Flaunt Your Clothes: Share Your Family’s Fashion History with The Cayuga Museum’s Fabrication: Telling Stories Through Clothing Exhibit

The Cayuga Museum of History and Art in Auburn is actively looking for clothing objects to be included in our upcoming exhibition, Fabrication: Telling Stories Through Clothing.
This major exhibition will be the first at the museum to focus explicitly on clothing items, from the specific styles worn during certain time periods, to the stories clothing can tell about the individuals who wore them. It will be the lead exhibit at the Cayuga Museum from March to December 2023. Community stories will be a major theme within the exhibition, and the Cayuga Museum is inviting residents of Cayuga County to participate by including their own stories and clothing items in the exhibition. Particularly, we encourage those with Irish, Polish, and Ukrainian immigrant stories, as well as those within the African American community, to participate.
Clothing can include fashionable items, such as dresses worn to important events. However, fashion is only one facet of clothing. Workwear and uniforms also expand upon the larger themes of clothing and class, women’s history, immigrant history, and African American history which will be explored throughout the exhibition. Items that can help illustrate these stories include dresses, shirts, skirts, pants, full ensembles, and other clothing items of all types, anywhere on the spectrum from formal to workwear. Photographs in which clothing can be clearly seen can also add to these stories. Specifically, we are interested in items dating from the 1800s to the 1910s, and from the 1940s to the 1970s.
If you, or your family, have any clothing objects, photos, and stories relating to the Black or immigrant experiences within Cayuga County, please consider sharing them with the Museum and the thousands of visitors who will enjoy this exhibit. All loaned items will be secured, covered under the Museum’s insurance policy, and returned at the end of the exhibition. Please call Kirsten at the Cayuga Museum at 315-253-8051, or email Megan at megan@cayugamuseum.org by December 1, 2022, to share the information concerning your family’s fashionable history!