Our upcoming exhibition Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style shoehorns 19 thematic sections into the 5,000-square-foot Governors Gallery of the State Museum. That is a lot of information and even more stories.

One such story involves a buckskin suit included in the Cattle Culture section of the exhibition. The suit—consisting of a matching fringed coat and pants—belonged to Franz Hanneburg, who worked on a ranch near Hebron. As is often the case with historic garments, we don’t know how he came to own the suit in the 1890s. We also don’t know the maker’s name, but it was probably a woman affiliated with the Sioux/Nakota/Yanktonai.

Front view of buckskin suit. SHSND 2018.5.1-.2 

The suit represents a significant earlier element in Western history—the military scout. Beginning in the 1860s, military scouts adopted this hybrid combination of European-cut garments fabricated and embellished with regional materials—in this case, tanned buckskin and porcupine quills. It was a style first romanticized in The Leatherstocking Tales of James Fennimore Cooper and in the writings of Washington Irving, then later adopted by several scouts when they became theatrical performers and led the Wild West shows popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is the flamboyant style favored by notables such as Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Pawnee Bill.

This flashy suit style wasn’t limited to showmen; we are also highlighting studio photographs of the Marquis de Morès and the photographer Frank Fiske in similar scout-inspired outfits in the exhibition. The Hanneburg suit is cut after a European-style lounge coat pattern using set-in sleeves and a distinctive diamond-shaped back panel and accented with patch pockets. The two pockets are die-cut buckskin—possibly using a u-shaped chisel—and possess a decorative reverse-flute edge.

Detail of back yoke.

Detail of patch pocket with fluted edge.

This windproof buckskin coat is fully lined with red wool, trade blanket fabric and would have been an effective buffer against the region’s brutal climate. The fringed coat is also embellished with a delicate pattern of stems and leaves worked in multicolored, dyed porcupine quills. Interestingly, a change in the decoration scheme is evident. As is the case in several locations on the coat, there are graphite, hand-drawn guidelines for flowers that were never executed.

Graphite pattern for quillwork.

The stylistic legacy of the Hanneburg suit is represented in another garment in the Cattle Culture section, an embroidered wool shirt from the 1950s. While the two garments are remarkably different, they share a common lineage in the evolution of Western fashion.

Embroidered black wool shirt. SHSND 2011.53.1

Up until the mid-19th century the prevailing mode in men’s fashions could rarely be called conservative or subdued. Men very often appeared as strutting peacocks, decked in rich, patterned fabrics, intricately cut tailoring, elaborate embroidery, and bright, flashy color combinations. The dandies of those times, the English Macaronis and the French Incroyables of the old regime, were swept away by the somber grays and blacks of the Industrial Age.

How curious that at the same time—and in the most unlikely of settings—the ostentatious plainsmen and scout suits of the American West took hold. The style found its way into the first generation of Western showmen and women, and easily transitioned to the silver screen in the early days of serial movies. Buckaroo stars such as Tom Mix and Tim McCoy provided macho swagger while draped in historic flamboyance.

Wild West shows, rodeos, and dude ranches perpetuated the look, and by the postwar America of the 1950s, the genre was firmly entrenched in popular culture. While masquerading as the most American of icons—the cowboy—no one would question or suspect an old-world dandy preference for bright colors and intricate embroidery.

While our black wool cowboy shirt is fairly subdued, its contrasting white rayon chainstitch embroidery clearly reflects the legacy of the quillwork on the Hanneburg suit, right down to the especially elaborate flourish across the back yoke.

Detail of back yoke.

Join us in early 2021 to experience these two fine examples from the holdings of the State Historical Society of North Dakota—along with many more—when we premiere Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style.

Former Governor Arthur and First Lady Grace Link at their wedding in 1939. SHSND SA 10943-76

Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style, the upcoming exhibition at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, includes 19 thematic sections ranging from decorative and symbolic feather usage to graduation gowns. One section—dubbed “The Wedding March”—focuses on bridal traditions utilizing a selection of garments, photographs, and accessories. And while bridal white features prominently in the layout, it isn’t the exclusive color.

Drawn from the State Historical Society’s objects and photographic collections, the display captures a wide range of garments worn by North Dakota brides, including an afternoon suit, an evening dress, and an ensemble hand-crocheted by the bride’s grandmother over a three-month period.

Also included are two folk ensembles worn by Norwegian and Icelandic brides in the mid-19th century. The colorful Norwegian bunad includes elaborate embroidery worked with glass beads, while the Icelandic Skautbúningur features a national folk style introduced just prior to its wearing in 1861.

Wedding portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Dick Ramsey, Fort Yates, circa 1908. The bride wears a fashionable, flounced, white cotton batiste lingerie dress with a dotted Swiss motif, a floral headdress, and silk tulle veil. SHSND SA 1952-2037

The most formal gown in the grouping is also the “history mystery” within the exhibition, as it appears incomplete. The ivory wool flannel and silk brocade gown (SHSND 13405) was worn by Jennie Martha Kelley at her marriage to Oscar St. Clair Chenery, in Jamestown, during the late territorial period. The gown stylistically falls within the second bustle period of the 19th century.

