dress, 1-piece
date: label: Date made
content: 1989
name: label: maker
content: McFadden, Mary
notes: label: Description
content: Dress, 1-piece; black horizontally crinkled miniskirt; heavily beaded strapless bodice to hipline; beading is done in horizontal strips approx. 2" w., each consisting of a ground of vertically-laid gold metallic thread on olive green thread satin-stitch and running stitch; green, brown, purple and blue round and tubular beads, opal and iridescent pink, blue and white sequins; purple, green, orange cotton thread french knots laid down in motif of medow scene; skirt lined with black silk; bodice is boned and lined with olive green silk; cleaning and size labels inside; size 6; B. length is 26" (66 cm).
label: Description
content: Label text: Mary McFadden / Couture
label: Description
content: Other items in accession selected by designer as appropriate to be worn with dress. Original designer sketch is .5 in this accession.
label: Description
content: Acquired for the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program's (RAP) 25th Anniversary in 1990. McFadden gave a lecture for the RAP course, "Fashion in the 1990s: Evenings with America's Leading Designers."
label: Description
content: This dress was first made with a long pleated skirt for McFadden's 1988 collection inspired by the novel Tale of Genji. Curator Claudia Kidwell requested a short dress for exhibition, as that was the lastest look for evening dresses, and was surprised when McFadden sent a modified version of her 1988 dress, which she updated by taking off the long skirt and turning the pleated fabric to wrap around the body. McFadden told Kidwell that the stylized flower embroidery was meant to invoke Japanese scroll painting and themes of obstruction and diversions in life in the Tale of Genji.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Costume
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mary McFadden
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1990.0246.001
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Dress, 1-Piece