FASHION & TEXTILE HISTORY GALLERY, The Museum at FIT

November 17, 2021 - May 8, 2022

Accessories are often considered ancillary to clothing in women’s fashion, yet they have always been integral to the overall ensemble. Public historian Ariel Beaujot notes that, from the nineteenth century, accessories “helped women create a sense of who they were, with important consequences for how they experienced gender, class, and race.” Head to Toe explores more than two hundred years of women’s dress from 1800 through the early twenty-first century, focusing on the role that accessories play within the total ensembles of Western women’s fashion, as well as the messages that they communicate about social and cultural values.