Fantasy of Fashion, Revisited

Radio Diaries. For almost 30 years, Radio Diaries has been helping people document their own

“lives and histories. Now they're back with a new series called "Ortson Wells and the Blind”

Soldier" about a small town crime that sparked the desegregation of the U.S. military. In 1946, a black world war II veteran named Isaac Woodard was blinded by a white police officer, nobody knew who the officer was or where the attack happened. But when famed director Ortson Wells found out about the attack, he pledged to not only broadcast it, but to solve it. On the radio, week by week. "Wash your hands off a selects, wash them well, scrub and scour. You won't

blood out the blood of a blinded war veteran. You're going to be uncovered. We will blast out your name. I will find means to remove from you all refuge of a selects you can't get rid of me." This series is a riveting true crime investigation told by descendants, activists, and the last known witness to the attack. Listen to Ortson Wells and the blind soldier out now, wherever you get your podcasts, or at RadioTopia.com. The following is one of my favorite stories I have

“ever had the privilege of making. It came out in 2020. I remember I finished it in my apartment”

during lockdown, and since it came out, there've been a lot of new updates that have happened.

So first I'll play the piece, and then there'll be a little tiny follow-up. Enjoy.

Linda Tessner wanted out. I did not love living in the middle west, the Midwest, and I really wanted to move. Linda went to Ohio State University for her masters in art history, and when she graduated in the early 80s. She was ready to high-tail it out to New York or Boston. I wanted a museum job, but institution after institution, Linda was striking out. Then, one day, Linda was flipping through a newsletter for museum professionals,

and she saw a job listing to be the director at a place in Washington State called the Mary Hill Museum of Art. And I thought what the heck is this? And at the time there was no internet in 1983,

“there was no way to kind of check it up or look at their website. I had no idea what this museum”

was about, but I sent them my materials anyway. Even though Linda was 26 years old and had never

worked in museum management and didn't know this place at all, she got the job. And it was only then that Linda learned exactly where she was moving. Mary Hill Museum is in the middle of nowhere. The closest town is Goldendale Washington, which is 13 miles away. The Mary Hill Museum of Art is a stately mansion perched on top of a cliff by the Columbia River Gorge. It's stunning, but it looks like it was just cut and pasted onto the Lewis and Clark Trail. It has absolutely no

other buildings around it. It's a very curious place because you drive to it and the museum just unfolds like a castle on the banks of the river surrounded by basically nothing but hills. This is not what Linda was picturing when she got into the arts. She grew up reading fashion magazines, getting up on culture. Glamour was kind of my Bible for a long time. I mean, as a teenager, I read every single issue of 17 magazine and then jump cut to Linda at 26 years

old looking out over a vast expanse of the Columbia River. Fred and my son that she gave me a year because I couldn't live among cowboys. The Mary Hill Museum of Art is surrounded by acres and acres of ranch land. Visitors usually found the museum by accident as they were driving back from ski trips. The closest thing to a restaurant was the nearest gas station. The closest building at all was two miles away, a small cottage owned by the museum. That's where Linda lived,

mostly alone. Why were you alone? You moved with your husband. My husband was a research glyceologist and he was on expeditions about nine months out of every year. So even before our marriage fell apart, I was living alone mostly. So it was mostly just me living there with a big dog. Linda's big dog was her protector, barking at the rattlesnakes that appeared in her yard and sometimes in her basement. I don't know, it was a brave person when I was 26 and stupid.

As for the collection, it was actually inside the Mary Hill Museum of Art. It was all over the place as random and fascinating as its location. Because the whole museum was created as a larke by four random fascinating friends. The main founder was businessman Sam Hill. He's friend number one. He began construction on this beautiful mansion in 1914 and named it Mary Hill. And there's some debate about whether he named it for his wife or his daughter because they were

performance artist and friend to the sculptor Roda. She helped bring in a collection of Roda's original cast to Mary Hill. The third friend was Queen Marie of Romania. She had met Sam Hill in his world travels and she is why the atrium of the Mary Hill Museum of Art is full of beautiful Romanian furniture.

