Exhibitions

Past Exhibitions

Color Me Fashion
March 23 - August 15, 2025

COLOR ME FASHION includes more than forty-five looks with related accessories spanning approximately 100 years of fashion history from c. 1890 to 1990. The power of color is undeniable when attempting to arrange disparate objects cohesively. In this curatorial process, color merged oppositional styles, silhouettes, and fabrications of each garment. While color trends may come and go, the foundational components of color theory provide an everlasting framework in which one can organize different objects to create visually alluring tableaus. 

Each end of the gallery highlights complementary colors—those opposite each other on the color wheel, including blue and orange—and purple and yellow. Other gallery sections include analogous relationships, which are those colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel. Green/blue/yellow and red/purple/blue artifacts combine different designers and periods for these groupings. Finally, items presented in the cases and on the return wall explore monochromatic presentations of color, including pink—inspired by the “Think Pink” sequence performed by Kay Thompson in the 1957 film Funny Face and various shades of blue and green inspired by sea glass, sometimes referred to as mermaid’s tears. 

Across cultures, time, and space, color communicates different things to different people. One example is the Hindu festival of Holi, which welcomes spring, the start of the new year, and the universal triumph of good over evil. Revelers spend the day in celebration, made vibrant by colored powder that covers everything in sight. Color, dance, food, music, family, fashion, and friendship combine to celebrate life and renewal. This exhibition is directly inspired by Holi and attempts to, in some way, indicate the joyful nature of fashion and color. Color and fashion often combine to commemorate the most important events of human existence, from birth to death and everything in between. And unlike many humans, colors that are opposites or neighbors, when considered carefully and with intention, perpetually work together to achieve a joyful state. 

Presented by
John G. Turner & Jerry G. Fischer

With generous support from
Dillard’s
Lubna Culbert

And by our sponsors
Pat Alford
Mindy & Greg LaCour

Photography by Kevin Duffy
Exhibition video and display case digital displays by Martha Rigney
Graphic Design by Garrett Robertson of Vivid Ink
Styling assistance from Jeanne Triche

Faculty Curator: Dr. Michael E. Mamp
Director & Curator LSU Textile & Costume Museum

Curatorial Graduate Assistants: 
Morgan Strzynski
Katherine Bankhead

Undergraduate Student Workers:
Martha Rigney 
Olivia Ryland

Hours

Come Visit

Admission is free!
Hours of Operation
Weekdays: 11:00 am - 4:00 pm 

Weekends: The first Sunday* of each month from 2:00-4:00 pm

*excludes holiday weekends

Phone: 225-578-1087
E-mail: textile@lsu.edu

NOTICE:  The LSU Textile and Costume Museum will be closed for the winter holidays from Dember 22nd through January 2nd. We will reopen for the First Sunday on January 4th. Close Alert

Parking: 

Central Campus is gated Monday through Friday. Parking is available for visitors at the nearby Barnes & Noble parking garage or the Welcome Center on the corner of Dalrymple and Highland Road. 

On our first Sunday openings, the gates are up and closer lots will be available for guests. 

Current Exhibition

Dressing Louisiana

 

Coming Home: Geoffrey Beene
May 5, 2024 – January 24, 2025

Geoffrey Beene

Geoffrey Beene (1924-2004) was among the twentieth century's most successful American fashion designers. In Coming Home: Geoffrey Beene, the Textile & Costume Museum (TCM) celebrates the many accomplishments of this master of classic style and impeccable craftsmanship who, for decades, reigned supreme as the gold standard of American fashion design. Mr. Beene, originally from Haynesville, Louisiana, was a southern gentleman to his core, committed to celebrating beauty in all its forms. His excellence in design garnered him eight Coty Awards and two Council of American Fashion Designers awards. Mr. Beene’s work is in the collections of leading institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum at FIT, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Sylvia R. Karasu, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine of New York City, donated over two hundred pieces of Geoffrey Beene fashion from her collection and related ephemera, documenting Mr. Beene's career and Dr. Karasu's passion for Geoffrey Beene designs to TCM. The exhibition includes garments from Dr. Karasu’s gift and sketches. Beene fashioned each collection with impeccable craftsmanship and design, adapting his training in French couture for the American market. Join us to celebrate Mr. Beene in 2024, what would have been the year of his 100th birthday.

Coming Home: Geoffrey Beene opened May 5, 2024 at TCM at 330 Tower Dr. in the Human Ecology Building on LSU’s campus. An additional outpost of approximately 22 garments opened at the LSU Museum of Art on April 26, 2024, and ran through August 30, 2024. Both exhibitions were curated by graduate students from the Department of Textiles, Apparel Design, & Merchandising with guidance from TCM Curator and Associate Professor Dr. Michael Mamp.

Presented by
John G. Turner & Jerry G. Fischer

Women Fashioning Women
October 1, 2023 - March 28, 2024

Women Fashioning Women examines the hidden history of women fashion designers. This exhibition will feature the work of twenty or more women fashion designers of the twentieth century. Ironically, in an industry fueled and supported by women, the accomplishments of woman fashion designers have been limited to the repetitive stories of trailblazers such as Chanel and Schiaparelli. We reaffirm the essential contributions of couturiers such as Chanel, Lanvin, and Schiaparelli but expand the conversation to examine the work of woman designers such as Vera Maxwell, Anne Fogarty, Ceil Chapman, Elizabeth Hawes, and many more. With a wide range of artifacts pulled from the holdings of the LSU Textile & Costume Museum and others borrowed from partner institutions, we respond to the assessment of feminist and theorist Bell Hooks, who said, "To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body" (Hooks, 2015, p. xvii). Women Fashioning Women repositions the accomplishments of influential but oft-forgotten woman fashion designers solidifying their place in the main body of fashion history.