Download or read book Dressing the World of Tomorrow written by Christa Molinaro and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This qualifying paper explores the role that fashion played in the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadow in Queens, New York. How was fashion integrated into the development and design of the fair? Did the attempt to include fashion differ between the fashion industry and other industries present at the fair? With international representation, did involvement differ between countries present at the fair? What role – if any – did American fashion designers have at the fair? To answer these questions, I examined the New York Public Library World’s Fair archive extensively, as well as other historical collections. The results are presented in the form of an exhibition proposal, an interpretive plan that could be used in future to share these important primary source documents, mainly photographs, with a wider audience. This rich resource of materials has not yet been exhibited or seen by the public, aside from individual researchers accessing the collection. I believe that using an object-based approach with accompanying didactics allows an accessible entry point into the many sociopolitical, economic and fashion historical context surrounding each object. I found that the official themes for each year of the fair – The World of Tomorrow (1939) and For Peace and Freedom (1940) - doubled as undercurrent themes found in the incorporation of fashion in the fair over both years. Therefore, I organized the two main sections of the exhibition under those titles. The last section playfully explores fashion in fair merchandising and the press, paralleling as a virtual “exit through the gift shop” for exhibition attendees.