The "Mannequinage" or fitting process

Before an exhibition, a costume should go through several phase, like the restoration, which we evoked in the previous article, and the „mannequinnage“ or fitting process.

Their presentation to the public should appeal to inert supports which will not damage them. The "mannequinage" involves conceiving a support made to measure for the costume and which respects its aspect and the forms of the body for which it was made, all while integrating the constraints of conservation for the duration of the exhibition. 

Any garment that is to be exhibited must be tough enough to stand being handled, then shown on a dummy for some months. Once consolidated, it can be fitted on the dummy, a process that can take up to a day when the item is a complex one. The actual setting up of an exhibition will take the fitting team a month. The aim is not only to recreate the look of a given period, but also to ensure that the garments will retain their shape throughout the exhibition; heavy and sometimes well-worn, they have to bear their own weight for several months, something they were never originally intended to do. This is why certain items must be displayed flat.

Fitting also uses such chemically neutral conservation materials as polyester wadding, neutral cardboard, polyester film and polyethylene foam, and elements of lingerie, underskirts and corsets are sometimes remade since they are missing from the collection.

The fitting process is a delicate alchemy involving the concrete – the measurements of the garment – and the abstract: the spirit of an age, for example. Skilled fitting must combine padding techniques with sound knowledge of the history of costume and the evolution of silhouettes. Research into the cutting and assembly of clothes provides invaluable information, which is then backed up by visual material from the period. In this way the shapes and postures of the time can be reestablished, while preserving an awareness of the gap between image and reality.

The type of presentation mannequin is chosen with the scenographer of the exhibition: a pre-existing mannequin which will be adapted with padding or sculpting; creation of a made-to-measure mannequin which can disappear under a costume with a simple structure; black or beige covered mannequins, or even more fanciful ones…

Fashion accessories make the same demands. It is crucial to understand the object and identify its weak points in order to come up with the optimal means of presentation. Every exhibited piece is closely studied with a view to creating a support that will ensure clear, attractive display while also taking account of its structural features and its fragile points

Restoration

The general principles of the textile restoration are the same as other works of art: readability, visibility, compatibility and reversibility of the interventions. It's a curatif care which is made in mind of preservation: the aim isn't to reconstitute, but to strengthen a work by ensuring its continued existence and its integrity. Only reversible techniques are used, that it was done should be dismantle after, with the least damage on the object.

Restores intervene on the objet and they are helped by other people for certain task, for example the dyeing and preparation of textiles.

The intervention times on an object are very changeable and can reach 3 or 4 months of work.

Two principal stages for the costume's restoration:

• The cleaning

Each stage of cleaning should be carry out cautiously during the micro-aspiration, the soft brush and the aspiration strength should be adapted to the fragilty of the piece. The wash by demineralized water or solvent, with a few detergent, is a heavy intervention which is practice in rare cases. Last stage of cleaning, the reshape be made at flat with class sheet, weights or steam (but without heat addition). The ironing is forbidden: the iron crushs and damages textile fibre.

• The consolidation

The intervention is made by support or protection textiles, compatible with the work. The support textile, which lines the original fabric, relieves this one of tension. The consolidation is made by needle with point of sewing specific to the restoration.

An example of a restoration service in situ: The Galliera Museum

The restorers of Galliera Museum work in restoration and preventive preservation workshop of the museum, which are in the ground floor of the building (in the basement are the storerooms)

The workshops are composed of different space divided according to the costume journey from its arrival to the storerooms:

·         a transit room

·         a restoration room divided in 2 separate rooms:

-          a humid room, where are carried out evry intervention with water and solvent (There are a washing table, a class table, an equipment for the dyeing…)

-          a dry room, where are made the other intervention and the studying of pieces (There are a moving table, tidying space…

·            A dust removal room, for the micro aspiration (before put the costumes in the storerooms or after exhibition back) 

·            A quarantine room 

·            A photographic studio

·            A stocking equipment room

·            A « mannequinage » room

Several restorers work in this workshop. The Galliera museum makes restoration campaign according to each materials

A lot of museums haven’t workshops restoration. It’s the case of the CNCS. This one works regularly with independent textile restorers

Video in french: Musée Galliera : Visite de l'atelier de restauration

Focus: "Roman d'une garde robe" (Novel of a wardrobe)

I choose to tell you about an exemple of an exhibition I saw in Carnavalet Museum (Museum of City of Paris History)

This exhibition presents us the story of Alice Alleaume, a Parisian woman, and the mixing of Alice's wardrobe, professional and personal life which frames fashion moments of the Parisian chic. She was, indeed, first saleswoman at Cheruit. We follow her path through 4 important stages in her life.

