Irene Castle

Throughout the exhibition this fall, we have two of our Bard Graduate Center PhD students who are doing durational reconstructions of two garments in the show.

So visitors can come wander throughout the exhibition and then come up to the fourth floor and speak with our students, Sydney and Jaya, about the Seriously the Enchantress dress that Jaya is recreating and this amazing 1922 Lucille dance dress worn by Irene Castle that Sydney is working to recreate.

Again, sort of trying to get at this idea that they were meant to be seen in motion, but we obviously can't do that with historical garments anymore.

And so it'll be really fascinating to see over the course of the exhibition their work sort of live for our audiences.

Jay.

Yeah.

It was, wonderful that he participated and when I asked him to contribute that was the first person he went to and one of the reasons he really wanted to explore her was to use it as an example of what we don't have right and what has been lost and that is definitely one of these threads that you cannot get away from when you're addressing silent film which is kind of amazing and there are a you know, actors, designers in the exhibition who are also that, you know, so Irene Castle, for example, I mean, she's been heavily documented, so it's not like she's a lost figure, but she was in a lot of silent films and most of them don't survive, right? Billy Burke is another person who had this incredible career in theater and film.

most of her films don't survive.

She has, in other words, a mind and a style of her own.

No matter what has been said about bobbed hair, and a great deal has been said ever since Irene Castle thought up the Castle coiffure, Miss Dalton likes it, and so, the other day, she clipped her abundant tresses with the accompanying results.

The story continues, "When the news first got about that Dorothy had bobbed her hair, people shook their heads sadly.

It would never, never do, they said.