UA UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH & CREATIVE ACTIVITY CONFERENCE
2019

Operation Monkey Coat:
A Fashionable Material Culture Approach to Object-based Research in Dress
(poster presentation)

John Pace

History & Economics
Blount Scholars Program, Honors College & Randall Research Scholars
(Class of 2022)

Dr. Marcy L. Koontz, Faculty Advisor

In the 1930s, Miss Henrietta Thompson, a faculty member in the Department of Clothing, Textiles & Interior Design, started collecting garments for use in classroom instruction and study. Today the collection contains thousands of dress and related objects dating from the 15th century to present day. In the spring of 2018, it was renamed The Fashion Archive and a restructuring plan was introduced which included the development and implementation of professional curatorial procedures, practices and management. This poster focuses on an object-based research project developed to examine the first woman’s coat donated to the collection to determine its date, construction and materials as well as its design, style and the era’s zeitgeist.

The process followed a material culture methodological approach of systematic object study in three stages with specific hypotheses for inquiry: observation, reflection and interpretation. This framework was adapted by scholars Ingrid Mida and Alexandra Kim using the work of Jules Prown and others to provide a more specific and useful pathway for object-based research in dress. In addition, fiber samples were extracted from each of the eight materials used in the construction and design applications of the coat and were analyzed using a TESCAN LYRA3 FE-SEM microscope.