The Costume Endured

Paris 1900: City of Entertainment exhibition
Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
August 10, 2019 | 11:55am

Beneath the gallery lights of the Portland Art Museum’s Paris 1900: City of Entertainment exhibition, I encountered a stage costume worn by Sarah Bernhardt around 1890.

Bernhardt (1844–1923) was one of the most celebrated actresses of her era. Long before film, television, or social media, she cultivated a public image that combined theatrical talent, celebrity, and spectacle, often challenging the social conventions of her time. Costumes like this one were part of that image, helping transform a performance into an event audiences remembered after leaving the theatre.

At first, it was difficult to know where to look. Embroidered satin brocade covered nearly every inch of the garment. Metallic thread wound through elaborate patterns. Pearls, imitation gems, and deep red stones caught the gallery lights more than a century after they had first reflected the lights of a theatre stage.

Even among the exhibition’s many artifacts, it was impossible to overlook.

What struck me most, though, was not Bernhardt’s fame. It was the fact that the costume had endured at all.

A stage costume is made for a particular moment. It is worn before an audience, packed away after the curtain falls, then altered, repaired, reused, or discarded. Few are expected to survive for generations. Yet here was this one, its embroidery still visible, its stones still catching the light, and the careful work of the artisans who made it still present in every detail.

The performance for which it was created is gone. So is its audience. The applause faded long ago.

Standing in the gallery, I realized that I would never see Bernhardt wear it onstage. No recording could fully recreate what it was like to sit in a theatre and watch that particular performance unfold.

But the costume remained: one physical connection to an art form that exists, by nature, only for a moment before disappearing.

The curtain fell. The performance ended. The costume endured.