Our Summer Intern

This past month, we were lucky to have Tahj interning with us! He attended high school nearby and recently graduated (congrats!). Before heading off to college to study fashion, he spent time at the FHCC working on a big project we’ve been calling the “Silhouette Dictionary.”

As you’ve seen in our previous posts, putting clothing on a dress form requires a lot of work. Ideal body shapes, support structures, and undergarments are crucial elements to consider when trying to make a garment “read” accurately for its time period. Additionally, we are always thinking about hairstyles and other details that matter when discussing costume history (or when making those Tyvek wigs!). Usually we grab a book and search for an image to refer to when dressing and styling, but Clare suggested we compile a year by year compendium of images in order to streamline the process.

Enter Tahj, who came in already knowing a lot about costume history, but wanted to learn even more about fashion from the past 200 years. First, he spent hours combing through the Vogue archive, saving images from every decade. Then, he meticulously cut out every shape and glued them onto sheets so he could organize them year by year.

Tahj at work

Thanks to him, we have an amazing image compendium to refer to when preparing mannequins. Here’s what he had to say about his time here:

Working here at Drexel in the historic costume collection has really taught me about the past and what women would do to their bodies to achieve the ideal silhouette. I have learned that magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar go all the way back to the 1890s–but back then it looked more like newspaper articles with hand drawn illustrations. In my opinion, the people of the early 20th century were very vain because they were always worried about their appearance, and how they could stop themselves from aging and from having saggy skin. This society was built on looking good all the time and it stayed the same all the way until the 1960s. As we go from 1900 to modern times we see a big decrease in undergarments, too. Over all I am having a lot of fun and learning a lot too.

Tahj Abbott-Linton

Placing the images into the book!

A group of images from Vogue in the 1920s

He had so many great questions and was ready to learn as much as he could while here–we are really going to miss you, Tahj! Good luck in college, we know you’ll rock it.

-The FHCC team