied costume design. It just came naturally to her. She began as a costume sketch artist. But enough bio stuff.... you can read more about her life on Wikipedia if you are interested. Let's move on to the exhibit!
My traveling companion (here after referred to as TC) and I had never been to Lancaster before. We were immediately impressed by how lovely the town is. There are many well tended historic homes and several museums in the downtown area. The Decorative Arts Center of Ohio is in a building called the Reese-Peters House which dates back to 1835. The first floor is decorated with period furniture to represent the house as it would have been in its heyday. The second floor is for special exhibits. There is another building on the property called the Wendel Center for Art Education, and of course there is a delightful, ubiquitous gift shop.
TC and I both agreed that this exhibit was very well done! A large grand staircase swept from the first floor to the second with actresses in Edith Head designs leading the way.
From the top of the stairs hung movie reels with pieces of film hanging down identifying the names of her Academy Award winning films. Very clever!
The exhibit consisted of 4 rooms and the central hallway where the clothing was displayed. One of the most clever parts of the exhibit was the use of technology. In each room was an iPad on a stand. The screen showed the costumes in the room, and when you touched a photo, a movie clip would play showing the opening movie title sequence, the credits, and then a scene where the costume was worn. This part of the exhibit was really great and added so much to the write-ups of the clothing.
It was amazing to be able to compare the clothing we were seeing in person to the images on the screen. It was clear just how much the camera can distort its subject! Here are some examples of what I mean:
This dress was worn by Joan Fontaine in the 1950 movie September Affair. Much of the beaded detail of the bodice was lost in the black and white movie. In person, this dress is magnificent! The dress also appears to be white in the movie.
These costumes were worn by Arlene Dahl and Bob Hope in the 1953 Here Come the Girls. You can see the golden color of this dress with a pink ruffle in my photo above. In the black and white display photo it appeared white (below), and the color of the ruffle was totally washed out. However, in the color movie clip, the whole dress appeared to be a pink/lavender color. I don't know if the movie was colorized, or if that was the original version, but it was interesting to see how much black and white photography and colored filming affected the true color of the dress.
Speaking of color versus black & white film, I noticed early on that a dress that was a dark rust color in person looked black in the movie. I asked the docent on duty if Edith designed with the use of b&w filming in mind. It turns out she did, and that is why she often wore large glasses with dark-tinted lenses. She said she wanted to view the world as a black and white camera does.
One of the dresses I found most interesting was very simple and made of silk. It was worn by Carroll Baker in 1965's Harlow. It was a bias cut, cream silk charmeuse. In the movie, the star falls into a fountain, and as you can see from the picture below, the dress becomes her skin. What I marveled at was that the silk survived that water. I am curious as to how this was cleaned after the filming.
Along the walls of the display rooms were quotes. This is a good one:
The center dress is this display was worn by Mae West in She Done Him Wrong from 1933. This got my vote for "favorite costume" out of 4 shown for museum guests to pick from. When we voted, the 4 options were running neck & neck.
Here is Edith shown with a list of the movies she won her Oscars for. Interestingly, none of these movies were represented with clothing in this show.
My friend, TC had this to say about the show: "The Edith Head exhibit was a lovely treat for fans who are nostalgic for the glamour of old Hollywood!" I agree! Here are some of her favorite costumes:
This was worn by 2 actresses in the same film as part of the plot was the 2 women show up at a party wearing the same dress. TC said she had a bridesmaid dress with a similar print.
The one at the right here was from an Elvis Presley movie - this got TC's vote for "favorite". (Note, the one at the left is the one I said looked black in the movie.)
This was worn by Jane Russell, and of course she looked amazing in it!
We noticed that in the movie where this black dress was worn, the "drops" were very sparkly - it was much more impressive with movie lighting on it. But TC commented that this was something that could easily be worn today. Indeed several of the styles on display were classics that could be worn now. The dress at the right with the fish decals wasn't worn in a movie. It was made for a promotional photograph.
We also commented that all of the costumes were very small. Of course, they were made for Hollywood glamour girls with curvy figures and small waists, but most of these were tiny-tiny. Our docent said that Edith designed specifically for each person and worked to hide their flaws and accentuate their assets.
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TC and I topped off our visit to this exhibit with lunch at a place called Shaw's Restaurant. This a lovely restaurant in a hotel in downtown Lancaster, just a couple of blocks from all the museums. The food was very good, and I can highly recommend it to my readers who visit Lancaster in the future.
This exhibit is on through August 17, so if you are local and can make it to Lancaster, please let me know what YOUR favorites were!
Thanks for reading!
:)Amy (and TC!)
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