of Design and Merchandising in Fort Collins has a story.
Sometimes, those stories are unfinished, like the tale of Anne “Bookie” Bucher’s elegant silk and rayon dress, bought in 1923.
Trimmed with fox squirrel at the hem and richly detailed in glass beads and velvet, the dress is a gorgeous example of art nouveau/art deco style, said museum curator Linda Carlson. The Avenir museum, formerly housed in the smaller, remote Gifford Building, celebrated its grand reopening last week in the University Center for the Arts building at Colorado State University.
Bucher bought the dress in France during the course of a world tour. Her family in Hillsboro, N.M., had sent her off with her aunt, hoping to get Bucher’s heart and mind off the cowboy who had become the unsuitable object of her affection.
The family succeeded. Bucher never married. Instead, she took over her father’s banking business. She kept the dress. Was it a memento of lost love, or of her grand tour?
“We get a skewed image of what people’s lives were like because of what they saved,” Carlson said.
“They saved the special things. The things with memories to them.”
The exhibit also shows off the museum’s new interest: chairs.
“Chairs have a wonderful relationship with costume,” Carlson said.
“They’re a wonderful representation of change over time in interiors. Think of a Southern belle wearing huge hoop skirts, perching on the edge of a chair. It has to be quite deep to allow her to just touch her bottom to the end, and let the dress rest behind her. That’s a nice example of interaction between costume and chair.”
If you go
Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandise, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays and Fridays, and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, 1400 Remington St., Fort Collins
