Immerse yourself in the creative life of Bonnie Cashin (1908-2000), one of the most innovative American fashion designers in the second half of the 20th century, at the biennial Bonnie Cashin Lecture Series, presented by UCLA Library Special Collections. This year’s lecture features Mellissa Huber, Associate Curator in The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and a fashion historian specializing in 20th-century dress.
Bonnie Cashin (1908–2000) was among a coterie of designers that helped the domestic clothing industry move beyond the hegemony of French haute couture, establishing the liberating, future forward philosophy that came to characterize American fashion. Throughout a career that spanned over sixty years—and transcended the bounds of film, theatre, apparel, and accessories design—Cashin approached dress as a form of embodied architecture. She adeptly oscillated between temporal, cultural, and environmental needs while delighting in the expressive and material qualities of her luxurious, yet highly functioning, fashions. This talk will serve to revisit Cashin’s significant legacy as a prescient thinker, innovative designer, and dedicated philanthropist who challenged convention and anticipated the needs of women, seeking creativity and freedom for maker and wearer alike. — Mellissa Huber
Book signing and reception following the talk. RSVP is required(opens in a new tab).
UCLA Library acquired the Bonnie Cashin Collection of Fashion, Theater and Film Costume Design (1913-2000)(opens in a new tab) as a gift from the designer's estate in 2003. In addition to Cashin’s personal papers and other physical artifacts, the estate provided an endowment to establish The Bonnie Cashin Lecture Series. The biennial lecture celebrates the creative process and innovation of gifted individuals represented in Library collections and in so doing preserves the legacy of Cashin’s remarkable life and work.
Mellissa Huber is a fashion historian specializing in 20th-century dress. She is Associate Curator in The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she has co-curated the exhibitions Women Dressing Women (2023) and In Pursuit of Fashion: The Sandy Schreier Collection (2019); and contributed to some of the museum’s most visited shows including Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty (2023); Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and The Catholic Imagination (2018); Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion (2016); Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology (2016); Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style (2015); China: Through the Looking Glass (2015); Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire (2014); Charles James: Beyond Fashion (2014); and Punk: Chaos to Couture (2013). Mellissa received her BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology with a minor in Art History, and a certificate in curating fashion from the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. She lectures regularly and holds an MA in visual culture from New York University, where she has taught courses on fashion curation and special topics in The Costume Studies graduate program.
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