This intense reddish orange satin hot pants set (covered by a matching wrap skirt) belonged to concert violinist Susan Weber-Hall—whose daughter, Branwen Hall ’00 Sci, is a former Penn State fencer. Weber-Hall sewed her own clothes and has given the archive several items including house dresses and aprons in the flamboyant prints and styles of the ’70s.

Richard St. Clair '80 A&A, head of costume design for the College of Arts and Architecture, who also designs costumes for the opera (his first gig was dressing Luciano Pavarotti for a New York production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème), donated his grandmother’s 1915 cotton summer dress to the archive. He found the garment in his mother’s basement while cleaning up after a flood. The lace detailing and insets on the dress harken back to a young girl’s long-ago life in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where St. Clair’s grandmother was born and raised.

The uptake of sewing machines in the early 1900s made it easier for women to procure blouses like this one from 1905. It’s made of silk and features the details of the time: soutache—a flat, decorative braid; swoosh sleeves; shoulder and bosom tucks; a silk yoke and lace around the wrists. Designed to create the highly coveted S curve that was so popular at that time, the blouse lent itself perfectly to big, Gibson Girl hair under a beautiful hat.

Small patchwork pieces in a variety of fabrics representing a lifetime of memories were zig-zagged together using cream-and-black stitching to make this groovy 1970s women’s coat with a peacock blue-green lining. 

The peacock blue, two-piece silk-satin evening dress from the 1880s—donated to the Palmer Museum of Art in 1981 by Grier Robinson and likely worn by a family member—features many intricate details: hundreds of decorative metal cut beads, a subtle bustle in the skirt, a tiny loft to the sleeve, and a letter ‘P’ embroidered on the waistband. Was it the wearer’s name? The initial of a secret lover? The answer lies in the dress’s silken folds, as intactly preserved as the garment itself.

The archive has five drawers full of purses from every decade. There’s a debate in the archive as to the design on this 1930s beaded evening bag. Is it coral under the sea? Or water reflecting flowers in the sky?

A 1940s evening purse with a brass clasp has just enough room for a compact and a swivel lipstick.

The 1960s Bermuda bag was a must-have for female college students. This one belonged to Aimee Rusinko Kakos ’69 H&HD, a longtime supporter of the College of Arts and Architecture and the Arboretum at Penn State.

This hard case pocketbook from the 1950s comes with a structured handle.

The oldest hat in the archive’s extensive collection of bonnets, cloches, top hats, Stetsons, and Penn State dinks dates back to 1870. Richard St. Clair can date each one like that. St. Clair ’80 A&A, head of costume design for the College of Arts and Architecture, is a milliner; he’s worked in theater and film—he designed a perch hat for Oprah Winfrey’s character in the movie Beloved. (In the end, she never wore it, he says, “because on the day of the shooting the director decided to use a shawl over her head.”) Hats are St. Clair’s babies, and he lovingly cares for the archive’s collection. Scroll through the gallery to view more.

St. Clair's favorite hat in the Fashion Archive's collection is a 1966 cream wool Yves Saint Laurent hat with a blue velvet bow. (He has a photo of Liza Minelli wearing the same one.)