“And the fourth and most important friend at least for Linda was Alma DeBretville Spreckles.”

She was the wife of Adolf Spreckles, head of these Spreckles Sugar Company. When I was a little

girl, the boxes of sugar in our kitchen were always Spreckles Sugar. Alma became one of the

museums first trustees and foremost benefactors. Her donation to the museum collection would have the biggest impact on Linda's life. And it was a bunch of creepy dolls. I shouldn't say this, but I thought they were the most macabre objects I'd ever seen. When Linda got to Mary Hill, she stumbled on a glass case full of these dolls. And they weren't like baby dolls. They were clearly supposed to be adults, but they were thin and skeletal and looked like they were out of

“the nightmare before Christmas. Some of them were taken apart, so you'd see the American and”

a wire mannequin with a disembodied head. You'd see these parts, little shoes, little purses,

these wire bodies, these very blank, ghost-like faces. The dolls were 27 inches tall, about double the length of your forearm. And they all wore strange dirty dresses and mismatched jackets. All bedraggled from years of volunteers playing with them and switching up their outfits. They were around 50 of these dolls displayed in the glass case. All just bunched up close together like they were on crowded bleachers. A bright fluorescent light flickered above them,

accentuating their creepiness. Apparently there were about a hundred more of these dolls in storage.

“Linda did not know what was up with these dolls, but she couldn't really dwell on it. Frankly,”

there were so many things that had to be done at Mary Hill. Absolutely everything was in some sort of disrepair or dysfunction. Everything. I mean, from the bathrooms to signage. So, among the Rodinus sculptures, the Romanian furniture, a large collection of indigenous art and a display of chest sets, there were the dirty dolls. Hiling up against the glass showcase in the hall, collecting dust. Until one day, when Linda got a call from a curator at the

young museum in San Francisco, she asked Linda if she could come to Mary Hill because she wanted to see these dolls. And that was when Linda learned what she had on her hands. These dolls weren't supposed to be so macabre. Actually, they were kind of heroes in a way, because these dolls had saved French fashion. This was the end of German pride and power in Paris. It began with the fall of France, and now I'm in the tears of the people that Nazi has fallen.

After four devastating years of Nazi occupation, Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944. A static, Parisians rejoiced in the streets. Some of them gathered up the Russian tickets that had governed their lives and tore them into confetti. And this turned out to be a very bad idea, because the war was not over. They still need those Russian tickets.

In the aftermath of the occupation, more than five million French adults and children didn't

have adequate shelter or food. Parasians dressed in ratty, worn clothes, walked and bicycle through their dark city. The capital of light of art, of culture, was a shell of itself. During the course of World War II, Paris lost its position as the epicenter of contemporary fine art. That moved to New York City. The literary world also resented around New York. But Paris was determined not to lose its soul, or at least not to lose everything to New York.

Somehow, even though they didn't have electricity, Paris had to remain a capital of beauty and ideas. It had to retain its title as the capital of fashion. Look at it this way. France has been relying on the couture industry and all of the other industries it involves. The textile industry.

rose. This is Melissa Leventon, an independent curator fashion historian and a praiser. That's been a big

“part of not only France's economy, but France's national identity since the 17th century.”

They're not just going to let that go, because of four-year occupation by Germany. They were not going to let it die without a really tough fight. Before the war in 1939, the French fashion industry

employed more than 900,000 people. It was the second largest industry in France, and then by the

end of the occupation, Paris fashion houses were just gasping for breath. They had no customers, and no materials at all. Everything had gone to the war effort, shreds of leather and buttons were rare, even spools of thread were few and far between. And this was really hard for France. I mean, the country has a department of its government devoted to regulating high fashion. It's called the Shambras and the Calderlachatur, and even in that post-occupation scarcity.

“The Shambras and the Calderlachatur wanted to send a message to the world. We are still here.”

