Frontier Dressing: Helen Geier Flynt and Eighteenth-Century Dress Museology at Historic Deerfield

Abstract

This article examines the goals, objectives and context of Helen Geier Flynt to collect and display eighteenth-century dress at Historic Deerfield during the mid-twentieth century. Founded by Flynt and her husband, their museum interpreting rural American life was just one of a handful of American decorative arts museums specifically collecting eighteenth-century clothing. Ignoring biases prevalent in these institutions at the time, Flynt’s focus on fashion as a collector/curator was more reflective of other, mostly English women engaged in similar activities, and the eventual establishment of her Fabric Hall gallery in Deerfield mirrored ground-breaking efforts undertaken on both sides of the Atlantic, mostly in urban settings. Flynt’s legacy does not reflect the emerging scholarship of the 1950s and 1960s, and her displays prioritized ornate, visual and aesthetic relationships over geographical and historical accuracies. Nevertheless, her pioneering collecting and display embodied a tangible commitment that contributed to historic clothing’s rightful place in the twenty-first century among other decorative arts.