Holly’s Harp
Los Angeles based designer Holly Harp (1939-1995) began her fashion career in the late 1960s, designing theatrical, psychedelic clothing for iconic performers such as Janis Joplin and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane. Harp's early designs were in tune... Read Article ››

Azzedine Alaia
Azzedine Alaia's body conscious aesthetic earned him the title "King of Cling" and is closely associated with the 1980s. Throughout the decade, Alaia produced intricately seamed garments made of supple glove leather or stretch fabrics such as Lycra and silk... Read Article ››

Aprons
In practical terms, aprons are merely protective overgarments, worn to prevent food or dirt from staining the clothing underneath. Despite these functional origins, aprons have taken on the much larger role of signifying feminine domesticity. This is... Read Article ››

Transforming the Rudi Gernreich Archive
If you read this post, you'll know that the FIDM Museum houses an extensive Rudi Gernreich Archive. The Archive numbers nearly 1,000 items and includes not only garments and accessories, but patterns, furniture, scrapbooks and other miscellaneous items.... Read Article ››

Wiener Werkstatte textiles
Remember this post about found textiles? Today's post features a group of Wiener Werkstatte textiles from the same collection. The Wiener Werkstatte (Vienna Workshop) was an artistic collective based on an interest in eliminating the gap between fine art... Read Article ››

Hairpin lace
When this hairpin lace dress was donated to the FIDM Museum in 2007, we had to give ourselves a crash course, because we weren't familiar with this form of handwork. Worked on a small, hand-held "fork" or loom with a crochet hook, hairpin lace... Read Article ››

Fast fashion
Over the last few years, collaborations between clothing designers and mass-market retailers have become increasingly common. These fast fashion or capsule collections consist of a small group of designer items created for a specific retailer and are only... Read Article ››

Bonnie Cashin
Lots of designers start from scratch every six months or so, moving with the trends. Not Bonnie Cashin. Every season she adds a little to what has gone before–some new colors, an experimental shape. Nothing invalidates her previous season’s... Read Article ››

Would you believe it’s paper?
As many of our readers may already know, season 6 of Project Runway was filmed at FIDM! In the most recent episode (season 6, episode 5), the contestants used pages from the Los Angeles Times to create “ripped from the headlines” garments. You can... Read Article ››

Charles Worth
Often called the “dictator of fashion,” Charles Worth (1825-1895) was the preeminent fashion tastemaker of the mid to late nineteenth century. Born in rural England, Worth emigrated to Paris in 1845 and worked in a series of dry-goods and... Read Article ››

Boué Soeurs
If you're looking for a research project, here's a great one for you! See if you can add anything new to the existing information about the Boué Soeurs, the pair of French sisters who designed this lingerie-style dress... Read Article ››

Found textiles
All museum employees are charged with careful collection oversight. We monitor temperature and humidity, store objects with an eye to preventing damage while also trying to learn more about each object in the collection. Despite these efforts, we sometimes... Read Article ››
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