Bodice and detail of the Kelley wedding gown, 1886. SHSND 13405

Beginning in the late 1860s the fullness of the period’s bell-shaped skirts began to shift—with the mass moving to the back—often accented with swaged overskirts and flared peplums. This silhouette collapsed in the late 1870s with the introduction of fitted princess-line gowns featuring long trailing fishtail trains. Then, in the 1880s, the bustle reappeared as a very prominent feature extending much like a wide shelf from the base of the wearer’s back.

The period was distinctive for the profuse use of upholstery trims, embroidery, draped swags, and knife-pleated ruffles, all accenting the mass of the bustle. It was the age of conspicuous consumption. Bustles (politely termed tournures) were supported by spring wire, horsehair, and hinged steel hoop understructures of a scale that made it impossible to sit back in a chair, forcing fashionable women to perch sideways when they sat. Ladies chairs were designed without arms to accommodate their full skirts.

The Kelley wedding gown dates to 1886. Its “history mystery” is that the distinctive bustled train is missing. The skirt has been modified yet retains a removable half-moon-shaped dust ruffle indicating the fullness of the original bustle and chapel-length train. The dust ruffle would have protected the underside of the train as it dragged across floors and the ground.

Two lace-edged silk brocade swags positioned over the skirt’s hips—known as a polonaise (in the Polish style)—indicate they led to an incomplete back arrangement that no doubt incorporated both a third swag (completing the polonaise), and a cascade of both silk brocade and lace forming the train. The bustle must have been made as a separate component attached to the back waistline of the skirt.

Another feature of the wedding gown is its rather deep neckline. As it appears, the bride would have had reason to blush as she would have gone down the aisle virtually bare breasted! The neckline’s deep cut and the presence of narrow lapels and lace ruffles indicate it was filled with a chemisette—much like a dickey—providing a more modest secondary inner neckline, probably fashioned of gathered silk tulle matching the dress trim.

Do you know the difference between a bodice and a blouse? A blouse—while it can be tailored—is unstructured. A bodice has a fitted inner lining often including boning and occasionally padding. The steel boning in the Kelley wedding bodice was intended to maintain a smooth silhouette. A separate corset would have been worn as part of the underwear to support the bride’s figure.

Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style will appear in the Governors Gallery at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum in 2021.

Visual cues really help the creative process. They kickstart the imagination and the free association of ideas. This is especially true in the exhibition development process. Something — be it an artifact, an image, or a concept — will spark an idea, and you find yourself off and running in a world of exploration and discovery.

We are currently developing a new exhibit for the Governors Gallery at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, opening early 2021. Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style is a thematic exploration of the role clothing has played — and still plays — in the history of the region. The exhibition moves broadly across time while featuring specific aspects, trends, solutions, and adaptations expressed through clothing. It isn’t an exhibition about Parisian designers and haute couture, but rather focuses on practicality, functionality, and style expressed through everyday wardrobe elements.

“Cowgirls at the Medora Roundup” by Leo LaLonde, c. 1955. SHSND SA 00276-14365

Key to developing the exhibition is creating a visual look — or branding — that aids in telling the story and repeats throughout the gallery as a unifying component.  We are talking about design, after all. During the exhibit process I like to select a signature element or image to represent the scope of the project, and that holds true for Fashion & Function. I’ve spent a great deal of time reviewing photographs from the collections of the State Archives, looking not only at the historic moments, but at what the people in the photographs are wearing. I admit I started with a preconceived image in my head capturing my vision for the exhibition, but that fantasy photograph never appeared.

State Archives Division Director Ann Jenks pointed me toward several images she thought might be of interest. Included was a series of photographs created in the late 1950s by Bismarck photographer Leo LaLonde of the annual fall roundup in Medora. They included several great images of both authentic and urbanized western wear, and one shot that pushed all the right buttons as a signature image — and it had nothing to do with my preconceived idea. It was just right!

The photograph is of a well-worn cowboy boot and denim-clad leg resting on the rear bumper of a late 1940s Pontiac Chieftain — the worn character of the boot contrasting with the modernist style of the tail fin and gumdrop-shaped taillights. It just says “fashion” and “function.” The photograph also captures a distorted, reflected world in the chrome of the bumper, including the silhouette of the photographer, a second car, several skeletal trees, and the hilly horizon beyond.

“Boot and Spur, Medora Roundup” by Leo LaLonde, c. 1955. SHSND SA 00276-14370

Although limited documentation accompanies the photograph, my sense is that LaLonde created it with the intent of entering a photography competition. Several the photographs in the LaLonde Collection were made as contest entries, and it differs from the black and white photographs he normally created for the Bismarck Tribune. The composition is “artistic” rather than “documentary” and it lacks the extensive notations of his newspaper photographs listing the subjects, date, and location of the photograph.

The photographs in the Medora Roundup series have rich gray tones, strong diagonal components, and asymmetrical compositions. In the boot image, LaLonde chose to crop the spur attached to the heel of the boot. The incompleteness of the image forces the viewer to ponder the missing rowel, and why it isn’t there. I really like the energy of the image. It captures the essence of Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style.

Our new media specialist Andrew Kerr has been working with the photograph, folding its elements into a signature logo for the installation. Our plan is to combine the logo with neon and cut steel letters in a vignette at the entrance of the Governors Gallery including sequenced chaser lights and a Miss North Dakota pageant evening gown from 1960. Please plan to visit the exhibition this coming fall. It should prove a memorable experience.