In 1927, Paramount released a silent film called It. Clara Bow was 21. She became the first “It Girl.” Costumes from her era were almost never saved. Now one piece lies flat in a glass case in New York. It's a flesh-colored silk slip, its hem beaded with silver, made for a 1928 film called Red Hair. The film is lost. The dress is not. Laura Jacobs reviews the show for the Journal's Arts in Review.
The exhibition is Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film, at the Bard Graduate Center through Jan. 3, 2027. Jacobs says it's the first major show on the subject, which is a surprise. Silent movies started in the U.S. in 1896 with Thomas Edison's Vitascope in New York. With no spoken words, clothes had to do the talking. The wall text puts it plainly. Filmmakers used costume to show character and push the plot. Elinor Glyn, who wrote the story for It, had a sister in the business. Lady Duff-Gordon, the couturier Lucile, was dressing actresses for the movies as early as 1913.
Here's why so little survives. The industry began on the East Coast and moved to California in the mid-1910s. Nobody preserved costumes. The habit lasted well past the arrival of sound. A dress was something to use again, not something to keep. Leslie Caron once told Jacobs that her white Gigi gown from 1958, by Cecil Beaton, was worn again and again. The feathers were plucked. Eventually it got sleeves. The few pieces that made it usually needed restoring, and museums seldom put them out.
Sixteen that made it
So 16 surviving silent-screen pieces is a bounty. They're shown with the clips that put them in motion. Two outfits Lillian Gish wore in Way Down East (1920). A Travis Banton dress that served two films, in 1927 and 1929. Gloria Swanson's fringed gown from Male and Female (1919). Mae Murray's canary-yellow dress from Circe the Enchantress (1924), hung beside the clip of her dancing in it. Rudolph Valentino's matador jacket from Blood and Sand (1922). More than 180 objects fill three floors, with clips from more than 50 films. A 1920s usher's uniform stands at the door, near fan magazines and tins printed with the stars' faces.
Our read
This is an Estate story told through silk. We'll keep it light, because the show is a pleasure. The lesson is about value and time. These dresses were worth little to the people who had them. They were work clothes. So they got cut down, re-dyed and handed to the next picture. A hundred years later the few that escaped are behind glass with a loan agreement from Paris. Things become precious when they become rare, and they become rare when nobody is watching.
Your family has its own Red Hair dress. The wedding ring, the letters, the photo albums, the tools in the garage, the recipe box. Most wills say nothing about them. They pass to whoever gets to the house first, or they get reworked, like the Gigi gown, until no one remembers what they were. This week, pick the five things in your house that matter most to the family and photograph them. Write who should have each one. Many states let you attach that list to your will as a personal-property memorandum, a short list you can change without a lawyer. Ask your estate attorney whether yours allows it. Clara Bow's studio didn't plan for her dress to outlast the film. You can plan for yours. Better to find the umbrella while the sky is still bright.