Managing Costume Collections

An Essential Primer

Louise Coffey-Webb

• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780896729582
• Topic: Conception
• Subtopic: Stylisme

Managing Costume Collections offers systematic approaches to organization, accessibility, record keeping, safety, and a host of other stewardship concerns related to managing costume collections of every type. Conceived to address needs long identified by the Costume Society of America, this guide is written for a broad spectrum of collection managers at museums, historical societies and houses, university theaters and study collections, and company archives, as well as for vintage dealers, private collectors, and living history performers.Drawing on the wisdom of many disciplines, Coffey-Webb takes a holistic approach to problem-solving, explaining appropriate procedures and the reasons behind them, to arm collection managers, specialists and nonspecialists alike, with sufficient tools to make informed decisions on their own. She also offers alternative solutions to the recommended guidelines.Although there are books on costume conservation, there is a paucity of 04 Activeable material on costume-collection management. Managing Costume Collections is the first work in collection management to address a wide audience, from general to academic and hobbyist to professional, interested specifically in costume.

Chapter 1: What Is Collection Management?

Implementing a Management System

Costume collection management is a system of organization to enable you to accomplish a number of goals with the collection under your stewardship.

Logically, the person in physical charge of a collection is often called a collection manager. However, due to cultural or professional differences, the person in charge may also be referred to as a keeper (UK), a curator, or sometimes a registrar or conservator. Whatever your title, if stewardship of the collection is your responsibility, in my book you are a collection manager.

For the purposes of this book, it is assumed that the reader is responsible for the maintenance and protection of a costume collection, be it for as few as a dozen items within a larger museum collection, to many thousands of costumes in a rental company. Your stewardship will either place you as the decision-maker with regard to the available resources of time, labor, and budget, or it will necessitate informing and persuading others who control the resources you require. While the term collection manager may not garner the cachet of the term curator, it is arguably as important a position. If the study of material culture as it pertains to apparel throughout history is your métier, then access to the objects, and records of all their supporting context, is the altar of your knowledge. Primary sources reign, and those researchers whose main references are other people’s writings and theories, rather than the clothing itself, may be missing rich and valuable resources while bypassing the actual materials.

Cathy Ritchie, collections management advisor for the Government of Yukon, Canada, posted a statement that clearly summarizes the responsibilities:

When caring for collections, we are often caring for objects from the past, but as the caregivers to those collections, we must always be thinking of the future. Decisions we make, how we handle, document, exhibit, and store objects impact their future. Thus we want to make careful and informed decisions about the collections entrusted to our care to ensure that they are safe, secure and meaningful not just for the next exhibit or for the next few years, but for future generations. (www.connectingtocollections.org, January 18, 2013)

Any costume collection, whether in a nonprofit institution primarily focused on preservation and education, or in a rental company primarily interested in entertainment and profit, will benefit from attention to maintaining its assets. Thus begins the journey of assessment and understanding that becomes the groundwork for managing the assets in your charge. Following are some procedures to make your stewardship easier.

Goals, Inventories, and Collection Policies

Identifying the Type, Scope, and Purpose of Your Collection

How do you set about identifying or creating a system of organization? Before even taking inventory, discover and identify the type, scope, and purpose of your collection. In other words, understand the goals:

•What is the reason for your collection’s existence?

•What is its function?

•Is there a mission statement? And if so,

•How are the goals of the collection defined?

However, if you cannot answer these questions, you may take an inventory first. Having a summary of your holdings will help determine its function. For example, you may be surprised to discover that you have a huge collection of hats, or an emphasis on one particular designer. These discoveries could influence your future collecting patterns as well as your goals. If you have trouble identifying your goals, think about the driving force behind the collection’s formation. If, for example, you have a rental costume collection, your purpose is to serve customers needing to find period or character clothing to fit today’s woman, man, or child. It is advisable to create a mission statement for your business even if you are a commercial establishment. It is good business practice to declare your mission statement on whatever materials are disseminated, such as your brochures, website, and even invoices. For a long-range business strategy, you might consider a vision statement to include your dreams and goals beyond your current function. If, on the other hand, you have a university collection to be used as a teaching tool for students, your scope and purpose could be very different, because if the clothes do not need to be worn, there will be less concern about size or sturdiness. If your institution is a museum, its mandate probably includes preserving its collections, and there may be increased interest in quality and rarity. Ask yourself if the focus is on

•Acquiring or collecting

•Preservation

•Education or the dissemination of knowledge about the collection

•Distribution of, access to, lending, or renting the collection

If the institution accepts public funds or donations, a transparent mission statement becomes crucial, and the collection’s modus operandi can then be supported from an ethical and practical basis.

Managers of costume collections are usually very aware of their collection’s particular demands, which is why it is imperative to “know thy collection.”

In Valerie Cumming’s book Understanding Fashion History, the author clearly understands the demands that face managers of costume collections. Her language only cites museum professionals, but the concerns are universal with any type of clothing collection:

The one fact that invariably surprises researchers and museum professionals without knowledge of dress collections is the huge amount of hands-on labour that curating dress to tolerable standards requires. Preparing detailed inventories, regularly checking stored collections for damp, pests and other hazards, getting out and then returning material required by researchers and students and the preparation of garments for display takes much longer for a curator of dress than for their colleagues who curate ceramics, paintings or furniture. Volunteers and friends’ organizations are invaluable allies in the housekeeping aspects of this work, but volunteers cannot be expected to take responsibility for research, exhibitions and education, and all of these have to be fitted around the edges of caring for collections. (70)

Admittedly, other material object collections can also comprise widely varied media, but clothing and accessories are unique in that they fit on or around a body and are therefore malleable in a three-
dimensional way. They also overlap, layer, and support other components and need to be coordinated with regard to date and design. Additionally, there may be several different ways to coordinate the components. All of these factors render organization, storage, and display a specialized challenge.

Making an Inventory

Once you have identified the goals of the collection or understood the mission statement, you are now in a position to inventory the collection, if it has not already been done. An inventory is a numerical record rather than a complete catalogue. The numbers can be used for analysis and planning. It is most useful to describe your holdings in a way that makes sense to other decision-makers, such as your board, client, manager, bookkeeper, insurance agent, registrar, or patron. Also consider that they may not be familiar with a costume lexicon. Beyond basically enumerating your objects, ask the questions that will affect space and storage demands, such as:

•How many garments are very old or very fragile, that is, in need of special care?

•How many outfits have two or more parts?

•How many accessories are there? Will they need special supports or boxes?

•How many garments comprise flat textiles, for example, sarongs, saris, or shawls? (This information will be useful in determining whether a garment should be hung or boxed.)

•What about ephemera? Can it be stored flat, or is some of it three-dimensional?

Also make note of how many items are already in boxes, hung, or on shelves. Once you are armed with your goals, mission statement and inventory, you are in a position to create your collection policy, and further, to begin planning your effective system of organization.

Creating Your Collection Policy

Creating your collection policy is a way to publicly communicate your plans and ideas, and, by describing the demography you serve, deciding who has access to your collections. It will declare what you currently collect or do not collect. A statement such as, “We do not collect military uniforms,” if that is the case, may save you much hassle. Your policy may also include a declaration on desired condition or provenance, as well as procedures for donation.

It may be helpful to be familiar with the Costume Society of America’s Resolution, and consider how to communicate this to your potential customers and patrons. It reads as follows:

The Costume Society of America acknowledges that clothing is designed and created to be worn. However, with age or associations, clothing takes on particular values and meanings and deserves special care and consideration. The wearing of articles of attire inevitably exposes them to dangers of damage and deterioration; these dangers increase with the age and/...