We were not destroyed by the war, and we kept our skills, and we might not have much in the way of

materials, but we're just going to figure it out. We survived, and we want you to know that we survived, but in order to keep going, we need our customers back. And the Shambras into Cal came up with an idea. They would gather all the famous French fashion designers together to do a joint fall collection. They would use real fur, real leather, real silk, no compromises. Well, except that everything would have to be in miniature. That way they could scrape together

just enough to make tiny outfits, tiny shoes, little purses, and gloves, and belts, and still use real materials. So they revived an old, old French practice.

“Fashion dolls. So let's talk about fashion dolls. The way dress makers, and women who were”

called milliner as Moshan then mud, kind of like the fashion stylists of today. They sent

around dolls. Dressed in the latest fashion. Dolls were, in effect, the first catalogs.

Clotheers were sending out dolls to wealthy families and royal circles way before the first fashion magazine came out in the late 1700s. So the Shambras into Cal decided to use dolls again. They reached out to fashion houses like Balenciaga and Nina Richi and Emma's, and they each volunteered to create an outfit or two. The project was organized as a fundraiser for war refugees and victims. But it was also an advertising campaign, marketing the concept of French chic.

The collection of 228 fashion dolls would be called the Teatro del Amod, the theater of fashion. And they would be sent to the major cities across Europe and eventually America. And each showing would announce to the world that the couture houses in France were still in business. That Paris was still the capital of glamour and luxury, even though the city barely had power. And okay, so I keep calling them dolls, but I'm wrong. They are not technically dolls.

We have dolls enthusiast who are like, we want to see the dolls. You can see the mannequins. This is Collections Manager Anna Goodwin, showing me some of the Teatro del Amod mannequins. We definitely, at least I definitely cringe anytime someone calls them dolls. These mannequins were sculpted by the artist Eleon Bonabeu. And they are works of art in and of themselves. They were intentionally made with wire limbs and those blank plaster faces,

so that they would have no personality of their own. Absolutely. That was their goal was to create of mannequin that just disappeared. They look like sketchbook drawings brought to life. The wire limbs look like 3D brush marks. The focus is obviously supposed to be on the impeccable clothes. Like this dress Anna showed me in storage. It sort of has a bodice with buttons and a collar and then it comes down to the waist where there's a belt, which you can see is actually a

functional belt. It's like a teeny tiny belt. It's about the buckle is about half an inch by quarter inch. These are not doll clothes. There's no velcro, no fake snap on attachments. These are real outfits. With little clasps and right proper lining, I mean they look like runway or red carpet looks put into a shrinking machine. It kind of feels like when you look at a freshly-born baby and you're

Tiny little buttons there. Oh my god there's tiny buttons on the sleeves.

Let me tell you. These fashions from 1945 and '46 are not what you're imagining.

“Like when I think 1940's fashion, I think broad shoulders, pencil skirts, muted colors,”

practical, low-heeled wartime attire. No. These are richly colored, full-skirted affairs with sumptuous overcoats and gowns intricately beaded with thousands of tiny sequins and hair resplended with exotic bird feathers. There are tiny, radiant sundresses that hint at the 1950's to come and dramatic pleaded trousers that I would wear now. And the shoes do not get me started on the shoes.

These are like white leather platform Oxford, I guess, with a tiny buckle. Oh my god.

And like just the stitching is my nude. The Teatro Della Mud premiered in March of 1945 in the West Wing of Beluv. It was a massive success. Supposedly the installation in Paris raised something like a

“million French Frank, which was a lot of money given the total economic disaster that was”

France after World War II. As the Teatro Della Mud opened in March of 1945, Allied armies were pushing deeper into Germany, liberating French war prisoners. In April of

1945, France discovered the existential horror of the concentration camps.

