Rich seams of history

The Darnell Collection has thousands of garments and each tells a tale, writes Rachel Olding.

First came the boxes. Seventy trunks holding 3000 vintage designer garments dating back to 1790 arrived on Charlotte Smith's doorstep.

There were Chanel wedding gowns, Hermes driving gloves, Thierry Mugler suits, 1920s Bakelite driving goggles, Herve Leger two-pieces, velvet hats with exotic plumes and 1970s Pucci shift dresses.

Smith had inherited the staggering collection from her Quaker godmother, Doris Darnell, a flamboyant but gentle American from Philadelphia.

Then came the masses of faded letters, parchments and notes collected by Darnell to record the story of each dress given to her by friends, family and strangers.

"Among the last of Doris's boxes, I found her catalogue notes .. the notes of all her stories, of the dresses and the women who wore them," Smith says.

"As I pored over Doris's words - her wit, wonder and wisdom - the true value of what I had been bequeathed hit home."

Sorting and preserving the dresses and cataloguing their stories became a full-time job for Smith, a former antique store owner who now curates exhibitions and teaches the history of fashion.

There are originals by Dior, Chanel and Balenciaga, precious wedding gowns, glitzy flapper dresses, prairie dresses turned brown from hard wear, taffeta ball gowns, flirty minis and a pioneer woman's best and only dress, daintily mended to within an inch of its life.

Dreaming of Dior takes 140 dresses from the Darnell Collection and retells the owners' stories with lavish illustrations by Grant Cowan. "I'd always thought there was a book in the stories from the collection. I've got these wonderful, intimate vignettes into the lives of so many women," Smith says.

"The idea of the book is getting it out there for people to fall in love with the clothes and enjoy the passion that Doris had and the people who were giving the clothes to Doris had and I've now had.

"It's showing that it's not just a dress, it's more than that: it's a recording of social history and the way women's lives have changed."

There's a leopard-skin swing coat African doyenne Betty Achenbach altered as the times changed. It began as an ankle-length coat with long cuffs in the 1930s and came to Doris as a short cape, pillbox hat and bag.

There's Doris's debutante ball dress, Charlotte Glenn's intricately hand-crocheted lace tea gown that was part of her trousseau when she married John McMullin in 1904, Ruth Meyer's cocktail skirt and lace top from Dior's first collection and a silk taffeta dress stained by water. Its owner walked home through the snow after a dance and chose not to wash the dress so she could always remember the man she had met that night.

"When we initially selected dresses for the book, we found we were always going for the 1950s ones because they are so glamorous and colourful," Smith says.

"So we had to make sure we concentrated on other eras. There's a lot of Victorian dresses, a lot of '20s dresses; even the '80s are now considered vintage, so those dresses were important. Everyone will have their favourite or their favourite period."

As for her favourite?

"The most special pieces to me are the ones that aren't glamorous, that are soiled, patched and repaired.

"That's really special because why would someone have kept that? It looks terrible but somebody knew that it was a really special dress. Somebody knew it was a treasure."

Dreaming of Dior by Charlotte Smith, NZ$39.99.

Twenty-eight dresses from the book will be displayed in Sydney, along with letters and photographs from the Darnell Collection archives. September 20-December 18, The Fashion Gallery, 2 Short Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, (+61) 2 9380 2960. – Sydney Morning Herald

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