Where Vintage Goes To Die....

thevintagebungalow

thevintagebungalow

VFG Member
Back in October my Mom & Stepdad took my kids and I to Abilene, Kansas for a ride on a real train (my 3 year old was in heaven). Abilene was one of the big "cow towns" where cows were loaded up onto the trains for trips to the coasts.

They had a museum that was only a museum in the sense that it had old stuff in it. There was no conservation whatsoever. Everything was dusty and unprotected. In the very back was a bedroom display with some beautiful victorian clothing. Most of it was hanging on metal hangers and covered with dust. You could tell that just a touch would have sent it all to shreds. It was really very sad. Now that I know of so many lovely people on these forums who would preserve and care for such pieces, it seems such a waste.

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When I began business in the 60s, old clothing was literally considered 'rags' and went to the linter, or onto the bonfire. The big Goodwill store here, that sorted all the donations from northern California to Seattle, and the Pacific Ocean to Montana, shoved the beaded 20s dresses, opera capes, war bonnets, authentic plains Indian dresses, into their 'costume shop', where I saw people at Halloween literally STANDING on heaps of clothes as they dressed. Most things went to the dump...if people bothered to donate them at all. A few things were collected by vintage car buffs; a LOT of clothing was cut up to dress antique dolls.

I think what turned it around was hippies--our customers--who dressed in old clothes, if not 24/7, at least to the dancehalls on the weekends. They made old clothes fashionable...rescuing them from junkshops and rummage sales, abandoned old houses, dusty shop basements.





These are 1960s photos.
 
There's a little museum like that in East Tennessee. They have a "costume room" with beaded 20s dresses on wire hangers, and all of it covered in dust. Throughout the building they have mannequins set up, all wearing an mish-mash of old styles, and most of them near a window. I tried talking to them and was blown off.
 
I LOVE that photo of the 60's cowboys! A handsome lot there were in that photo:wub:

This thread reminds me of a museum in Cape Cod that I I used to visit when we stayed at my aunts house in Falmouth, it is the Cape Cod Historical Society:
http://www.falmouthhistoricalsociety.org

I just watched the video and it seems that they've fixed things and organized the displays better than they were 10 years ago. When we went, they had boxes of antique clothing stored underneath the furniture. LOL, my mum being the nosey woman she is, opened one of the lids as they were right there where anyone could get to them, and the cotton clothing article just went "poof". It had distintegrating due to being stored in the acid cardboard box and being stored improperly.

In the bedroom display, they had antique silk satin bodices being hung from the back of the neck in the open closet and a lobster tail bustle on display in the bright sun of the window!

In another room, they had one of those Victorian colored glass "fire extinghishers" still filled with the original liquid perched on the edge of the fireplace mantle. I told the tour guide there that he had better move that as if that fell and broke, the liquid inside would contaminate the whole room (I learned that from one of my mum's old Kovel's price guides!).

I always wished I lived in Falmouth so that I could volunteer there and put things straight!

Lei
 
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