Blouse

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Used as direct inspiration for two Jessie Franklin Turner designs in this collection from the 1920s (see 2009.300.336a, b and 2009.300.1355), this blouse is a wonderfully clear and well-documented example of how designers used Brooklyn Museum material to inspire design. During her early design career, Turner often worked with Stewart Culin, the Brooklyn Museum's Curator of Ethnology until 1929, to find material at the museum that would spark design. Culin also partnered with M.D.C. Crawford to encourage a mutually beneficial relationship between museums and industry, and Crawford sometimes lent objects from his personal collection, such as this piece, to that end. Turner was inspired by this exact blouse to create dresses with the bird motif, which has become iconic of her work. Crawford wrote about this interaction in Women's Wear in 1919, The Ways of Fashion in 1941 and featured drawings of both the blouse and a version of the dress produced from it in One World of Fashion in 1946.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art