{"id":289146,"date":"2026-02-18T01:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289146\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T01:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:32:12","slug":"denver-art-museum-opens-new-fashion-exhibit-conversation-pieces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289146\/","title":{"rendered":"Denver Art Museum Opens New Fashion Exhibit Conversation Pieces"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"two
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAn 1896 House of Worth ballgown (left) and a 2020 Rick Owens gown.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Denver Art Museum<\/p>\n

In the Denver Art Museum\u2019s<\/a> fashion archive, some garments hang from padded hangers, while others, like beaded dresses and knitwear, lie flat to preserve their quality. It\u2019s dark and quiet inside the storage facility, but when Director and Curator of Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion at the DAM Jill D\u2019Alessandro pays the archive a visit, she can almost hear the pieces of clothing talking to each other across styles, cultures and eras.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how she and her team came up with the title Conversation Pieces for the latest large-scale fashion<\/a> exhibit at the DAM, which features more than sixty unique designs from the museum\u2019s fashion archives \u2014 most of which have never been displayed before. <\/p>\n

Denver Art Museum Has a Growing Fashion Collection<\/p>\n

D\u2019Alessandro estimates that \u201cConversation Pieces\u201d accounts for about 15 percent of the museum\u2019s total fashion collection, a number that can be hard to quantify when individual pieces of an outfit, plus accessories, are considered.<\/p>\n

In recent years, major donations from the family of Veronique and Gregory Peck, New York resident Susan Gutfreund and New York financier Ricardo Zaragoza have grown the DAM\u2019s fashion collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were thinking, \u2018What are they saying to each other?’\u201d D\u2019Alessandro says of the pieces in the exhibit, which opened February 15. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat rose to the surface for me was this idea that fashion is a discipline, and that designers across time utilize a shared lexicon and a shared history. They\u2019re in constant communication with each other, whether they\u2019re contemporaries or separated by eras. There\u2019s a functionality to fashion that means they have the same root problem to work from. They\u2019re responding to the body, to cultural shifts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jill D\u2019Alessandro, Denver Art museum Director and Curator<\/p>\n

Conversation Pieces explores this by pairing different garments in ways that are expected (a Balenciaga with a Dior) and unexpected (an 1896 House of Worth ballgown with a 2020 Rick Owens gown, for instance). It features everything from designs by Gabrielle \u201cCoco\u201d Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent to Yohji Yamamoto and Ceil Chapman. Some dresses are classically timeless, while others are futuristic sculptures for the body.<\/p>\n

\"AA 2018 Comme des Gar\u00e7ons coat dress, acquired with funds from the Florence R. and Ralph L. Burgess Trust.<\/p>\n

A Window Into Denver\u2019s Fashion History<\/p>\n

The pieces range in style and era, but there\u2019s an unexpected connectedness to them. One jacket sports a very mod \u201960s psychedelic flower pattern, but it\u2019s from the \u201920s. Another fur-lined ensemble looks like a \u201970s Penny Lane coat, but it\u2019s from the 1800s. Many of the dresses from decades ago seem like they could be found on any modern-day red carpet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I like about the collection here at the DAM is that there are donations from numerous donors,\u201d Alessandro says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just one woman\u2019s wardrobe. When you have collections with more donors, you get more diversity.\u201d And more context, too. <\/p>\n

The exhibit is a window into Denver\u2019s fashion history, from the city\u2019s pioneering donors to the department stores that once championed American fashion design, such as Neusteters<\/a>. The DAM started collecting fashion in the 1940s and had an active program through the \u201980s, before taking a hiatus and revitalizing the department in 2015 with funding from the Avenir Institute, D\u2019Alessandro says. Because of that hiatus, D\u2019Alessandro describes the collection as \u201crefined,\u201d but touts it for its impressive amount of American-designed clothing, which is rare in museum fashion collections.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think American museums\u2019 collecting habits are shifting, but there has tended to be an emphasis on French haute couture fashion in exhibitions, so it\u2019s really refreshing to see the extent of the American designers that have been preserved here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jill D\u2019Alessandro, Denver Art museum Director and Curator<\/p>\n

There are even dresses from the \u201930s and \u201940s, which can be hard to come across because they\u2019re from the Depression and World War II era. \u201cThe war years were a great time for American design; we weren\u2019t going to Europe for fashion, so American designers really started to shine,\u201d D\u2019Alessandro says.<\/p>\n

Conversation Pieces displays an afternoon dress donated by May Wilfley, an inventor who came from a prominent Denver family. The piece dates to between 1905 and 1910 and is an aesthetic dress, demonstrating a shift from a time when women were heavily corseted and wore extensive underpinnings to something more free-flowing and artistic. A silk evening wrap from 1935 by Italian designer Maria Monaci Gallenga, once worn by Mrs. Thomas Patterson Campbell of the Rocky Mountain News family, is also on display.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth were from women who were progressive thinkers of their time,\u201d D\u2019Alessandro says. \u201cWe knew to research these donors because of what they were wearing. We knew all about Mrs. Wilfey\u2019s adventures because of the Rocky Mountain News. Early on, (the News) had female reporters, which was rare for the time, and the mother and sisters of the Rocky Mountain News family were very influential in the Women\u2019s Rights Movement, as were a lot of the female reporters. We know the history of aesthetic dress and the kind of women who wore aesthetic dress, so it led us to these really rich narratives about Denver.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA 1951 Jacques Fath coat, donated to DAM by Louise Vigoda. <\/p>\n

Inspiring Fashion in Modern-Day Colorado<\/p>\n

Today, Denver is inundated with \u201cColorado casual\u201d: Patagonia, workout wear, beanies and sweatpants. It\u2019s a major departure from the Denver of decades ago, when department stores held runway shows and commissioned one-of-a-kind designs, and well-to-do residents brought fashion back from France and other countries.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Alessandro hopes modern-day Denver residents who see Conversation Pieces will be inspired to lean into the city\u2019s strengths, such as workwear, Western wear and layers. After all, it\u2019s been said that fashion is the most personal of the decorative arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you learn about yourself,\u201d D\u2019Alessandro says. \u201cIt impacts us on a very personal level. It\u2019s reflective of our times, it\u2019s reflective of how we present ourselves to the world.\u201d She adds that she finds fashion fascinating because it\u2019s multi-disciplinary \u2014 there are many angles from which it can be studied.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne person might go into the exhibition and be fascinated by the artistry, where another person could go in and be interested in the history or the sociology. Someone might be interested in the construction or the embellishment or the technology. It can speak to you on many different levels, depending on what your personal interests are. It\u2019s part of our everyday life, so it\u2019s incredibly personal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jill D\u2019Alessandro, Denver Art museum Director and Curator<\/p>\n

And Conversation Pieces does feel incredibly personal, like walking into a room full of stories and secrets. But the garments don\u2019t gatekeep. Listen closely, and you might hear what they have to say.<\/p>\n

Conversation Pieces is open through October 11 at the Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Ave Parkway; the exhibit is included in general admission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An 1896 House of Worth ballgown (left) and a 2020 Rick Owens gown. Denver Art Museum In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,3685,63479,8793,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-289146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-events","15":"tag-fashion-style","16":"tag-museums","17":"tag-new-zealand","18":"tag-newzealand","19":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}