Wes & Erica's vacation photo album // Disney Archives: Heroes & Villains and Crown Jewels costume exhibits Arlington, TX // December 2024

There are two things I like to do when Wes & I go on vacation: 1. eat 🍣☕🍖🌽🍤🍸(we did plenty of that here (https://ragsreborn.blogspot.com/2024/12/wes-ericas-vacation-photo-album-dfw-tx.html), and 2. go to a fashion or sewing themed museum.

The Arlington Art Museum hosted a special costume exhibit from the Disney archives (okay, not hosted, past tense; I think the exhibit is open until March 2025). 👗 The first part is a gigantic room filled with costumes and accompanying pictures of the actors in scenes wearing the costume and a note from the designer about their process or the inspiration for the piece. The second part is a series of rooms with more costumes (but no photos or design notes 😔), jewelry and other props used in various movies. I'm not a big Disney fan so I haven't seen a lot of the movies, but it was still really neat to read about the costumes and props. I kind of want to go watch all the movies now! LOL The Heroes & Villians costume room was a lot better than the Crown Jewels prop/jewelry section, in my opinion. 

The polka dotted outfits in the top left were worn by Cinderella's step-sisters, who are loud and tacky, and that is what the dresses are supposed to reflect. I LOVE those outfits... I guess I'm loud & tacky, too 😂

I spent ages in the first room. I read each & every design note and examined the tailoring on every piece. 🤓 I wish I had the creative mind and skill of a costume designer (aside- the most prolific designer for Disney has got to be Colleen Atwood; I think every other dress was hers!). I loved that a lot of the unique elements in the pieces came from specific requests from the actors. Since the costumes were actually worn on screen, it was neat to see the height and build of the actors (James Franco is very tall and Danny DeVito is very short.) A majority of the dresses were like a size 000, but they did pad out the mannequins for some of the more average sized actresses. It was weird that they only padded the mannequins for the dresses. None of the male costumes were on larger mannequin's so some of them looked baggy & ill-fitting. 

The only normal sized dresses in the entire exhibit. The Sanderson sisters and the women in A Wrinkle in Time. The mannequins looked so overweight (even though they're not) after seeing all the really skinny dresses. 

I took a ton of pictures so the rest of this will be my pictures and what I learned about each costume. 📷  First up - the dress H.E.R wore for Beauty and the Beast. 💛 She is half Filipina and wanted her culture reflected in the costume. The red decorative edging around the apron is actually Filipino script. I don't remember what it read. The traditional yellow ballgown that Emma Watson wore in her Beauty and the Beast adaptation was also very beautiful. 

My absolute favorite dress in the entire exhibit was Regina's Evil Queen from Once Upon a Time. I love the collar and the sleeves and the color! 💓 The designer wanted to dye it black but the fabric didn't take to the ink so it turned pink. Captain Hook's outfit is pretty cool, too. 

My second favorite is the jacket Emily Blunt wore in Mary Poppins. Nothing fancy or special about it (that I can remember, but I'm sure the designer's note mentioned something), its just a coat I would totally wear. 😊 It looks simple enough that I could probably sew it, but when you look closer, it has so many cute design elements like the pockets, ruffled shoulders and belt. 

I live for those ruffled shoulders ! *swoon*

Both Johnny Depp and Meryl Streep didn't want to use animal fur in their respective costumes. 🐺 The designer embroidered the lines on the Big Bad Wolf suit to make it look like it was fur, and I think the tail and lapel are made from thread, too. For the Witch dress, the designer used pieces of leather and string to make it look like the dress was made from feathers. 

How cool are those shoes!! I've seen Into the Woods but I do not remember this awesome suit.

Also for the Witch dress, the designer knew that the character would be hunched over throughout the movie, so she designed the dress to be worn in a crouched position. Most people think rules & restrictions are bad, and garments should be designed without abandon [maybe for some designers that is true], but I actually really like rules. I think they make you think outside of the box; more creatively. That's why I love my sewing club's monthly challenges so much. 💗 Almost every one of them is something that I would never do in my regular sewing, but it makes me try new things and think differently. 

The following are dresses I really liked but I don't remember anything interesting about them. LOL

Mila Kunis was a witch in this movie. The witch rides in on a fireball and is supposed to be rock n' roll so this was the designer's interpretation of a "rock n' roll witch". I adore the sleeves! 

