Dress & Drinks: Kansas City Museum | Conversations on Dress | Costume Society of America

Join us as we speak with Lisa Shockley, Curator of Collections at Kansas City Museum. The museum holds a body of dress ranging from everyday wear to haute couture to photographs and artifact accompaniments, all in all encompassing over 20,000 garments. The collection highlights Kansas City as a fashion hub through time: in the 1870s, as local women ordered from Charles Worth in Paris and “1 in 4 women in the country were wearing dresses from Kansas City” and in 2023, as anyone can come learn about the city and dress at large through Shockley’s font of knowledge. Drawn to castoffs and the sometimes overlooked, Shockley grew up wearing the clothes of grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and continues to carry this sense of exploration of others and their garments through her 30 plus years in curation. Her experience is vast; she holds a BA in Theater and an MA in history and is trained in conservation. She has made Tudor dresses and wedding gowns and holds a love for Native American Indian beadwork. Shockley’s diverse curiosity and the places this takes her are no doubt reflected in her work in Kansas City. “As someone who trained as a social historian, telling the history of a place through the lives of ‘ordinary’ people and their belongings” continually excites her, and the museum’s breadth and depth proves people anything but ordinary. Did you enjoy this video? Please consider supporting our mission and our free webinar series by clicking here to make a contribution: htt