People rarely think about the engineering of gala gowns, or of fashion at all. This is part of a larger problem of treating traditionally feminine interests as non-science-related. Baking is practical chemistry, knitting is manual programming, makeup is about crafting optical illusions, and adjusting pattern sizes relies on algebra.
But gala gowns never appear alongside the ubiquitous thrown baseball in physics books, or pop up as exam questions. As copyright library Nancy Sims pointed out to me on Twitter, while plenty of spacial reasoning tests ask which pieces fold into a cube, none ask which set of pattern pieces would fit together into a pair of pants.
“The Fashion History Timeline
is an open-access source for fashion history knowledge, featuring
objects and artworks from over a hundred museums and libraries that span
the globe. The Timeline website offers well-researched, accessibly written entries on specific artworks, garments and films
for those interested in fashion and dress history. Started as a pilot
project by FIT art history faculty and students in the Fall of 2015, the
Timeline aims to be an important contribution to public
knowledge of the history of fashion and to serve as a constantly growing
and evolving resource not only for students and faculty, but also for
the wider world of those interested in fashion and dress history (from
the Renaissance scholar to the simply curious).”
I don’t have pictures, but this brings back memories of when I worked at a living history museum and witnessed a group of teenagers dressed in 19th century prairie settler clothing churning butter while singing Tik Tok after all the tourists had left.
Steel Phoenix Studios 