Trying on History

In the last few years, we have expanded our “Trying on History” program, held for visits from community groups (from the local PASWORD and Project AWARE groups for young women from local schools) or classes (from Vassar’s French, English, Drama, and Women’s Studies departments). This has grown from a yearly to a twice yearly event, and we now try to host more than one group on the same day, to take advantage of the time we put into displaying the objects.

For this program, our visitors are not only able to view and discuss notable examples from our historic collection, but also are able to try on costume reproductions, including foundation garments such as corsets and hoopskirts, so that they can experience the different posture and movement required in period costume. A recent internal grant at Vassar, from the Carolyn Grant '36 Endowment, allowed us to reproduce one of the historic costumes in a different size so that diverse sizes of participants would not be excluded from this activity.