The collection of ethnographic dress in the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection includes folk costume, and traditional dress worn outside the Western fashion tradition. Complete ensembles from various time periods and geographic cultures are represented, displaying a vast array of embellishment techniques. To see selections from the collection please visit our online gallery at our Fashion2Fiber website.

Examples include:

• Complete pre-WWII Japanese wedding kimono in three layers of obi, obi aga, tabi, and geta
• Children’s kimono for the Japanese ceremony Shichi-go-san
• Complete Macedonian wedding ensemble

Gold silk satin evening gown, c. 1863. See additional images on the fashion2fiber.osu.edu image gallery go.osu.edu/goldsatin1860s

In 1995, the Friends of the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection purchased five 19th century garments from the collection of the Traphagen School of Design. Following that purchase the recently closed school donated an additional 69 garments. Ethel Traphagen, was a fashion designer who is credited with introducing shorts and slacks into American women’s fashion. She founded the Traphagen School of Design with her husband in New York City in the 1920s. The school was known for its technical orientation of fashion design, with courses in pattern making and draping. The school closed its doors in the early 1990s. (The only records from the school that remain are held by the New York State Department of Education. These are the academic records (transcripts) of the students who attended Traphagen. If students need that information they should write directly to the NY State Department of Education providing the pertinent details including the years they attended.)

Some of the better known names in the fashion industry attended the Traphagen School. Alumni members include: Geoffrey Beene, James Galanos, Mary McFadden, John Kloss, Christos Yiannakou, and African-American designer Franklin Rowe.

The Traphagen collection at the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection consists of 56 garments and 12 assorted hats. The costumes range in date from the 1830s to the 1910s, with particular strength in the 1890s. The hats date from the 1840s up to the early 1950s. The Traphagen collection includes garments exemplifying the silhouettes of the 19th century, others are remarkable for their fabrics and opulence, and a few have French labels.

Indian bandhani textile featuring traditional resist-dyeing technique

Textiles in the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection are from both Western and non-Western traditions.

The earliest textiles date from the fifteenth century. Pre-Columbian South American textile artifacts woven on a backstrap loom and silk velvet European liturgical textiles with gold couched embroidery span the technology of textile manufacturing at this time.

The approximately 1,000 textile examples offer a historical chronology of Western textile design and manufacturing techniques for both dress as well as furnishing fabrics including quilts, coverlets, paisley shawls and Spanish shawls.

The Collection also offers many examples of design and manufacturing techniques from cultures around the globe. Especially significant is a collection of over 60 Indonesian, mostly ikat, textiles from the collection of Fred Richman.

One of several satsuma buttons collected by Ann W. Rudolph

The Ann Rudolph Button Collection is a comprehensive holding of buttons including representative examples of almost every type of collectible button, many of which are unique, rare and seldom available to scholars and collectors. Examples of everyday functional and utilitarian buttons are also included. Housed within the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection, the buttons are organized, identified, and catalogued according to standards of the National Button Society.

Extensive research sources including books, catalogs, and journals related to button history, button manufacture, button collecting, and the role of buttons in fashion and dress exist within the OSU Library system and can be accessed via the library catalog, OSCAR. A further enhancement, OSU Libraries is the designated repository for the archives of the National Button Society.