The Evil Queen from Enchanted. 

These were the main focal point costumes placed in the center of the exhibit, but I wasn't super impressed with them. I think it's because they actually look like costumes (aka Halloween and gimmicky).

From The Prince of Persia. I saw the movie but I don't remember this- there were a lot of fight scenes that zoomed in on the footwork. To distinguish the characters, the designer made Prince Dastan's shoes different.

Helena Bonham Carter's Fairy Godmother. I don't remember who played Cinderella. This is one of the movies I haven't seen. 

Glenn Close's Cruella de Vil. I love the sketches and wish more of her costumes from the movie were on display. 

Emma Stone's Cruella. I thought I would really like that movie, since it is a fashion heavy film, but I sadly didn't. I do love this half leather, half fur checkered pattern ❤

After the first room, there was a hallway with more costumes (but no design notes), that lead into the second part with all the props and jewelry. 

It could be because I spent sooooo much time in the first part of the exhibit that my attention span was waning, but I couldn't really get into the second half. Its crazy because I love accessories. 💍 I think any other time, I would have enjoyed reading about jewelry and how its made, but I was just too overwhelmed and fatigued. 😫 A cool thing I did learn - each piece is made a bunch of times and each replica has a different purpose. The one worn by the stunt double is lighter than the actual piece. Some pieces get weathered or broken throughout the movie, so they need to create a more worn looking version. 

The Disney Archives: Heroes & Villains and Crown Jewels costume exhibit is totally worth going to. The ticket prices are a bit hefty ($37/adult) but there is so much stuff jam packed into the galleries that you'll get your money's worth. The museum attendants are super nice, so I would suggest looking at the Heroes & Villians part first, then taking a break to get a coffee or lunch, then coming back for Crown Jewels (the attendants will give you a stamp if you ask... they'll also show you a secret door to the bathroom if you're too engrossed in the exhibit and forget that you have to pee and have been holding it for hours. 😅). There is a scavenger hunt that goes along with the jewelry/props. I saw a bunch of teens running around with paper and yelling, I found Troy's class ring!, but we didn't know what they were doing. The attendant asked us if we wanted to do the hunt as we were leaving but we declined. She still gave us the prize (a Prince and Princess sticker) for finishing it. 

Wes & Erica's Vacation Photo Album - San Francisco, CA (Legion of Honor Museum) - August 2022

I follow a bunch of designers on Instagram because I love fashion.👗 I am not a fashionable person and I'm not a consumer of anything in the high-end fashion world, but I do greatly enjoy looking at it. One of the designers I follow is Guo Pei. Earlier this year, she posted that several of her collections will be on display for a temporary exhibition called Fantasy Couture at the Legion of Honor Museum. Right then and there, I knew we'd be travelling to San Francisco to see it. 

The Legion of Honor Museum is modeled after its namesake in France. It is located in the center of Lincoln Park and is a gigantic museum!! I think we spent over three hours there. Luckily, we got in early because it got insanely busy around lunch time. We had planned to have lunch at the museum café, but the line was out the door and down the hallway. Its website stated that everyone was to purchase a timed ticket in advance, but I don't think they followed that rule because the museum felt like it was above capacity. 

Fair warning - I took at least one picture of every single dress that was on display, so this blog post will be 90% photo album---which you've probably already noticed. If you don't like dresses, turn back now! 👗 There were other works of art throughout the museum. Only the basement was dedicated to Fantasy Couture. A ton of paintings were housed on the main, second and (maybe) third floors -- I honestly don't remember how many floors it had. LOL 😅 But, there were MORE DRESSES scattered throughout the museum to accent the other artworks. I found it hard to appreciate the other pieces because my attention was immediately drawn to the gowns. 

One thing that I really appreciated about Guo Pei's dresses is that I understood them. I looked at the dress, then read the description with the artist's intent, and I could comprehend her vision. They weren't too pretentious, philosophical, or political. That's not to say that I thought her dresses were simple, because they definitely weren't. I don't like when designers are too artistic; their garments don't make sense, and the viewer won't "get it" unless they're as enlightened as the designer is. I also don't like the opposite of that when designers try to have an ultra-woke message, and it seems like they're just pandering. I felt neither of those intentions when I was at the Fantasy Couture exhibit.  