Bleakness was enveloping Europe. And the Teatro Della Mud was a tiny shred of pleasure. The show was extended for weeks and weeks and weeks. This miniature beacon of glamour attracted 100,000 visitors who paid what little money they had to witness this luxurious vision of what Paris still was in their imaginations, and maybe could be again. The Louvre's exhibit of the Teatro Della Mud ended around the same time that the war did

in May of 1945. And so the Teatro Della Mud went on to the next phase of its mission. The show, rebranded in English as a fantasy of fashion, was packed up in ship to London, then leads by Salona Copenhagen, Stockholm and Vienna, all to rave reviews. And then the little mannequins went to show off to the old rival, New York City, to more rapturous crowds.

Garing did his best to strip the French style capital of its finest treasure, but there seems to be some things he missed. Certainly pretty snazzy. It looks like it was really worthwhile, freeing Paris. In 1946, the Teatro Della Mud made its final stop, the young museum in San Francisco, and everyone agreed this would be the exhibit's final resting place. France didn't want the mannequins anymore. They didn't need the back, so the young had not

earmarked funds to return them, like there was no spare cash in the system. The Teatro Della Mud was sent to a department store in downtown San Francisco that was named

“confusingly the city of Paris. I remember talking to a woman who used to work at the city of Paris,”

saying she remembered seeing them in the basement. And the mannequins just stayed in the basement of the city of Paris department store for years. Until they were found by a wealthy San Francisco named Alma de Bretville Spruckles. In 1952, she shipped them off to her pet project, a museum in rural Washington state. They were sent without any accompanying documents or explanation as to their origin. Perhaps Alma thought these mannequins needed no introduction,

that everyone would, of course, remember this worldwide sensation, even though, of course, they didn't. In a lot of ways it seems to be the fate of this exhibition to get forgotten about from time to time. France pretty much forgot about the Teatro Della Mud, too. The mannequins were generally assumed to be lost or destroyed. But as you know, they weren't. The Teatro Della Mud was perched on a mountaintop overlooking the Columbia River Gorge.

With Linda, really soon after I started at Mary Hill, I got this call from a woman named Anna Bennett,

drive out to Mary Hill Museum and take a look at the tattoo Della Mud. It was like somebody walked into

the museum and provided information that had been missing for a very long time. When this curator rediscovered the mannequins in the 80s, word traveled around academic fashion circles, a slow trickle of curators and professors and editors made pilgrimages to Mary Hill, each one adding a little more to the pool of knowledge. But then finally, the news got to Susan Train, the Paris Bureau Chief for Condé Nast. She was a woman that wielded a life power.

She was very interested in fashion. She'd been in the fashion industry for her entire life. At the time, I met her. She must have been in her 50s, late 50s, maybe? Of course, Susan Train knew

“all about the Tiatra Della Mud. And she knew it's important. She couldn't believe that it was like”

there was this time capsule. There was this collection sitting in where, like Golden Della Washington, what? Susan flew from Paris to the Pacific Northwest to see the mannequins. And was she wearing

heels when she touched down at the Portland airport? Yeah. She always wore heels and always wore

pearls with her blonde hair chopped in a chic bob. Oh, and she always carried a pure bread long hair to American kennel club Doxon with her. Linda remembers she had one named Nefofia, which is a flower. I had to look up. She was, uh, she was very intimidating because she was a very tall, thin, elegant, very elegant woman. Linda tried to roll out the red carpet as best she could. She took Susan to the only place you could eat out for dinner, which was a truck stop across

the river called Jack's Fine Foods. This was a woman that we, I mean, I'm sure that a French fight rarely crossed her lips. And when Linda took Susan to the Mary Hill Museum to see the Tiatra Della Mud, Susan adored it. She could see past the grime and the mismatched outfits and recognize what it once had been. And she looked at the Tiatra Della Mud and she fell in love. It was kind of love it for sight. And there was another love blossoming between Linda and Susan. Not in a romantic

way. Maybe it was an older sister, younger sister relationship. Listen, you can hear it in Linda's voice. She wore these big earrings that were cut glass, but was like a big chunk of rock on her ear.

And they were, they were so shockingly beautiful to me. I'd really never seen anything like that.

