Descendant Wilson Quarre and his wife, Peggy Wiley, alongside the portrait of Gladys Quarre Knapp by world-renowned artist Tadeusz Styka, with Michael Redmon, interim executive director of research. Gladys is a 4th-generation Californian and generous benefactor to the Santa Barbara Historical Museum. (photo by Priscilla)
Santa Barbara Historical Museum’s Costume Council has opened its new exhibition, The West-Dressed Woman, featuring 11 outfits from pioneer days to the 1960s, including a colorful kimono made for the late copper heiress Huguette Clark.
Other restored exhibits include an ornate bodice owned by community activist Pearl Chase and a gown worn by opera singer Ganna Walska, owner of Lotusland.
It took six months to put the latest exhibition, which runs through March 24, together, according to guest curator Sharon Bradford.
“There are two thousand costumes in the ten thousand square feet of storage space in the museum’s basement, many of them hidden away in boxes, so it is a great deal of work to sort them and then finding conservators to restore them.”
Among the guests were Eleanor Van Cott, Roxi Solakian, Beverley Jackson, Peggy Wiley and Wilson Quarre, Missy DeYoung, and Warren and Marlene Miller.
Nancy Kerkstra, Carol Greene, Laia Cheng, SBHM trustee John Woodward, Veronique Chevalier, Paula Cathey, Diane Soto Ruiz, and Evie Sullivan celebrating “Birthday Happiness” to Eleanor Van Cott, SBHM trustee (photo by Priscilla)Sharon Bradford, SBHM vice president and curator, flanked by family Brett Hodges (brother) and his wife, Natalie Hodges; before a costumed setting of a 1890 Tea Gown Haute couture designer Charles Frederick Worth and centered is Anita de la Guerra’s Wedding Gown of her 1836 marriage to Alfred Robinson commemorated in “Two Years Before the Mast” by Richard Henry Dana; and an 1857 two-piece Trousseau gown with caged hoop skirt (photo by Priscilla)
SBHM Costume Council co-chairs Nancy Hunter and Cheryl Ziegler presented this circa 1960s Junihitoe Robe of silk, cotton, and silk crepe, which Huguette Clark commissioned by G.T. Marsh and Co. of Santa Barbara resembling a 12th-century Japanese court robe (photo by Priscilla)