Another thing that I really liked about the exhibit is that the dresses looked like real wearable dresses. I like avant-garde stuff, too, but I want my clothes to mostly resemble regular silhouettes. Although I could never add all the intricate detailing and handiwork to any of my dresses, if I wanted to sew one that looked somewhat like what I saw at the museum, I probably could find a pattern for it.

The more labor intensive dresses had labels that showed how many hours it took to make each dress. Some were up into the tens of thousands of hours!! The labels also showed the materials used. Guo Pei worked mostly with silk and exclusively Swarovski crystals. 

My favorite of her collections is Garden of the Soul. I loved the vibrant colors of the floral motifs. Each dress had so much detail. 😍 There was the dress itself, but if you looked underneath the skirt or inside the sleeves, there would be more crystals and flowers!! I also liked the wigs. Shoes and accessories were an important part of each of her ensembles. One of the placards stated that she liked dressing women in insane shoes with impossible heels to show off how strong her women (models) are. 

My second favorite of her collections is Alternate Universe. Her pieces imagined a world where the animals took over and she advised us to be gentle to all creatures because we never know what will happen after reincarnation. I was astounded by the dresses at the exhibit so I watched the runway show for this collection when I got home. I wasn't as impressed with them when they walked. I think it is because I didn't see all the details and the dresses mostly looked heavy and static on the runway. On the other hand, a collection that wasn't a favorite of mine at the museum, Elysium, walked magnificently down the runway at its show.

One of the dresses had several dolls/puppets sewn in. Each one of her ateliers made one to add to the dress. I thought that was a nice gesture since so many of her dresses are done by hand. I was completely mesmerized by the detailing in her designs. So much so that I was doing the "you're in someone's way so you move left and they move left, and the dance continues for a while" thing without knowing it. The woman who's way I was in glared at me and said some nasty remark before I noticed I was in her way. 😬 LOL I was just trying to get to the next dress! 

Wes's favorite collection is Himalaya. It was a summer collection but the fabric made me think of winter. I guess the colors were summer. Wes said it would be too obvious as a winter collection. The dresses were made from old Japanese silk scarves. She noticed the strange patterns that the embroidery made on the back of the scarf so she used inside-out scarves in her designs. 

I don't remember the name of it, but she had a collection inspired by nighttime in Paris. It was so shocking to see the black dresses. 😮 Everything up until then was either gold or colorful. The back of one of the gowns had a silhouetted scene (like a shadow puppet show) embroidered onto it. It is the bottom right picture in the collage below.

I love everything about the pants in the bottom row of the above picture. 😍 I actually majorly adore both of the outfits on the bottom row. It's weird looking at my pictures again as I type this because I was in a daze the entire time at the museum; I don't even remember taking some of the pictures. It felt like a dream being surrounded by all of the dresses.

I felt so alive and inspired while walking through this exhibit. I told myself that after this experience, I would learn how to sketch (a very far fetched idea ... a toddler draws better than I do, but you get crazy thoughts while you're immersed in something you love, right?) so I could start designing some of my own dresses. As of now, 2 months after our vacation, I haven't drawn a single thing, haven't designed a pattern, and have only sewn a few subpar dresses. 😕 I need to get my motivation back in order!! Wes bought the gallery art book for me -- best souvenir ever but a encyclopedia-sized book is NOT the best gift when you're travelling with only carry-on luggage -- so I probably just need to look through it again to get my brain going.

The last collection in the exhibit was one that she dedicated to her youngest daughter. She designed it while pregnant, and imagined what her daughter would do if her Barbie's came to life. Her models (above) dress a zillion times nicer than my Barbie's ever did! 

After floating through the Fantasy Couture exhibit, we still had time to see the rest of the museum. I took a picture of each painting that I noticed a dog in. There was a mummy on display, which was cool. I really like mummies and artifacts.

We went to the museum on a Thursday and flew out early Friday morning. I still had visions of dresses dancing through my head when I noticed a tiny fashion exhibit at the San Francisco airport! It showed fabric and dresses made from pineapple leaves. Apparently, artists use the hairs on the leaves to weave fabric. How amazing!! 🍍 I am so glad that I got to see the Fantasy Couture exhibit. It is the third fashion exhibit I've seen and I think it is my favorite so far!