Dressed in Diamonds: American Princesses & Gilded Age Fashion

with Kevin Jones of ASU-FIDM

The time period between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the beginning of World War I in 1914 is known as “The Gilded Age,” a term popularized by prolific writer and social commentator Mark Twain. Twain’s visionary insight revealed that America’s desire for all things modern and industrial was at odds with its undemocratic nostalgia for class hierarchy and aristocratic bearing.

Social distinctions between the ‘Old World’ and the ‘New’ were lessened by those few who were able to harness this fierce industrial era in which an uneducated nobody could become a respected somebody through sheer hard work, luck, and a “public-be-damned” attitude. The veneer that separated Yankee worker from European gentleman was thin, but the Industrial Revolution’s greatest asset—money—helped to gild American society and re-gild European society. And, for the most part, this highly reflective gloss was applied with layers of elaborate dresses and overlapping jewels worn by the ‘Dollar Princess’ daughters of these ‘Robber Barons’, five of whom are discussed in this paper: Jennie Jerome, Consuelo Yznaga, Consuelo Vanderbilt, Helena Zimmerman, and May Goelet.

Meet the instructor: 

KEVIN JONES joined the FIDM Museum (now the ASU FIDM Museum at the downtown Los Angeles campus of Arizona State University) as collections manager in 1999, and was appointed curator in 2002. He oversees the Museum’s more than 15,000-piece dress collection that spans 400 years of history. Born in Ventura, CA, Kevin studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising and art
history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Kevin’s fashion and social history expertise encompasses the eighteenth through twenty-first centuries, and his diverse exhibitions cover Hollywood to high fashion. In 2009, Kevin co-curated the Richard Martin Award-winning exhibition, catalogue, and documentary High Style: Betsy Bloomingdale and the Haute Couture. In 2011, he co-curated the exhibition and catalogue FABULOUS! Ten Years of FIDM Museum Acquisitions, 2000-2010. And in partnership with the American Federal of Arts, he co-curated the 2021 exhibition Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girl 1800 to 1960 that recently completed a three-year, nation-wide tour, and is scheduled to open at the ASU FIDM Museum Galleries during the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The accompanying 344-page catalogue won the Costume Society of America’s prestigious Millia Davenport Publication Award.

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