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This exhibition will explore the enduring interest in clothing our bodies to achieve fashionable shapes. It will feature twenty-five ensembles from the 18th to 21st centuries drawn predominantly from Historic Deerfield’s renowned clothing collection. Displayed along with the historical garments will be the understructures – stays, corsets, hoops skirts, and bustles – that helped shape, exaggerate, or reduce bodies to fit fashionable ideals.
In conjunction with a new exhibition, Body by Design: Fashionable Silhouettes from the Ideal to the Real, opening May 3, 2025, Historic Deerfield will organize a Fall Forum, “Fashioning the Body: Dress in New England 1600–1900,” that aims to examine men’s and women’s fashion through a specific New England lens by convening a group of experts in the field to explore the rich history of dressing the body in this region. Paper submissions are due May 3, 2025.