URI Historic Textile and Costume Collection

Online Collection

Now available online, the Historic Textile and Costume Collection supports teaching in the Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design, as well as other departments on campus. Browse hundreds of objects in the collections and watch for updates as new objects are added.

View the online collection

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Current Exhibit

The Textile Gallery is now open in Quinn Hall, first floor. The exhibit, East meets West: Textiles exhibit explores cultural exchange in fashion.

Previous Exhibits

Dressed for Business’ celebrates the College of Business’ centennial
The Kaleidoscope of Textiles: Dress as Multidimensional Cultural Documents
“One American Family: A Tale of North and South”
Feminism and Fashion of the Twentieth Century
Celebrating 125 Years at the University of Rhode Island: Featuring Fashions Typical of Campus Wear from the Historic Textiles and Costume Collection
The Rise of the Readymade Apparel Industry
The Other White Dress
From Kitchen to Kitsch: Aprons from the Seventeenth Century to the Present
China: the Power of Design
From Exotica into Americana
What We Wore: Clothing from 1976-79
Lace: the Elegant Fabric
At the Crossing: Midwestern Amish Crib Quilts and the Intersection of Cultures
American Woven “Coverlids”: Coverlets from the Historic Textile and Costume Collection
“History in Stitches”: Six Centuries of Embroidery
Nature’s Dyes: Textiles From Around the Globe
Purple: Celebrating 150 Years of Synthetic Dyes
“These are a few of my favorite things”: Faculty and Staff Choices

About the Collection

Historic Textile and Costume Collection

The URI Historic Textile and Costume Collection, located in Quinn Hall, contains approximately 20,000 objects. The mission of the Collection is threefold:

Teaching textile, fashion design, historic costume, and historic textiles classes in the TMD department as well as other departments on campus
Research by students, faculty, and visiting scholars
Exhibition in the Textile Gallery and loans for exhibitions in other museums

Objects in the Collection include both costumes and textiles from all over the world. That is one of the storylines in a new exhibit, “Dressed for Business: A Retrospective Look at the Suit and Beyond (1923-2023),” that takes over the University of Rhode Island’s Textile Gallery in Quinn Hall starting Thursday, March 23. Presented by the Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design Department, the exhibit fits like a well-tailored suit with the College of Business’ 100^th anniversary, providing a celebratory display of clothing from the University’s Historic Textiles and Costume Collection.

The special collections department of URI’s Library houses the related Commercial Pattern Archive of more than 40,000 paper patterns from the mid 19th century to the present time, and 50,000 images.

Textile Gallery

The Gallery was opened in 1999 after several years of fundraising and renovation of the space. It serves as a showcase for items from the Department’s Historic Textile and Costume Collection.

Developing the exhibits (currently 1-2 per year) is an invaluable experience for the Department’s graduate students as they work towards careers in museums, historical societies, and conservation labs.