“Hallowed with Memory”: The Colis de Trianon Collections of Costume and Haute Couture at the Costume Institute

Abstract

As Lou Taylor has written, a defining feature of American museum collection of costume is “their wealth of couture garments.” This article investigates the pioneering and ultimately dominant role of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a collector of this material—a marked shift from its founding interests—by exploring a little known 1940 charitable exhibition at the Wanamaker department stores in New York and Philadelphia, organized by socialites Lady Mendl, Mrs. Harrison Williams, and Mrs. Ector O. Munn. The collection of immediately pre-war haute couture garments exhibited and subsequently donated to the Costume Institute in 1946 formed the material and qualitative core of the young institution’s collection of essentially “new” haute couture, setting a precedent for a strategy of collecting that remains paramount. Emphasizing the long-term impact of this groundbreaking assemblage on the Costume Institute’s collection and exhibition program, this article analyzes the changing epistemological contexts—from tantalizing glimpses inside the celebrity wardrobes to “historicized” objects of practical study and finally as art—of this collection and the garments it comprises through an examination of the exhibitions in which it has played a significant role.