Exhibit displays ‘Bling!’ of past decades

The Oshkosh Public Museum is featuring an exhibit called, "Bling!" 100 Years of Over-Embellished Fashions, designed around historical women and fads in fashion.

The second floor of the second oldest public museum in Wisconsin is overflowing with dresses, shoes, purses and jewelry worn by some of the most important women across the state like the Clarks of Kimberly-Clark Corp.

Debra Daubert, curator for the Oshkosh Public Museum, put the idea of "Bling!" together with a team of fashion and clothing experts based on visitor requests.

"When planning exhibits the museum takes into consideration what visitors have repeatedly requested and what different audiences we may not have had an exhibit geared towards for a while," Daubert said.

She said the museum had been receiving requests for a clothing exhibit and thought it was time to bring out some of the collection the museum already owned.

"After a team brainstorming session on what type of clothing we would show it was decided that over-the-top examples of female clothing and accessories would best show-off how great our collections are," Daubert said.

The decorative and detailed clothing is all part of a collection already owned by the museum, and many items had been donated before the exhibit was even planned.

Daubert and her team did not have an easy task picking out what would go into the exhibit and what would remain left out.

"Since these are all items in our collection and we have so many wonderful pieces, the hardest part was deciding which items would be shown and what would not," Daubert said. "The over 250 objects on exhibit in the gallery are just a drop-in-the-bucket to what we have in the collections. We could do several clothing and accessory exhibits without reusing any items."

The exhibit was originally set at 50 dresses but they pushed the number to 57 with the help of Scott Jorgenson, a vintage fashion expert.

Megan Del Debbio, marketing coordinator at the museum, said that making the exhibit shocking and memorable was an important part of choosing the items.

"Scott served as a guest curator for the exhibit and assisted with dress selection and identification and also dreamed up oodles of fun ideas for the actual display of the pieces to make it a little out of the ordinary," Del Debbio said.

The exhibit, also available online, is organized not in chronological order but by styles, which is different from other exhibits in the museum.

"Taking a popular décor look of famous American fashion houses and high end stores of the 1950s, we recreated a runway feel to the gallery," Daubert said. "Dresses were not set up chronologically but rather by how colors and trims enhanced the wearer and recurred as trends over many different decades."

The online version of the exhibit is also broken up into categories based on styles like "Geometric Glamour," "Colorful Camouflage" and "Golden Treasures."

But the term "bling" does not necessarily mean glitzy and sparkling. According to Del Debbio, "bling" is simply what's in style.

"The concept of the exhibit is to exemplify that "bling" is simply a new term for an age old concept, the definition of "bling" simply changes from decade to decade, depending on what is considered flashy or chic at the time," Del Debbio said. "It might be delicate embroidery, a luxurious fabric, a daring silhouette or, what we often think of today, heavily jeweled."

The Oshkosh Public Museum has put together a booklet featuring some of the most extraordinary dresses and accessories which had been featured in local newspapers during their time of fashion.

One dress in particular was mentioned in the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern on March 22, 1881 and was said to be worn by Mary Sawyer, wife of Edgar Sawyer, who moved to Oshkosh to continue his father's lumber business.

The Sawyers were invited to Washington D.C. where the now famous dress first debuted.

Another story printed by the Oshkosh Northwestern on June 15, 1887 called "Drift of the Day" told of a girl in Fond du Lac who fell into the water and the extended bustle over her backside buoyed her up to the surface.

These designs are not just historical; many designers and fashionistas have used these dresses to inspire their works and personal styles.

Meghan Aldrich, an intern at the Oshkosh Public Museum, said what she likes about the exhibit is watching the transformation of fashion.

"My favorite part of ‘Bling!' is the different styles of dresses and seeing how fashion has changed throughout the past 100 years," Aldrich said.

Aldrich did a lot of work with the social media side of the exhibit and advertising for the museum.

"I worked specifically with Deb Daubert for social media marketing purposes," Aldrich said.

She also developed contests, wrote newsletters and press releases, wrote a radio advertisement and appeared an Oshkosh Today.

Some of the contests include a "Bling!" jewel hunt through the museum, and on display are the bedazzled mannequin busts from the "Bling!" Busts Fundraiser.

Having worked now with some of the most influential pieces of fashion history, Aldrich admits that some pieces she would wear even nowadays.

"There are some dresses that I would wear today and that adds to the interpretation of Bling! which is that some fashion never dies," Aldrich said.