Trying on History

 In the last few years, we have expanded our “Trying on History” program, held for visits from community groups (the local PASWORD and Project AWARE groups for young women from local schools) or classes (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 postures and movements required by period costumes. A recent internal grant at Vassar, from the Carolyn Grant '36 Endowment, allowed us to reproduce one of the historic costumes to expand the range of sizes available for the project.