‘A New Source of Inspiration’: Ethnographic Study Collections in Service of American Fashion Design, 1915-1919

This presentation explores the instrumental role photography played in the process by which several museum curators in New York City influenced the appropriation of ethnographic clothing and textiles in American fashion design from 1915 to 1919. The difficulty of transatlantic trade during the First World War presented museum curators with the opportunity to position their collections as an important resource for the development of the New York fashion industry. Influenced by museums like London’s South Kensington Museum that encouraged artists to engage with the best objects of the past, several curators of the Anthropology Department within the American Museum of Natural History—including Charles W. Mead, Herbert J. Spinden, Clark Wissler—selected ethnographic materials to inform the design of American fashion. Together, they produced a variety of photo objects including lantern slides, photographic essays and didactic manuals that demonstrated the value of their ethnographic study collection to the student, designer, artist, writer, educator, and interested layman. In this presentation, I examine a collection of photographs published in Vogue's December issue of 1917 that illustrated the value of the museum's collection to the American designer or manufacturer. I argue that the representation of ethnographic study collections in mainstream publications like Vogue and Women's Wear contributed to the naturalization of cultural appropriation within the American fashion industry, specifically in regard to the production and consumption of American fashion during the First World War.