I remember once at lunchtime, I was saying, "Oh, Susan, I really, those earrings. I just, I just love them." And she immediately popped them off her ears and handed to me and said, "I want them to, I want you to have them." She was generous like that. She was extremely generous.

“I mean, how could you not be completely taken with this glamorous person?”

It's the same thing that drew 100,000 starving French people to stare at the Tiatra Della Mud. Glamour and luxury are powerful. Susan knew she had to bring these mannequins back to Paris. To revive the Tiatra Della Mud back to its former glory. She went back to Paris and got busy. Susan did her Paris Conday Nasspear, which she was being pulled together and a lead team to refurbish the Tiatra Della Mud. There were moth holes in the mannequins themselves.

Some of them had to be resaudered and some things had to be recreated. And then maybe the most fixing thing was that well-meaning volunteers over the years had changed all the clothes. So they were in no way where they, in their original ensembles. This was a team effort from a crew of set designers, clotheers and historians, experts and artists referenced the black and white photographs

from the original show and talked with the fashion houses to make sure that outfits were perfectly restored. Leather was polished, silk was dry-cleaned, diamond jewelry was reconstructed, real hair replaced and combed. And once again, the Shambrasinda Caldillacatur was footing the bill. The cool thing was that many of the original artists and designers who worked on the project in the '40s were still alive to oversee the revival in the '80s. This labor of love they all thought

they had lost. And if the mannequins were going to Paris, Linda had to go with them. She had to ensure they were safe because they were still in the Mary Hill collection. But also, there were many parties and celebrations to attend.

“Well, I remember I had bought outfits for all of these events that were taking place in Paris.”

And I thought I knew what I was doing, but the minute I got to Paris, the minute I got to Paris, Susan wanted to, like, what did you bring? So I took all of the clothes that I had brought from home to her apartment once Saturday. And she was like, no, no. There was nothing wrong with Linda's look. But Susan was just on a whole other level. I ended up because she did so just approved of what I had brought from Oregon. I ended up wearing a lot of her clothes to these events.

disappoint her. For the next two years, as the mannequins were being fixed up,

“Linda went back and forth from Paris to Goldendale, from Champaintos to Rattlesnicks and back again.”

Little by little, she was becoming more glamorous under the tutelage of Susan train.

Whenever I came to Paris, Susan always made sure there were flowers in my hotel room when I arrived.

The most astonishing bouquets like a profusion of pink lilies. She arranged for me to have my hair done. She arranged for me to have my makeup done. She arranged for me to have a pearl choker made made. She actually marked me. Like, she just put me in the car with her driver and she would come along with her little dog and there was a jewelry store. I just know, I know just why I need to take you for a pearl choker. It was a real classic makeover montage. I actually have a scrapbook

I could pull out and show you. Could you? Yeah. Linda has kept nearly every party invitation,

“every dinner menu. And in her scrapbook there are lots and lots of photos. And Linda looks”

like a supermodel. She's tall and thin with blonde bobbed hair and her three strand pearl choker.

Always with a drink in hand, flushed with laughter.

The Teatro del Amod was reopened in Paris in May of 1990. At the Muse de de Arte del Amod, it was a smash success. There were parties and photos shoots and press interviews and it was like Linda had gone through the looking glass. She was living the very fantasy that the Teatro del Amod represented. Case in point, back in Washington State Linda had cut out an article from Vogue about the up-and-coming dress designer Evela J. And in Paris, Susan brought Linda to Evela J's studio

to get a dress fitted for her. It's simple. Black and white with a drop waste. In her blonde bob

and her Evela J dress, Linda looked like a 90s flapper. It was like a fairy tale,

especially because this Evela J dress was for an actual ball. After France, the Teatro del Amod was exhibited at the costume institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and it was on display during the Met Gala that year. And the Met Gala is just the fashion party. In 1990, Linda received an invitation. I was kind of be dazzled with the opportunity of going to this incredibly glamorous dinner party at the Met, like who would ever think that was

going to happen when I moved to Mary Helmysiam in 1983. And I can't help but notice as the pictures in her scrapbook progress. Linda starts to look more and more like Susan. Somebody once laughed like, oh Linda, your Susan's little mannequin, like she's dressing you. She had opinions about how I looked. She did. And it allows to do a little way. Like, I can teach you how to be chic. Susan wanted to teach and Linda wanted to learn. They were getting closer. We did love each other.

