Tucked away in a small room in the Human Ecology building lies a well-kept secret on campus. The LSU Textile and Costume Museum circulates textile pieces of historical and cultural value multiple times each semester, and has been doing so for nearly 25 years.
Pamela Vinci, museum curator and instructor in the department of textiles, apparel design and merchandising, has compiled the pieces necessary for each exhibit since 1992, though the collection of pieces was started in the early 1930s.
Vinci said the original funding for the museum came from a Board of Regents grant applied for by herself and Jenna Kuttruff, professor and head of the TAM department, to establish a gallery and story area.
Most of the pieces displayed in the museum are chosen from TAM’s vast collection of textiles, stored in a protected room adjacent to the museum gallery, Vinci said. However, numerous donors have offered pieces over the years to fill the museum’s exhibits including the inaugural attire of Bobby Jindal and family from his first inauguration in 2008, she said.
“I think that the topic is of interest and popular among the general public,” Vinci said.
Each semester, Vinci chooses which exhibits will be featured in the museum and is charged with the task of compiling the necessary outfits, garments or textile pieces to fill the gallery.
Thomas Boyd’s mortar board and Charles Coates’ top hat are among some of the more University-centric pieces that are part of the collection, Vinci said.
Though students can more easily relate to pieces they can somewhat localize, there are many exhibits featuring textiles that paint a picture of historical context or climate hundreds of years ago.
“Our faculty encourages our design students to use this resource,” Vinci said. “We have examples of when design students have used pieces from the museum as inspiration.”
Despite the more common display of historical pieces, the museum is also used as a way to showcase student work in various circumstances.
In 2014, the museum supported the work of student organization Hemline@LSU by displaying a few students work in an exhibit entitled “Students Promoting Fashion and Philanthropy.”
The designs were part of the American Heart Association’s campaign “Go Red for Women,” and were constructed out of red paper hearts signed by people who had made donations at the Mall of Louisiana last spring. The event will take place again this Saturday, Vinci said.
This semester the museum will feature an exhibit based around lingerie from the 1900s to the 1920s called “Iconic Yet Overlooked Everyday Fashions.” Though the gallery is currently under renovation, the exhibit is set to open sometime this spring semester.
The focus of the exhibit will be on women’s dresses that mimicked lingerie at the time in that they were white, embroidered and often incorporated lace but was for was in fact daywear.
“We’re tracing it from its frilliest to the 1920s, its least frilly, [to a time] when that kind fashion is ebbing and women are in favor of shorter lengths, less frilly and easier to wear,” Vinci said.
The collection of these “lingerie dresses” is rather large at LSU because most of them were made from cotton, which is not as fragile as wool or silk, so many of the fabrics have survived the last hundred years.
TAM doctoral student Dina Smith is aiding Vinci in preparing and displaying the pieces featured in the upcoming exhibit. She said the exhibit’s main purpose is to educate viewers about a particular type of fashion that was rather common among women in the South in the early 20th century.
Whether from the 1920s or 2015, Vinci said the garments and textiles presented in the LSU Textile and Costume Museum are a valuable resource for design students and anyone seeking information about an important aspect of social culture.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Haley Rowe-Kadow