Get an Inside Look at Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 - 1960

The first exhibition to explore the evolution of women’s sporting attire in Western fashion over a 160-year period, Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960 features 65 fully accessorized ensembles composed of more than 480 historic objects from the FIDM Museum’s collection. Organized by the American Federation of Arts and the FIDM Museum, the groundbreaking exhibition debuted at The Frick Pittsburgh in 2021 and will travel to seven institutions across the U.S. through 2024, with its final stop at the FIDM Museum in Los Angeles.

Sporting Fashion includes garments and accessories from long-established sportswear brands such as Champion, Pendleton, Spalding, and Stetson, in addition to garments and accessories from key fashion companies such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Balenciaga, Chanel, Hermès, Patou, Pucci, and Schiaparelli. “This 15-year project took us down many paths as we gathered together the very rare objects, many not found in other museum collections,” said Kevin L. Jones, Curator at the FIDM Museum. 

“Not only are we displaying more than 65 original ensembles, but we are excited to highlight 16 sportswomen, and their varied accomplishments, whom most people will not have heard of before. Every single woman you see represented in these clothes was the modern woman, whether it was the 1820s or the 1920s.” International tennis champion and fashion icon Serena Williams wrote the foreword to the exhibition’s accompanying illustrated 344-page catalogue.

Get an inside look at Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 - 1960 in our upcoming free webinar led by exhibition Curator Kevin Jones on April 21, 2022, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.