A love of all things vintage has become a lifelong mission to find and save beautiful pieces of history for Leslie Drollinger Stratmoen of Riverton.
Years spent sifting through old boxes and trunks at flea markets, antique stores and garage sales to find the most beautiful, interesting and unusual women’s clothing and accessories has led to a collection consisting of thousands of pieces.
Now, more than 3,000 of those artifacts of historical women’s clothing, accessories and household items from the 20th century are going on public display this month at the Occidental Hotel Museum in Buffalo, Wyoming. Called Flappers to Fringe, the exhibit features fashion from the 1920s to 1970s.
“The exhibit tells the story of how people, places and events influenced and sometimes dictated what women of this time period wore,” Stratmoen said. “So, as visitors walk through the exhibit, they will learn why hemlines rose and fell, what influenced the changing silhouettes and fashion trends and how the brave women of the past blazed the trail for the women of today to wear whatever she wants.”
Love Of Vintage
Stratmoen’s love of vintage began at an early age, beginning with jewelry in junior high.
“I think I was just drawn to something pretty and I could afford it as a kid,” she said. “I have a collection of costume jewelry and some of it is very sought after in the vintage jewelry collecting field.”
Years later, she began collecting vintage clothes while she was in college because “it was an affordable way to create your own style.”
“It was something new and different,” Stratmoen said. “It wasn’t what everybody was buying in the stores. I think I really started there. I really loved some of the different styles.”
Stratmoen spent four decades as a journalist for newspapers, magazines and radio, retiring in 2016. But on the side, she stayed busy as a singer, performer and costume designer. It was those gigs that really grew her collection.
“As I got into performing and in doing different theatrical productions, I would find things for those different plays I was either in or helping to costume,” she said. “And I just started keeping them from there, thinking that I might wear them down the line. And I did. I spent most of my life singing with big bands, so I love to wear vintage 1940s gowns.”
She’s been a costumer for various shows throughout the years, including a six-year stint at Central Wyoming College in Riverton. She’s designed and created costumes for more than 25 theater productions, such as “Guys and Dolls” and “Meet Me In St. Louis,” and served as costume coordinator and production assistant in films.
To find the right pieces for each show, Stratmoen searched for authentic pieces for the era. And whenever a costume warehouse in the area was thinning out their collection, she’d be first in line.
“I’d grab those, just to save them, because so many of those pieces, especially from the 1900s up to the 1950s were made so well, and it’s really fun to see how they were constructed,” she said.
A Crazy Idea
About 10 years ago, she started toying with the idea of creating a historical exhibit using a big wardrobe steamer trunk as a way to present the wardrobe of the young women of the day.
“I had created different fashion and art displays prior to this, including one at Central Wyoming College called Windows of Time Through a Woman’s Eyes,” she said. “So, I thought that would be a fun gig.”
At some point her thoughts shifted to something bigger because of the sheer amount of pieces she had. And while her entire collection spans from the early 1900s to modern day, she decided to narrow it down to the decades of the 1920s to the 1970s. The premise is how people, places and events influence fashion of the era – reflecting on social change and also celebrating women’s empowerment.
“I decided I liked the symmetry between the 1920s and 1970s, because in the 1920s we were just coming out of wartime, and they were throwing off their restrictive undergarments, and that’s when you came into the sack dress or the tube shape,” she said. “And then you come around to the 1970s and there again, we were coming out of wartime, and now they were really burning their bras, and starting to just be more accepting of every type of fashion and wearing whatever they wanted to.”
Stratmoen was still formulating exactly how her exhibit would look when COVID hit. With everything so uncertain, she had decided to scrap the whole project until a young friend changed her mind.
Oakley Boycott grew up in Lander but is now a model and actress in New York. The two met when Boycott was just 13 and she was an assistant costumer for Stratmoen during a production of “Meet Me in St. Louis.”
“We just had a wonderful time, and from that time we stayed friends,” Stratmoen said.
In the spring of 2020, she asked Boycott if she’d model some of her clothing pieces she wanted to get insured before she packed them away.
“I thought that I was going to just close up shop and forget about everything, but we had so much fun,” Stratmoen said. “I’d pull out everything I wanted her to put on for the 40s, for instance, and I started snapping pictures.”
Boycott mentioned the possibility of creating an online exhibit on a website that could also be a place to sell some of her additional vintage pieces. Stratmoen wasn’t sure she was up to the task by herself, but then the next day Boycott returned.
“She said, ‘I’m here to help you, I just found out that New York is closed and all my jobs have ended, so I’m here for whenever,’” Stratmoen said. “And we just launched, and we just spent the next three months working solely on it during COVID.”
The site is flapperstofringevintage.com and features photos of the clothing from each decade in an online exhibit, as well as a blog, and some items for sale.
Finding A Home
Revitalized, Stratmoen also threw herself back into finishing the Flappers to Fringe exhibit. It was ready to go last year, but first she needed to find a venue. A visit to the Occidental Hotel in Buffalo for a Thanksgiving holiday was the answer. The Stratmoens have been staying at the Occidental for several years and have gotten to know owners Jackie and David Stewart. As they were leaving, Jackie asked how the vintage clothing project was coming along.
“I said, ‘It’s great,” Stratmoen said. “It’s ready to book out. I’m checking in with museums soon who might want it. Without skipping a beat she said, ‘It needs to be coming to the Occidental.’”
