Dress the history of fashion is a production of I Heart Radio.

There were seven billion people in the world we all have one thing in common.

Every day we all get dressed. Welcome to dress the history of fashion.

A podcast where we explore the here what when of why we wear we are fashion historians and your

hosts April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary. Welcome back dress listeners. Today we

continue our conversation with Jessica Pusher collections manager of the 50,000 plus

piece fashion and dress collection at the Chicago History Museum and today she is back to share

more incredible stories behind some of the specific objects in the collection.

So we're just going to go right ahead and drop back into the conversation.

But something I also really love about the Chicago History Museum collection in particular

is that it speaks to the social and cultural significance of dress because so many pieces in

your collection come with an attached provenance that makes it unique to Chicago. It makes that

garment unique because you know who wore it you know where it came from you know it's significance

historically and you know it be it clothing from Marshall Fields or those garments that you

mentioned worn by Washington general Washington president Washington by Abraham Lincoln. I'd love

if you could tell us about your collection of garments worn by Lincoln actually and his wife Mary

Todd and we've done an episode on the dressmaker Elizabeth Teckley who you know they

and enslaved once enslaved women who brought her freedom in the antebellum south and made her

way to DC to become one of the city's premier dressmakers dressing among many others Mary Todd Lincoln.

You have a couple of her garments maybe more in your collection I'd love if you could tell us a

little bit more. Yes so in the collection of the museum we have well over 300 objects related to

the Lincoln's and around 18 pieces directly related to Mary Todd herself. So like I said before

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