American Fashion Transformed: Four Master Designers

The University of Minnesota’s McNeal Hall is home to something of a dream closet: an archive of more than twenty thousand articles of vintage couture. Most of these pieces were bought long ago, and mostly by Minnesota women with the wherewithal to shop the Oval Room or the old Young-Quinlan and Frank Murphy department stores in downtown Minneapolis. For this show, the Goldstein Museum has ventured into its McNeal Hall stash to unpack treasures from four designers who were integral in changing what women wore in postwar America: Norman Norell, Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene, and Pauline Trigère, a Frenchwoman who set up her own fashion house in New York in 1942. Highlights include Beene’s 1968 “M&M dress,” a flirty silk number with layers upon layers of fabric-covered buttons, and a psychedelic slip dress, lavished with both feathers and frayed chiffon, from the Blass collection of the same year. 1985 Buford Ave., St. Paul; 612-624-7434; Goldstein.cdes.umn.edu