September 28, 2024 - April 20, 2025 | Textile Gallery
Are these pieces à la mode or just macabre?
Discover the consequences of style, from clothing that could kill to accessories made out of endangered animals. These everyday objects can be part of some of the most exhilarating, intimate, or horrifying moments of our lives. Along with appreciating the outward appearance and the inherent beauty of these materials, it is crucial to question the deeper physical impact that fashion has on wearers’ bodies, workers’ lives, and the natural world, both animal and environmental.
The first section of this exhibition will demonstrate the negative impacts of unregulated materials, and how the bodies of consumers are adversely affected by trends in society.
The next section will address workers in the fashion and textile industries, including advances in labor protections and the backslide caused by fast fashion. Finally, the impact of fashion on the natural environment will be shown through paired examples of garments and accessories with specimens from the museum’s Natural History Collections.
Based on the scholarship of Dr. Alison Mathews David, author of Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present, this exhibition explores fearsome fashions, sinister styles, and terrifying trends from the past, the present, and the future.
In the Museum’s Armory, see excellent examples of historic weaponry, dating from 1750 to the twentieth century, with uses that ranged from military to more personal applications such as hunting and dueling.
In the Historic Textiles Gallery, the Museum features regularly rotating exhibits from its rich historic textiles and clothing collection, one of the finest in the southeastern United States.
In The Charleston Museum: The Early Days gallery, see exotic collections from around the world, representative of the Museum’s nineteenth century cosmopolitan collecting focus.
In the Lowcountry History Hall, see materials relating to the Native Americans who first inhabited the Lowcountry and the African American and European settlers who transformed the region into an agricultural empire.
In the Natural History gallery you will see an extraordinary array of birds, reptiles and mammals that have called the South Carolina Lowcountry home since prehistory, including contributions from noted naturalists.
The Charleston Museum is pleased to present Kidstory, a fun and exciting, hands-on exhibit for children, where the fascinating history of Charleston and the Lowcountry comes alive.
In the Loeblein Gallery of Charleston Silver discover the impressive work of the South’s finest craftsmen and women, from the colonial era through the Victorian Age.
