Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film

About this event

This program is the fourteenth annual lecture honoring the legacy of Hillwood's former executive director, Frederick J. Fisher.

Join fashion curator Michelle Finamore for a glimpse of some of the rare surviving objects from the advent of cinema. Her exhibition Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film features two of Hillwood’s treasures – a dazzling blue dress by Madame Frances, a talented and entrepreneurial fashion designer who was in active player in New York’s film world in the 1910s and 1920s, as well as tiered, custom-made day dress designed by Lucile.

When films were silent, fashion spoke volumes. The Bard Graduate Center Gallery’s Goddesses in the Machine exhibition reveals the untold story of costume and style in early Hollywood, from actors wearing their own clothes to the birth of the movie costume designer. The first major exhibition to explore fashion in American silent film, Goddesses in the Machine illuminates the way silent films transformed fashion from personal expression into powerful storytelling, creating the blueprint for modern movie glamour.

Speaker and author Michelle Finamore will sign copies of Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film after the lecture.

HYBRID PROGRAM

This lecture will be presented in the theater in the Ellen MacNeille Charles Visitor Center and will be livestreamed via Zoom. Visitors can submit questions for the speaker from any location.

IN-PERSON TIMELINE

5:30–6:30 p.m. | Explore Hillwood

Enjoy Hillwood’s mansion, gardens, greenhouse, and exhibition, Interwoven: A Tradition of Textiles

Find the perfect memento from your visit at the museum shop

6 p.m. | Reception

All attendees are invited to a free reception to celebrate and honor Frederick J. Fisher, for whom the lecture is named.

6:30–7:30 p.m. | Lecture in the Visitor Center Theater

7:30 p.m. | Book signing. Michelle's book Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film will be available for purchase in the museum store.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michelle Tolini Finamore, Ph.D., is a Fashion and Design Historian, Curator and Author. She has curated numerous exhibitions, the Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour as well as the groundbreaking Gender Bending Fashion, #techstyle, Hollywood Glamour: Fashion and Jewelry from the Silver Screen and Think Pink at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Current exhibitions include Shoe Stories: Past, Present, Future at Historic New England's Haverhill Center, Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery, and the forthcoming Fashioning Nature at the Concord Museum, which will open in 2027.

She is passionate about silent film and her 2014 publication Hollywood Before Glamour: Fashion in American Silent Film was the first in-depth book on the subject. She has written numerous books and articles for both the scholarly and popular press on topics as varied as American fashion, menswear, contemporary fashion, sustainability, studio jewelry, and food history and has taught courses on fashion/design/film history at various colleges in the Northeast. She has also interviewed fashion luminaries such as Hamish Bowles, Fern Mallis, Isaac Mizrahi, Liz Goldwyn, Hussein Chalayan, Diane Pernet, Viktoria Modesta, Virgil Ortiz, and Rodarte on stage. Michelle has multiple generations of Boston-based French-trained chefs in her family and has always loved to cook and now has one of the largest fashion cookbook collections in the world.