The first section presents years of learning and family influence which take her towards the fashion world. The second section evokes the fashion parisian background in the area of the Place Vendôme and the Rue de la Paix. The third section, heart of the exhition, focuses on the Alice Alleaume career in the Cheruit House. The room dedicaded to Alice's business engagement with Cheruit captures the creative production in detail and her business ethic. Finally, the last section devoted to the 1930's reveals the great taste and the originality of this elegant woman , who incarnated the parisian chic.

This exhibition shows pieces from Carnavalet museum and the Galliera museum, which acquired the collection in 2008. It's the first time what it is exhibited.

We can admire some 400 exceptional pieces, designer dresses Chéruit, Worth and Lanvin, evening shoes of Hellstem, hats of Alphonsine, Marcelle Demay, Madeleine Panizon, Le Monnier, evening headbands of Rose Descat, jewels...We found also manuscripts and documents: sale notebooks and customer list (wherre she wrote everyday the details of her sales, the retouchs to make, and even the measurements of her rich customers.), the deposit of models, completed by textiles samples, painting and print of the Carnavalet museum which evoke the Rue de la Paix et the Place Vendôme, luxe temple, befor First World War, as well as personal photos that reveal Alice's personal style, taste, elegance and feminity.

The scenography:

Dresses of Alice and her family, are presenting in several rooms linked, without outside light. The museography is modern and presents clothes and documents from the end of the 19^th century to the Golden Twenties (« Les années folles »), on colourful walls and in dispaly cabinets.

In a small room, we can listen womens who are reading letters from Alice Alleaume and her correspondents. On the walls, we found a lot of photos of outfit. Below, there are screens on which we see pass through photos and videos. These fashion illustrations, which were mostly featured in the magazine la Gazette du Bon, indirectly recalling pony steps of the fashion retail and marketing.

On the walls, throughout the exhibition, the path is punctuated of Alice's sentences, or fashion references.

Preservation and presentation:

All of the works which are exhibited here, first of all textiles, but also archive documents, drawings, original pictures from which they are sensitive to climatic variation and light. This one is limited. Works are not very enlightened (max 50lux)

Clothes are in display cabinets, on dummies. Several types of dummy are used:

• chest dummy, without head and arms. These are for clothes which don't need a great staging
• classics dummy coloured grey, standardized. These ones reproduce a certain body movement, a fashion posture. It is used for charleston dresses (from the Golden Twenties), present with accessories.
• Dummy are made to fit for each garments: in particular for dresses of the end of the 19^th century which are not adapted for a classic dummy and should be alter correctly to the dummy.

Some fabric or costume elements should be present at flat . Shoes are reshaped by padding of adapt material. Hats are installed on specific support.

We found at the end of the exhibition, artificial flowers. A video shows us the restoration and the reshape of flowers for their future preservation in preservation specific boxes, or for their exhibition, like here.


This exhibition is very interresting because it shows the life of a Parisian. We aren't interested only in clothes, but also in what is around, the context. Through Alice's life, it's all a

time that we admire. Unintentionally, the exhibition also shows a wider image of women in the early modern society, primarily we see the social position and social standing of Alice and her family.

The collection possess an important patrimonial character and an great esthetic quality. But it tells above all a story of a family, a Parisian, a fashion house and composes the novel of a wardrobe.

Video of the exhibition in french

Storerooms

Through examples of the Fashion museum of the City of Paris: the Galliera Museum, and the Centre National du Costume de Scène of Moulin (Allier, France), let's see now what storeroom's textile museum look like.

Storerooms are organized to contain the whole collections of the museum in accordance with preservation conditions fix by the ICOM (International Council of Museum): maintenance at 50% of relative humidity and a temperature of 18°C, air filtering to avoid dust and protect pieces in covers and packaging in neutral materials.