We really did. We did love each other. We're very very good friends. But Linda started imitating Susan in other ways too. Less healthy ones. I'm sure she was naturally thin. So staying in that body that I had in Paris, New York was really hard and took a lot of time. Linda was eating less and as she put it, exercising like a crazy person. And then you'd get back to Goldendale and you'd still be like running and dieting. And yes, definitely. Really. Yeah. I didn't want to

“disappoint Susan. I know exactly what Linda is talking about. I think a lot of people do.”

There were years in my life where I tried to starve myself and definitely a big part of it was I wanted to fit into beautiful clothing. And when you are intentionally starving yourself, that is a task that takes over your whole brain. I didn't think about anything else. It's not sustainable. And it's not even very fun. Because you're constantly thinking all the goddamn time about what you're going to eat or not eat. So your entire world, it kind of pains me to think

of those years, like not thinking about other things, but thinking about assiduously writing down every calorie in a little notebook. In this condition, you feel like you're not human. Like you can't eat meals and just enjoy life the way other people can. But I did it in pursuit of glamour of something that ascends to a higher plane than normal life. Something that's impossible. You can't stay this thin for that long. You can't. I mean, I couldn't. And it was created a real

about me at how thin I had become. And I remember at one lunch, we were having lunch together,

and she insisted on getting a bowl of strawberries and whipped cream for dessert. And I remember her sitting there saying, "Linda, eat." After New York, the Tchiadela mode went to Tokyo. And so did Linda. But in the pictures in her scrapbook, all the glamour appears to be taking a toll on her. She actually gained a lot of weight and only a few months from all the stress and traveling. And she was spending a lot of money. Oh, I put myself into debt by chasing like having to

have the air vailage. I don't regret it. It was really exciting to wear that dress for one night at the the costume Institute Gala. I would do it again. But it had major repercussions in my life.

“That lasted for a long time. Financial repercussions? Financial repercussions?”

Body dysmorphia? Linda started to wonder exactly why she was doing all this. Like, "How much did I want to be like Susan Train?" and she was in many ways a very lonely person. I didn't want to depend on anyone for anything. Susan Train told a Vogue Journalist in 2007.

I never wanted to be identified with one click. The profile adds that Susan Train knew every

designer but kept a professional distance and that she intentionally did not spend time with Americans. Linda apparently was an exception. Well, I learned that what appears to be very glamorous could be very lonely. In watching Susan Linda realized that she didn't want to be quite so addicted to her work or quite so lonely or quite so thin. And then the best possible thing happened. The show ended. The Teatro Della mode went back to Maryhill and so did Linda. Back to her

little house on the cliff. But this whirlwind experience made Linda ready to move on. She went to

live in New York for a spell and then eventually went back west. She lives in Portland now and she

spent much of her career working in museums and collections there. She can drive to the Maryhill

“Museum of Art in two hours. And she does. Every so often. To remember this beacon of hope for postwar”

France and this evidence of a parallel life she once had. Because the other witnesses to her story are mostly gone. My husband John met Susan and went to France for a honeymoon. They went to Paris and it was so great to see Susan. We had meals together and it was the last time I saw her. Most of the artisans and experts and historians who were involved with the mannequins in both of their incarnations have passed away. A lot of ways this story has become Linda's.

