K-State Historic Costume and Textile Museum

10/10/2026

So happy to see the newly installed quilt display! Great work by your team to provide stable and safe display for your textile collection! Always happy to help.preserve these quilts.

The Art of Quilting is tomorrow, October 10! You can view all of these beautiful quilts on display while learning about the quilting process from Derby’s Community Quilting group. They'll share the techniques and equipment used and contrasting old methods with new.

While here, you'll also notice that we have upgraded our collection to better follow fabric preservation practices, such as removing safety pins and stitching labels onto the artifacts instead. We learned a lot from Marla Day, curator of K-State Historic Costume and Textile Museum, when she was here a few months ago to present at the museum. We love that our speakers can teach us things, too!

We hope to see you there! Come and enjoy this engaging quilting presentation and view these beautiful, historic artifacts on the display this Saturday.

09/30/2026

Come for our all new and revamped Nelly Don program! Premiering October 6, 6 pm at Flight Crew Coffee!

09/29/2026

Join us at Flight Crew Coffee in Manhattan on October 6th, at 6 pm. Hannah and Marla will be presenting on Nelly Don, an American Fashion Icon.

💙October is a BIG month at Flight Crew Coffee... It’s our 5th birthday! ☕And you know we couldn’t let that milestone fly by without celebrating!

Our October events calendar is officially HERE, with detailed descriptions of each coming later this week! ✈️

From Flight Crew Fashion Week and meaningful conversations about grief to meeting an author, spending an evening with The Flying Medium, and celebrating our birthday with some very special treats… There’s a LOT to look forward to!

Save the dates, tell your crew, and make your plans! These are some events you WON'T want to miss!

Which October event are you most excited about? Tell us in the comments! 👇

08/20/2026

If you have ever wondered about where "paisley shawls" came from, here is a nice history about them. Here is a link to one of our paisley shawls in the museum's holdings--
https://kstatehctm.catalogaccess.com/objects/3450

There is a pattern on scarves and shirts all over the world named after a Scottish town, and the men who made it famous were among the best read workers in Europe. 🧵

Paisley, in Renfrewshire. The teardrop shape itself is not Scottish at all. It is the boteh, an ancient Persian and Kashmiri motif, and it arrived in Britain on hand woven shawls brought back from India in the late seventeen hundreds. Those shawls were astonishingly expensive and every fashionable woman in the country wanted one.

Paisley worked out how to make them. Edinburgh and Norwich tried too, but Paisley won, and won so completely that by the middle of the nineteenth century the town's name had simply replaced the pattern's name in English. The weavers used the drawloom and later the Jacquard, and at their peak they were producing shawls of fifteen colours when their competitors could manage a handful.

The weavers themselves are the real story. Paisley handloom weavers worked at home, set their own hours and were famously independent minded. They kept books. They kept flowers, and bred prize pinks and auriculas on their windowsills. They kept birds and fiddles. They argued politics at the loom all day and were so deeply involved in the reform movement that Paisley sat at the centre of the Radical War of 1820. They produced poets, most famously Robert Tannahill, whose songs are still sung. 📚

And then it ended. Fashion turned, the crinoline went out, the power loom came in, and by the eighteen seventies the trade had collapsed. Thousands of highly skilled men held a craft that was worth nothing almost overnight. Some went into the great Coats and Clark thread mills that made Paisley famous all over again. Many others emigrated, and Paisley weavers turn up in Ontario, New England, Australia and New Zealand, taking their looms and their opinions with them.

If you have Renfrewshire in your tree there is a fair chance you have a weaver in it, and a fair chance he was a difficult, clever, well read man who would not be told what to think.

The pattern outlived the trade by a hundred and fifty years, and the world still calls it Paisley. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

07/23/2026

I had a wonderful day meeting the people who attended the presentation and thank you to those who brought along items for me to look at and offer advice on how to best preserve their cherished family pieces.
Be sure to check out the museum! They have great exhibits for you too see and their volunteers are top notch!

05/13/2026

Gloves, gloves, gloves!

Mikey Schneider, a senior majoring in history with a minor in classical studies and a certificate in museum studies, curated the newest exhibit in the fashion studies office in Justin Hall.

Peak: 1850-1918
In the 1800’s, the most fashionable gloves were those of the softest, whitest kid leather. Gloves were a luxury item exclusive to the highest social class, and those who aspired to be them. Glove etiquette was heavily debated, but it was agreed upon that “soiled” gloves were improper to wear in public. Stains could not be removed from leather gloves, so they were disposed of.