The two met in January to put together a plan, with the biggest hurdle being moving the collection to Buffalo. However, a Spark Grant from the Wyoming Humanities Council paid for the move and the collection was transported to Buffalo in the largest Uhaul available in April.
“I have nine steamer trunks and those are packed full,” she said. “And then I had 10 big wardrobe boxes that either had clothing in them, or all the hats in their boxes inside of those large wardrobe boxes.
“Then the security stanchions with the posts and the ropes that’ll go in. And then there’s suitcases for every decade, and hat racks for each one or clothing rack and various pieces of small furniture as staging pieces.”
Stratmoen did the initial setup in April and returned in May for fine tuning. The exhibit is staged in six life-sized dioramas, each including a life-like female mannequin and her steamer trunk, staged as if she’s a fashionable young lady of the day who’s arrived at her destination, unpacking and getting ready for an event.
“It’s a ridiculous amount of things that I have, because it went beyond every single outfit,” she said. “I’ve got the hats, the purses, the jewelry and the toiletry items that she’d be using. Because I really wanted to set the scene, I want people to feel like they’re getting a little sneak peek into what it might have been like for her to be traveling in that time period.”
Some of these pieces go back more than 30 years but the bulk of the collection to be shown was found in the last 20 years in Wyoming.
“Considering that most of these things that people see were collected here in Wyoming, it will show that the cowgirls out here did wear flapper dresses and miniskirts and some of these pieces could have actually been worn by one of your ancestors,” she said. “When you look at these pieces, they’re just made so well. It’s not like our fast fashion, where you just buy something, wear it and get rid of it and buy something new.
“People really just spent their money on buying something really lovely that they would love for a long time, and they hung on to it.”
A 10-month residency also allows Stratmoen to change parts of the exhibit seasonally.
“It’s just really a treat to be able to get to do this,” she said. “To get to be in there through April and really change it out will be really fun. When I go in for the holidays and put them into their holiday attire. I’m also going to bring in my collection of vintage fashion dolls through the years, and so I thought that would be a fun extra holiday display.”
Bringing Back Memories
Stratmoen said she can’t choose a favorite piece out of the collection, as each provokes so many memories.
“Of course, the ’60s and ’70s were my era when I was coming up into junior high and high school and college, but the ’50s were just bright, fun and lovely, and the ’40s make me think of my mother,” she said.
Others who’ve seen the exhibit already have expressed similar thoughts.
“I had one young man say that when he looked at the 1920s it made him think of his grandmother, because he remembered seeing pictures of her wearing something just like that,” she said. “And that was really special, because that’s really my hope.
“I hope that when they go through the display, it will bring back memories like that of loved ones, and that they’ll leave talking about the past and reminiscing.”
She also would like young women to gain a better understanding of why they’re able to wear the fashions they do today.
“It’s because of these women who came before them who were brave enough to break out of the mold and create their own styles or do what was maybe considered brazen in that time, to really create new styles and move fashion forward” Stratmoen added.
However, the exhibit isn’t just for women, as men too will discover parts of history they likely didn’t know about through the pieces.
“They’ll learn that inventions like the car, when that came in the 1920s, changed the way women dress, because now they needed dresses that were shorter and allowed more movement from those prior to that which was a hobble skirt that kept her legs tied together,” she said.
Another interesting tidbit was some of the reasons for hemlines going up and down, including in the 1940s, when wartime rationing meant you could only use three yards of material at a time.
“So, you had to make a slimmer dress,” she said. “The thing I found interesting in my research is that many of the 1940s dresses will be embellished on the bodice, part of it with sequins and rhinestones. They could use as many sequins as they wanted, because sequins were not rationed.
“So essentially, they were making a simpler dress but that was a way to make it more fancy.”
Peep toe shoes also became more popular during that time because you could not purchase leather.
“They had to use up what they had, and to be able to finish with less leather,” she said. “ So you’ll see it and hopefully read through some of the material in the booklet that I have that goes along with it to learn a little bit about history as you go along.”
Ready To Open
In recent weeks, Stratmoen has been busy finalizing the signage and informational booklet for the exhibit. When finding information about the clothing of each decade, Stratmoen said she has a large collection of vintage magazines and books on costuming, clothing and fashion.
“So, I have a lot of collective history that’s been in my brain for all these years, but then really putting that down and making sure that I was presenting this absolutely correctly for each piece,” she said. “In my exhibit how they were inspired by what was around them, which might be magazines. McCall’s magazine, for instance, was wonderful because it showed the current styles.”
She also gleaned some valuable tidbits from memoirs.
“One book I read was about a woman who lived in the1920s, and she was describing how they would take red tissue paper and just wet that a little bit and then dab that on their lips to make them red,” she said. “I always find out wonderful things in memoirs.”
The opening gala is set for 7 p.m. June 21 and is open to the public free of charge.
“I really hope that people dress up,” she said. “We’re really encouraging them to have fun and come in vintage dress, whatever that means to them, whatever decade they love. Just come and have fun.”
And Stratmoen doesn’t rule out exhibits of other decades in the 20th century in the future.
“We’re starting off with Flappers to Fringe and then depending on how this goes and whether people are enjoying it we’ll just branch out from there,” she said.
