The First Ladies' Gowns
Various designers · 1789 to the present
Behind glass in a long, softly lit gallery stand two dozen dresses on headless mannequins, arranged in chronological order from Martha Washington's silk gown to the inaugural ball gowns of the most recent presidents' wives. It is the most popular collection in the museum and one of the oldest, begun in 1912 when a Washington socialite, Cassie Myers James, and Rose Gouverneur Hoes, a descendant of James Monroe, persuaded the families of former presidents to give dresses to the Smithsonian. The idea that each new First Lady would donate her inaugural gown became a tradition soon after and has continued ever since.
Walk the line slowly and you can watch two hundred years of fashion, technology and taste change in front of you. Look for Martha Washington's hand-painted silk from the 1780s, Dolley Madison's embroidered dress, the narrow black-and-white gowns of the Gilded Age with their tiny waists, and the pale silk sheath Jacqueline Kennedy wore to her husband's inaugural gala in 1961, shown in the photograph here. Michelle Obama's white silk chiffon by Jason Wu and the more recent inaugural gowns are at the end. The dresses are rotated and rested in storage to protect the fabric.
The gallery also asks what the job of First Lady is. There is no official description of it, and the exhibition uses china, jewellery, photographs and the women's own words to show how each of them shaped the role, from Eleanor Roosevelt's activism to Lady Bird Johnson's environmental work. Notice how the earliest dresses are darker and more fragile, and how the mannequins are made without faces, a decision the museum took so that the dresses, not portraits, would tell the story.
Did You Know? The collection began in 1912, and the tradition that each First Lady donates her inaugural gown has continued for more than a century.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.