Imperial Valley’s hidden fashion history unveiled at Pioneers’ Museum
Adrik Vargas
IMPERIAL COUNTY, Calif. (KYMA) – The Pioneers’ Museum in Imperial Valley is pulling clothing out of storage for the first time in more than a decade, revealing the region’s fashion and history through the people who wore it.
The new exhibit, Pioneers’ Style: Weaving Cotton, Culture, and Fashion Through the Ages, features pieces from a collection of about 3,000 garments, many dating back to the early 1900s.
Helping to curate the exhibit, Arizona State University student and Imperial Valley native Mia Higginbotham said she was especially drawn to a blue riding outfit.
“It’s from around 1906,” she said. “It’s a riding outfit that likely came with someone to the Valley before the Valley even existed.”
Each piece tells its own story. One bag, Higginbotham explained, traveled by train with a newly married woman moving to the Valley.
It was later passed down to her granddaughter, donated to an antique collection, and eventually given to the museum.
Choosing which garments to display wasn’t about style, Higginbotham said, but condition. Some items show the effects of heat, light, and time. Fading colors and brittle fabric highlight the challenges of preservation.
“This is an example of heat and light damage that causes discoloration or fading,” she said, pointing to a piece in the exhibit. “You can see it in the orange-yellow color. It also makes the fabric really brittle.”
Archivist Tyler Brinkerhoff said preservation is a key part of the museum’s mission.
“We’ll be transferring the items off of display into archival-safe boxes so that they’ll be here another hundred years to be able to put on display again,” Brinkerhoff said.
The exhibit is open to the public through late November.