Dorothy Shaver was without question one of the most important figures in American retail and fashion in the first half of the 20th century. Shaver began her enormously successful career in retail at Lord & Taylor in the early 1920s. She created the store’s department of Fashion and Design in 1925 and was elected to the Board of Directors in 1927. In 1928, she mounted the groundbreaking Exposition of Modern French Decorative Art — a selection of objects from the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, never before seen in the United States. Perhaps her single most significant project at Lord & Taylor was “The American Look”. Established in 1932, its function was to introduce and promote the work of American designers who were creating garments expressly for American consumers. “The American Look” featured ready-to-wear pieces from notables like Claire McCardell and Adrian, among numerous others. Shaver continued to move through the department store ranks promoted first to vice president and ultimately president in 1945, a position she held for the next fourteen years. But her reach and influence extended well beyond Lord & Taylor. She was heavily involved with the Red Cross and the redesign of women’s military uniforms and was in fact one of the founders of the Museum of Costume Art which became The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1944. She was simply unparalleled in her achievements as a woman in the retail world at that moment and most certainly paved the way for those that continue to follow.      

Charles James, “Butterfly” Ball Gown, 1955 Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

We were so excited at the announcement last week that the Spring/Summer 2014 Costume Institute exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will focus on the British-American designer Charles James (1906-1978). We knew very little of James and his work until 2010 with two great corresponding, simultaneous exhibitions at The Met (American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity) and the Brooklyn Museum (American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection) and the marvelous catalog that was created to compliment both, High Style by Jan Glier Reeder, that featured his designs prominently. The shows celebrated the merging of the museums’ two renowned costume collections in 2009 which, still identified separately, are housed together permanently at The Met. The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the largest collection of James’ work in the world which includes, in addition to the garments themselves, six hundred related materials such as sketches and patterns. With Millicent Rogers as his muse, James is best known for his exquisite couture gowns from the 1940s and 50s. But we love his day dresses, suits and coats from those decades just as much and have our fingers crossed that we’ll see a lot of those pieces as well in Charles James: Beyond Fashion opening May 8, 2014 — most definitely an exhibition well worth waiting for!