They often consist of work space big enough. In the work room, we make the preservation work of textiles, studies and searchs: inventory, marking, dust removal, photography shooting, costumes's preparation for an exhibition, use of mannequins... For these 2 museums, these spaces are on the ground floor of their respective building.

At the Galliera Museum, the building usual to preservation and restoration makes 4500 m2 on 3 levels. In the basement, we find the storerooms. In the CNCS, the storerooms building extend on 1730 m2 and on 3 floors, in these ones are the storerooms.

In the storerooms of a textile museum, furnitures are specific, and the dying of textile pieces change compared with a fine arts museum for example.

At the Galliera Museum, collections are group together by historic period, by volumes, by series, and by label. These pieces are hanging or well tidy at flat according to their fragility. They are in a mettalic furniture and disapear in a lot of row. They are lock up in drawers, in cotton cover ("décati"), protect from light, from dust. These pieces are kept sheltered from looks.

The furniture, specifically designed, is in metal covered with epoxy painting under heat. Open for a best ventilation of works stored, it is divided into 2 systems of tidy: clothes are hanging in the upper part, when they can support this kind of storage, or keep flat in drawers in the lower part when they are too fragile or that their weight and their strucutre don't make possible the hanging.

In the CNCS, it's the same thing. The tidying to preserve collections, can contain around 10 000 costumes (namely more 20 000 pieces). There is a furniture, like compactus (row of wardrobe put on a false floor with rails), made on the scale of preserve pieces. 

Preservation conditions and Environment

Textile is a very fragile organic material. The preservation state of each works is very changeable. This state depends on the nature and the quality of costume's materials, and its route of its creation to today, its "personal experience". It's the same for different material of fashion accessories.

The causes of damage are multiple:

• Light: it may contribute to fading or discoloration, but of more concern is the damage which the fibers may suffer under prolonged exposure to non-visible light, such as ultraviolet and infrared lighting. So we should limit the intensity of natural and electric light, and exhibit duration to this light (max 50Lux during 4-5 months)
• Heat and humidity: a lot of humidity create moisture, a lot of heat weaken fibers. temperature and humidity should be kept as constant as possible: ideally between 18° and 21° and relative humidity of 50%
• Dust and dirt
• Pest: Among the most common are clothes moths, carpet beetles, silverfish, firebrats and rodents. They cause damage to fibres. For insects, keeping clean storage, display and work environment is the best method of prevention. The insect may be killed through freezing of the object.
• Handling and packaging: textiles should be handled with care. We should wear clean cloth gloves when handling textiles.

To ensure the continued existence of works, several actions are set up for the preventive conservation:

• Watch of climatic condition of the building
• Reconditioning of costumes and accessories (padded coat hanger for hanging costumes)
• Creation of specific support for flat costumes and for accessories (hat, mask, or shoes)
• Take into account fragility of textile works
• Use material adapted to their preservation
• Confinement of material witch risk to damage their neighbour
• Costumes dust removal
• Minimize handling
• Transport

The preventive conservation should ensure the continued existence of work and the integrity of works by protecting them from natural or accidental damages.

We take on causes rather than effects of the damage. It's about indirect actions on the collection. 

Textile and Fashion Museums: how to preserve textile, during and after its exhibition

This blog deals with textile and fashion museums in France, and show some examples of those in other countries.

These museums preserve and exhibit particular collections of textile . Preserving and showing textile items are considered to be the most difficult things because of the materials used which are extremely fragile.

Textile are made of organic materials: vegetable fiber (cotton, linen), animal fiber (silk, wool), artificial or synthetic ones. So it is sensitive to environmental factors: light, temperature, humidity, insect can all damage the textile, depending on their intensity. 

An item exhibited during 5 months should stay in the dark, immune to dust and attacks from outside, such as sun rays or humidity , during more or less 4 years.

Missions of those museums are difficult, but it's still enriching and fascinating.

My aim is to present you, through this blog, the aspects of these museums, their exhibitions which I saw or interested me, the conditions of conservation, the storerooms, the restoration ...