In the summer of 1965, Virginia Ullman, a close friend of my grandparents, came to stay with them at their summer home in Newport, R.I. Virginia was accompanied by Jean Hildreth, who was traveling around the country in hopes of collecting beautiful garmets for Phoenix Art Museum’s new costume collection. Their timing was fortuitous because my grandmother was in the process of clearing the attic of her family’s home in Bryn Mawr, PA. Trunks of beautiful clothes kept arriving that had belonged to her mother, my great-grandmother, Anita Berwind Strawbridge. My sister and I had a  wonderful time trying on her wedding dress, court presentation gown, and  gorgeous day and evening dresses. Sadly, because women were so tightly corseted in the late nineteenth century, nothing fit us (and these were our “ thin” days). 

I well remember the day Virginia and Jean arrived. My grandmother’s bedroom and the guest rooms were an explosion of hats, dresses, evening cloaks, petticoats, gloves, silk stockings, and shoes – laid out so Jean could choose what she wanted. Among her choices were the wedding dress, a beautiful velvet opera cloak, several reception dresses, numerous petticoats, and pairs of gloves. These would form the  foundation for what became our fabulous Arizona Costume Institute.