I'm kind of sick of people talking about like I did this or I had this and it changed my life, it changed my life changing experience. This actually changed my life. It taught me lessons that I think about today. After our weekend together, Linda sent me a quote that she had heard a long time ago which had stayed with her. It was attributed to Ben Brantley, the theater critic for the New York Times. Glamour is whatever you can't have. It is best perceived at a distance,

either literally or emotionally. Knowledge kills Glamour. This just seems so utterly true to Linda. She experienced the shadow side of her jet set life was Susan. She knew about the suffering and deep trauma behind the tiny mannequins. And yet, I personally don't know if knowledge kills Glamour entirely. Wounds it severely, for sure, but it's hard to completely destroy the illusion. The aspirational pull of fashion carves out a space in our imagination. It's why we dream of Paris,

why we want to see Cardi B on the red carpet and vintage couture. Glamour involves so much delicate placement of smoke and mirrors for the people who occupy that rarefied air. So much so that the pleasure in it is really ours. We, the viewing public, the audience.

“Linda knows this and I think that's why she enjoys the show. I don't want to go any place else”

on the night of the Oscars. I want to be in front of my TV with absolute silence and I just want to watch, but I don't want to be that. And I don't even want to be in that world. Not again. That once once was enough. From the vantage point of Linda's living room, the beautiful people on TV seem so small and innocuous. They almost look like little dolls.

that followed somewhat revived, which I will tell you about after the break.

“Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global Director of Vogue Runway in Vogue Business and host of the Run”

through podcast. Every Tuesday, join me for the latest fashion news like the shake-ups of Balenciaga and Dior and what's trending in Paris and Milan. You'll also hear interviews with top designers from Marc Jacobs and Rick Owens to Daniel Rosebury, Sarah Burton, and many more. On Thursdays, Chloe Mall, editor of Vogue.com, and Choman Nadie, head of editorial content at British Vogue, take you behind the scenes at Vogue and share their thoughts on fashion through the

lens of culture. You'll hear interviews with some of your favorite stars like Julian Moore, Ferrell Williams, and Celebrity Stylus Law Roach. Join us to get your fashion and culture news twice a week, listen to the run through with Vogue every Tuesday and Thursday wherever you get your

podcasts. You're a podcast about tattoo dilemmas actually my first time hearing about Mary Hill.

It became a symbol of what Mary Hill could be with job hunting after graduating, and it has this anxiety-induced grad student glimmer of hope. I met Brielle when she was a grad student, and now she works at the Mary Hill Museum of Art. I'm Brielle Pazzala. I'm the collection manager at Mary Hill Museum of Art. I started this summer, and I looked out. I mean, it's wild. Now, Brielle sort of has a version of the job that our protagonist Linda once had.

Honestly, the day-to-day monitoring and maintaining the galleries and sharing that there's no unwanted six-legged critter visitors, and it's smaller than other museums, but it's impact is bigger

than it feels like it should be. This place, two hours drive from Portland is actually like a

treasure. In many ways, because of the Tiatra del Amode. I mean, it's a gallery of a kind of clothing that really doesn't exist anymore. It's really nice just seeing the different usage of the materials and just the variety. Learning about the permits we used to have for the export, important re-import of endangered and extinct species of feathers. Wait, the feathers on the Tiatra del Amode?

“Yeah, especially in the hats, like hummingbirds, birds of paradise. And if you want to see all those”

hats and dresses and teeny tiny shoes, you have to go out to Mary Hill. Like, you have to make that pilgrimage. The people who are fans of the TDLM are the most hardcore of all of our visitors. That is art curator at Mary Hill Museum of Art, Stephen Graff. I don't want to say people dance in place and scream, but there's a level of enthusiasm. And sometimes you can just see who came just for Tiatra del Amode because they dress up. And people get dressed up and

trek out to this museum in the middle of the Columbia River Gorge because the Tiatra del Amode isn't going to be touring around again anytime soon. There's been a more touring one traveling since 2015. Those clothes are fragile. They're, like, you would expect any year old garments to be. There's a little bit of fading on some fabrics and there's some tired, wire mannequins. So the mannequins rotate out of their display every couple of months to give the clothes

and their curators a little break. Every outfit that's on display has to come off, be

“condition-reported and vacuumed, pretty labor-intensive. That's why they rest for out of every six”

years. And why they don't travel anymore. But the reputation has traveled far beyond them, especially during the pandemic. Because of the pandemic, there were no in-person runway shows. Business needed to proceed or limp a long, I guess, as much as possible. A number of fashion designers and brands preceded to present their 2021 collections in miniature. The Belgian designer Walter van Berendonk made glam-dupp looking fashion dolls that were almost like Barbies.

