Some 20 years ago when Michelle Finamore was thumbing through archival footage at the British Film Institute, she hit the fashion-history jackpot. In the middle of a collection of early 20th-century newsreels (weekly compilations of current events screened in theaters before the feature film) was the legendary French couturier Madeleine Vionnet explaining how she puts her thumbprint on her garments’ labels to prove their authenticity. “It was astonishing,” Finamore, a Salem, Massachusetts-based curator and author, recalls to Harper’s Bazaar. “The footage hadn’t been catalogued under ‘fashion’, and no one in my field had ever seen it before.”
This was one of countless research revelations Finamore encountered during her PhD program at Bard Graduate Center (BGC), in which she focused on fashion in early cinema. This fall her scholarship comes full circle with “Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film”, the first major exhibition dedicated to the topic (on view through January 3, 2027). Co-curated with fellow BGC alum Emma Cormack, BGC’s Associate Curator for Exhibitions and Study Collection Curator, the fascinating show presents rare surviving objects—think posters, ephemera, and utterly glamorous costumes—from 1895 to the introduction of “talkies” during the late 1920s. Many of the glittering garments are also seen in motion via beautifully restored film clips.
Over three floors (plus a fourth dedicated to current PhD candidates’ reconstructions of ensembles in the exhibition), visitors will discover how film costuming went from the actors’ responsibility to the studio-driven enterprise we know today. Amid the wide array of objects on view, perhaps what is most impressive is the sheer volume of extant garments and accessories in remarkably good condition, despite being more than a century old (and as several film clips attest, worn during feverish dance numbers). Finamore and Cormack note that both the films and costumes required conservation feats due to their fragility (according to the Library of Congress, only approximately 20% of films from the silent era have been preserved; many in compromised states as the cellulose-nitrate film stock has faded, degraded, and combusted).
Also fascinating are the mix of institutions (from the Museum of the City of New York to La Cinémathèque française) and private collectors who loaned these objects. They paint a picture of how this exhibition could only be done by a true insider, like Finamore. Nevertheless, while collecting categories within the silent-film community run the gamut (from lobby cards to footwear), Finamore underscores how much all collectors care about providing access. For example, “Goddesses in the Machine” features several glass slides (ads that were projected onscreen before a film) from the Starts Thursday! Cinema Slide Archive, in which more than 10,000 slides have been digitized and made available online.
Cormack adds it’s also common for private collectors to concentrate on a single starlet, whether it’s Clara Bow or Gloria Swanson: “People have their favorite actresses, which illustrates how mesmerizing these women were on the screen at the time and how they still have that magnetism for many today.” The exhibition charts the rise of fan culture, as well as the commercial industries that tapped actors’ and actresses’ marketing potential. The show includes samples of the dozens of weekly and monthly film magazines that gained a mass following, as well as scrapbooks featuring movie memorabilia and clippings, crafted by devoted fans. Additionally discussed is the close relationship between production companies and department stores to sell celebrity-endorsed or celebrity-emulating products.
