Mountaineer's fancy dress

An exotic gown worn by Dorothy Theomin provides a window into a privileged world, writes Moira White.

Margery Blackman, QSM, worked with the textile collections at Tūhura Otago Museum as a volunteer for years, but we were not the only organisation to which she generously contributed her time and expertise.

Olveston, the Theomin family home in Royal Terrace, also benefitted from Margery’s skills and dedication. She worked there as a guide and became knowledgeable about the people associated with the house as well as its contents. Margery wrote Dorothy Theomin of Olveston: Mountaineer, photographer, traveller & benefactor, which was published in 2007, and curated an exhibition of Dorothy Theomin’s alpine photography at the Hocken Collections.

Margery’s enduring interest in Dorothy Theomin was the main motivation behind her purchase at a local auction of one of the garments on display in Otago Museum’s exhibition, "It’s all in the making". It’s an embroidered, dark blue silk aba - a tunic-shaped dress - with shisha work, from the Kutch area of Gujurat, India.

Sadly, we do not know when or where Ms Theomin acquired it, but she wore it, with a pair of loose-fitting red silk trousers (from which it was separated), in Dunedin as a fancy-dress costume in the early 20th century.

Margery’s research located an April 1919 report in the Otago Witness of a fancy dress dance at All Saints Church hall in Cumberland St, where Dorothy Theomin was described as wearing a "handsome Eastern costume in lovely blues and reds, and turban headdress". We think Dorothy also lent it to her sister-in-law to wear on at least one occasion.

In shisha work, dresses, caps, and even footwear are decorated with small pieces of reflective material which are most often attached using a mixture of straight and/or blanket stitches. The technique is believed to have originated in India but by the late 19th century had spread to Afghanistan, China, Indonesia and Iran.

Wall and door hangings were also decorated in this way. Older examples use mica (a shiny silicate mineral that splits easily into very thin sheets) for the reflective elements but later, tin, silver, thin coins or glass were used as well and nowadays, some shiny plastics, too.

Dorothy Theomin was not known as a particularly fashionable dresser, but she wore clothes appropriate to the occasion, and her privileged social position.

In her early years of climbing she wore a short skirt, puttees and hob-nailed boots. We know a little about her outfits at various public events through reports in the local press, and dress historian, Dr Jane Malthus, documented some examples in a 2010 paper.

At her coming-out ball, held at Olveston in 1907, for example, Dorothy wore "a very handsome white chiffon dress over rich glace silk", the bodice of which was trimmed with satin bands and worn with a satin belt.

At a Thursday afternoon "at home" in 1911 she wore navy blue serge and a cerise hat with wings. At a 1931 wedding she wore "a frock of brown floral crepe de chine with a beige vestee, [and] wide-brimmed brown hat"; and she wore a black tailored suit and black hat to the Wingatui Spring Meeting races in 1934; and a beaver coat and light grey hat to the Dunedin Jockey Club’s race meeting in 1936.

The more colourful and flamboyant silk aba and pantaloons were worn as a dress-up costume but it was not, as many fancy dress costumes are, an ingenious instance of artistic imagination. It was a real example of the clothing worn somewhere else in the world.

I can think of three very different examples of fancy dress in our collection that would each in their own way have effected the wearer’s transformation into another time, place or entity. We have a muslin and crepe paper skirt, cape and hat "Rainbow" costume; an adult-sized brown fur-fabric bear costume with papier-mache head; and an imitation 18th century dress, worn as fancy dress by a young girl in the 19th century.

I would love to know how Dorothy Theomin felt wearing the Gujurat garments. Was she transported for an evening to a strikingly different, warmer world or, more mundanely, safe in the knowledge that she had met the requirements for participation in the dance?

Dorothy Theomin was a founding member of the Association of Friends of the Otago Museum, and Margery served as a patron of that association for many years.

Margery’s thoughtful choice to share her textile collection, including this aba, with her Dunedin community and fellow textile enthusiasts, links us to her, Ms Theomin, and a small part of the varied and wonderful textile traditions in India.

• Moira White is curator, humanities at Tūhura Otago Museum