Dior made little tiny dress forms, the kind without a head, and made fully intact guitar gowns for them. Machino used little marionettes, and they made this promotional video with their creative director Jeremy Scott. I just love a puppet show. This isn't a puppet show. This is a fashion show. I'm so sorry I didn't mean to fend you. The show is getting ready to start. Take your seat.

And all of these miniature collections were completely intricate and intact and complete as any full-size clothing collection. The oral history surrounding time to go and notice that the individual outfits took as much time as a full-size outfit. Within that

So did any of them reach out to Mary Hill? No. Apparently Jeremy Scott of Machino wanted to

come by the museum, but that felt through. I know we didn't follow up on it. But it's not like they're giving you any of the clothes. No. And I'm embarrassed to say I actually before we had made the acquaintance of these folks sent them a letter saying hey I have a great idea. Do you

“want to give us those clothes? Yeah, I think it's a great idea. And of course it went nowhere which”

is fine. While the use of these miniatures in fashion houses might have brought in a few visitors,

that wasn't where the real impact came. Where the boost really I think came was after the new look.

The new look. The show on Apple TV Plus about the House of Dior. Preation cannot stop the bullet, but creation is our way forward. It's either episode three or it's episode four, but they're recreating the discussions behind what is the culture industry going to do to support relief. And they come up with this idea. Which is taking a few creative liberties because when the Tiatra Delamod was created, Dior didn't have his own house yet. He was working for the designer

“Lucien well-long. So maybe he worked on one of these mannequins, but we're not a hundred”

percent sure it's not in his name. It got people here, but they came fairly uninformed. We had

people wanting to see the Christian Dior mannequins wanting to see the Kokoshenel mannequins of which there are none. I'd make sense why this was a pandemic thing. But do you think that this is going to like revive the practice of miniatures? Do you see a future for it? Only anecdotally. And only one instance. I know a native artist who is a fashion designer. The designer Orlando Duguay spelled Duguay check him out. And he was here three years ago because he is interested in creating

fashion in miniature because every, you know, he's making bespoke clothing and it gets more and once on the runway and then it's a lot of effort. Does Linda still stop by sometimes? I haven't emailed her since last week. Okay. We hear from her from time to time. Yeah. So true confession, the podcast you did with Linda about Tatra Della mode and Susan Trainnell. That's the only podcast I've ever listened to in my life. Oh my god. And that will provide then the context for what I'm

going to say next. I'm old enough that my father's entire generation was World War II bats. My dad, my uncle, their cousins, they were all in the service during the war. And so this is a historical continuum that doesn't seem that far away to me even though it's 80 years. What do you think the connection? Because it's funny to look at Tatra Della mode as a vestige of war, which it obviously is. But there's not a lot that's particularly war like about it. What do you think it says about

“a conflict? I think what it says is something really profound about humanity and the depths of”

both creativity and hope that are available to people. And I'm not saying that there isn't of course a lot of trauma written into the text, but it doesn't have to be solely trauma. The peace of paper, words from yesterday, there's a portrait painted on the things we love. This episode was made back when articles of interest was a part of the podcast 99% invisible so it was edited by Chris Burubei, with insights and other edits from the rest of the staff.

Including Joe Rosenberg and the Fitzgerald Vivian Lays, Swanry Owl, Lashima Don, Kurt Colstead, Delaney Holland, Katie Mingle, and especially especially my podfather Roman Mars. The music is by Ray Royal, it was fact checked by Tom Colligan, it was mixed by Sri Fusef and Katherine Ray Mando, and this kick-ass custom song is by Sassami. For images of the Tatra Della mode and images of the other fashion houses that all relied on miniatures during the pandemic