Wichita WORE WHAT ?

from W Magazine | Winter-Spring 2023

Fashioning Art from Paper

A Century Of Local Fashion

WICHITA. UNEXPECTEDLY FASHIONABLE?

Perhaps. In 1872, Marshall Murdock, the editor of the Wichita Eagle newspaper wrote: ‘The style and intelligence of the people who are setting up the homesteads and building up the frontier towns of Southwestern Kansas are often a subject of remark by those just in from the East… The great majority of those living on homesteads in this section of the state are people of refinement and taste.” Reverend John Pearse Harsen of First Presbyterian Church—anxious to defend his city against stereotypes of shootouts and saloons—was even more short and sweet when said “We are not all ruffians.”

WICHITA WORE WHAT? A Century of Local Fashion spotlights our city’s fashionable history. In 1870, Wichita officially boasted about 700 residents. By the turn of the 20th century, however, Wichita had become a major regional center offering a wide variety of shopping spots, places to see and be seen, and residents eager to assert their identities as refined citizens of the world. With nearly a dozen department stores dotting the downtown area alone, Wichitans could admire and purchase the latest styles from the East Coast and beyond. As the city continued to flourish after World War I and World War II—with the success of companies including Coleman, Mentholatum, Travel Air, Beech, Stearman, and Cessna—residents continued to embrace the most up-to-date designs.

WICHITA WORE WHAT? features clothing and accessories worn in Wichita from 1888–1988 (with a few outliers), surveying changes in both apparel and lifestyle. The exhibition includes designs by superstars like Sadie Nemser, James Galanos, Geoffrey Beene,

Norman Norell, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, and Pauline Trigère. For WAM Curator Dr. Tera Lee Hedrick, the beaded Sadie Nemser dress is a highlight. She says “I didn’t know about this designer until Jami [Frazier Tracy, co-curator of Wore What? and Curator of Collections for the WichitaSedgwick County Historical Museum] brought her to my attention a few years ago. I love her. She worked in the 1920s and is one of the earliest American female fashion designers. The beadwork is astounding. Thousands of beads are applied to tissue-thin silk and chiffon. It is miraculous the dress hasn’t just disintegrated.” Hedrick also adds, “I just look at it and feel like I’ve been transported to the Roaring 20s, and I’m dancing the Charleston at a speakeasy!”

Jami Frazier Tracy, co-curator of the exhibition, loves the chance to highlight fashion from various moments in Wichita’s history. She says, “Wichita had a long tradition of being a retail center—not just for the state but the Midwest. Fashionable men and women could shop from dozens of department stores, specialty boutiques, and later, shopping malls, to find the latest styles. Because Wichita also had wealthy entrepreneurs, our community had people who wanted to look good and were happy to pay for it.” In this exhibition, Tracy has special love for the 1970s and 1980s fashions and calls attention to the beaded and sequined Matisse Jacket by Bill Blass. “It was worn by Rochelle Levitt, who with her husband, Leo, owned Henry’s Department Store. Henry’s was one of the premier department stores in the Midwest. The jacket is so opulent and so in line with what we think about the 1980s—excess, volume, luxe, big shoulders, rich detail. All in one jacket. And, it references art. It features a design from the French painter Henri Matisse!”

A trip through American fashion history, the exhibition also features garments that are standouts not just for style but for their provenance—who owned and wore them. One special dress was worn by Connie Peters, the first woman elected to Wichita’s City Commission and our first female mayor. A woman of her moment, Peters wore mini-skirts while presiding over Commission meetings. Perhaps the most important garment in the show was worn by civil rights icon Chester I. Lewis, an attorney and leader of the Wichita chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Under Lewis’s leadership, NAACP youth held the first successful student-led sit-in for civil rights in 1958 at Wichita’s Dockum Drug Store. The dashiki worn by Lewis— based on traditional tunics worn in West Africa—symbolized Lewis’ embrace of his African heritage and rejection of the status quo. Hedrick notes that “Lewis’ dashiki is a Wichita treasure, a national treasure. WAM is incredibly privileged that the Historical Museum was willing to lend it for this exhibition.”