Innovation: 1920-1950
Extravagant displays of wealth were frowned upon after the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Glove makers took advantage of the emerging technologies in textile production to create fabric and knitted gloves for a lower price point. New colors could be worn, such as black, dark green, navy, brown, and pink. The fashion at the time turned to looser gloves that did not require a tight fit.

Decline: 1950-1965
Women primarily wore short gloves, with the most common color in our collection being white. The most common material is a firm knitted fabric called “simplex,” which replicates traditional leather gloves. In the 20th century, gloves were usually cut in factories by men, and the pieces were then sent to small shops or home workers, usually women, who would sew them together. By the middle of the century, American glove companies were trying to keep up with the decrease in demand by exporting work to poorer countries, often subjects of US colonialism.

Today, gloves have returned to a primarily functional purpose. In many ways, the death of the glove created the necessary conditions for the rise of nail polish and decorations.

05/11/2026

Causing Quite a Stir: Beach Pajamas in the U.S.

Exhibit Design by Heather Bigwood, a Kansas State graduate with a B.A. in History.

Heather was an active member of the Historic Costume and Textile Museum from 2022 to 2024. She volunteered, interned, and worked at the museum. After graduation, Heather worked at the Riley County Historical Museum in Manhattan, KS, the Orphan Train Museum in Concordia, KS, and has most recently welcomed her first baby enjoying time as a stay at home mom.

Beach Pajamas first appeared on the U.S. shores in 1923, which shocked many Americans. The audacity to wear pajamas, an intimate bedroom garment that showcased a female’s legs to public view, was considered a slip in moral judgment to some. The women who first dared to risk the accepted rules of American decorum were the rich socialites. They often had money to travel overseas, where female societal norms were more relaxed. Eventually, beach pajamas won over the hearts and approval of the American public in the end.

The beach pajamas displayed were manufactured by the Donnelly Garment Co. in Kansas City, circa 1930. The Donnelly Garment Co. was created by Nell Donnelly Reed in 1916, a woman born in Parsons, KS. Within four years, her company skyrocketed and continued to be successful until Nell sold the company in 1956, after 40 years of business. Nell earned her place among America’s earliest businesswoman millionaires.

05/06/2026

Come see us but let us know you’re coming, we have limited hours we are open, and especially during finals week.
Summer availability and hours posted soon.

04/01/2026

Mikey Schneider is a senior majoring in history, with a minor in classical studies and a certificate in museum studies. He started volunteering at the Historic Costume and Textile Museum (HCTM) in Justin Hall at Kansas State, about a year ago, when his class took a trip to the museum for his certificate. Mikey sews and was already interested in historical fashion, so volunteering at the museum seemed like a no-brainer. Later, he was able to be a student intern and is now a student staff member. This is Mikey’s first solo exhibit titled, “An Introduction to the Grand Army of the Republic.” He was originally inspired by the band uniform he found while inventorying a cabinet at the HCTM in Justin Hall. Mikey was intrigued by the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) buttons on the uniform and decided to learn more. The Grand Army of the Republic was the first veteran organization in US History. They were founded by a group of Civil War veterans. Their largest membership numbers were in the 1880s and 90s with one million members nationally. They held encampments annually, which were conferences held to discuss activities and business for the year that involved the organization. The GAR organization was a driver of social change. They successfully lobbied for pensions for veterans of old age, their wives, widows, and orphan children. They also advocate for voting rights for Black Americans, and were a racially integrated fraternal organization, when at the time most fraternal organizations were segregated. The Grand Army of the Republic organization fizzled out as the last member died in the 1950s. The members decided not to allow any new members to join the organization, as it was for Civil War veterans. Instead, an organization was formed called the Sons of Union Veterans to continue on the legacy after the last member of GAR passed away The uniform is a linen canvas material with dyed red cotton trim, made around the 1880s. These materials were much more informal and inexpensive compared to materials that were typically used for the GAR uniforms. GAR uniforms were typically a darker color than the light linen used to make this band uniform. The coronet featured is on loan from the Riley County Historical Museum. The coronet is from the time period of the uniform, around 1880-1890s, and was made by a company in Philadelphia. It was owned by a person who worked at Kansas State and later donated it to the Riley County Historical Museum in the 1910s. The GAR badge is from an encampment in McPherson, KS, from 1903. The guidons hanging in the display are hand-sewn and hand-painted replicas made by Mikey. These would have been sold in a GAR catalog. The picture displayed behind the items is of the Caman Winfield military band that was sent as a delegation for the national GAR encampment, not a specific GAR band.