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Leila Old remembers one of her first finds at the UI, shortly after she joined the Home Economics faculty in 1967—a battered wooden trunk holding turn-of-the-century stand-up collars, gloves, and ribbons. Then, in a second-floor hall closet of the Home Economics building, she discovered old floral hat decorations, and in the corners of the basement, more old and forgotten articles of clothing.

“We hope the garments present a picture of how life was lived in Idaho in good times and bad, in kitchens and in ballrooms.”

“There was stuff hidden away here and there and everywhere,” Old recalls. A teacher of pattern making and clothing design, she started gathering the items for students to use in her classes. During the summers that followed, she studied techniques for museum curators to learn how to care for and catalog the garments.

As word of Old’s collection spread, donations started coming in from alumni, faculty, and friends of the university. Old retired from the university in 1981, and the historic pieces were named the Leila Old Historic Costume Collection in her honor. A small endowment also was established to maintain the collection. Old, 85, still works at the collection each Tuesday, along with Kathleen Warnick, a collection volunteer for the past 20 years.

“It’s an underused gem,” says David Trayte, professor of clothing, textiles, and design, who now works with the collection with his students.

Items date from the 1860s to the present. Most have been worn by Idahoans or their ancestors, and a fair number relate to UI life: an 1890s cotton and silk floral print dress belonged to Annette Bowman, one of the university’s original four faculty members, and a 1980s cherry red business suit was worn by head of home economics Margaret Ritchie, “the lady in red.”

“We hope the garments present a picture of how life was lived in Idaho in good times and bad, in kitchens and in ballrooms,” says Warnick.

Dresses and suits, sorted by decade, hang from wire hangers that volunteers have padded with thick cotton batting. Wooden drawers contain mittens, belt fasteners, hat pins, parasols, bathing suits, aprons, and spats. There are 1910 corsets with metal stays and 1920s silk dresses so heavy with beadwork that they must be folded in drawers rather than hung.

Located in climate-controlled rooms on the second floor of the Alumni Center, the collection of approximately 7,000 pieces is open for classes and to the public by appointment. Old and Warnick mount periodic displays to provide further exposure for the collection. They are currently verifying the documentation on each item in the collection so the information can be entered into a computer database, giving students and scholars better access to the holdings.

Donations of Idaho-related clothing, plain and fancy, continue to be welcome. “Historic costume is not just your wedding gown,” says Trayte. “It’s what you live your life in.”

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