A new exhibit celebrates the city’s bicentennial by exploring its contributions to the fashion retail industry.
On view through Dec. 7 at the Gladys Keller Snowden Gallery in Campbell Hall at The Ohio State University, “The Columbus Fashion Story” highlights the work of several craftsmen and retailers, including what are now Federated Department Stores and Limited Brands, whose influence between the 19th and early 21st centuries has often extended beyond their original home base.
Dressmakers, tailors, milliners and shoemakers made up the capital city’s fashion pioneers, said Gayle Strege, curator of the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection at OSU.
Arguably they were quite successful.
MC Lilley Co. was the largest manufacturer of men’s fraternal regalia in the United States during the 1890s, she said, and Columbus shoe factories manufactured one of every eight pairs of shoes in the United States in 1900.
Dry goods stores and men’s and women’s clothing stores became our big department stores −F. & R. Lazarus Co., The Union, and The Fashion− as mass production became the norm in the 20th century, she said.
Fred Lazarus Jr. −Lazarus heir and former president and board chairman of Federated Department Stores Inc.− continues to impact the retail industry, having persuaded President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 to move Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday in November (instead of the last) to guarantee more shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
After World War II, retail development that was once reserved for the urban core spread to suburbs and shopping centers, Strege said, giving rise to specialty stores like The Limited, which Limited Brands Founder Les Wexner opened in 1963 at the Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington.
The majority of the clothing, shoes, and accessories featured in “The Columbus Fashion Story” belongs to the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection, though most of the items in the Limited Brands section are borrowed from community members.
Strege and her assistant, Marlise Schoeny, began working on the exhibit about a year-and-a-half ago.
The Gladys Keller Snowden Gallery is located on the second floor of the Geraldine Schottenstein wing of Campbell Hall at 1787 Neil Ave. on OSU’s campus. The gallery’s hours are Tues.–Thurs.: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Fri.: 10 a.m.–4 p.m.; and Sat.: 12-4 p.m. (It is closed on Saturdays that OSU has home football games.)
To learn more about “The Columbus Fashion Story,” click HERE.
