On 17 August 2024 during another Golden Afternoon in the beautiful Stryszów Manor House the exhibition „All Shades of Green” will have its opening.

All Shades of Green.
About the Colour Green in the 19th and 20th c. Fashion

The exhibition “All Shades of Green” was inspired not only by the admiration for the green hues of beautiful costumes and accessories of bygone eras, but also by the very actual need to reflect on our expansive attitude towards the world of nature. This approach gives the exhibition a unique and innovative quality, as museum presentations of fashion artifacts do not reveal the gloomy aspects of early fashion to their visitors. It is also the first such exhibition in Poland – focusing on history of one chosen colour – and although it is a small exhibition by comparison, it may surprise with an unconventional juxtaposition of unique objects in green: 19th-century afternoon dresses, straight from the elegant city salons, with festive folk costumes; watercolor designs for dresses with beautiful fashion magazines and portraits.

Green, like maybe no other color, symbolizes humans’ ambivalent attitude towards nature. The fresh colors of the spring-reborn vegetation or the stunning shades of bird plumage always evoked associations with life and beauty – it is no wonder that there were attempts to imitate them in fashion, with creation of costumes and various accessories in the whole rich palette of greens. Nineteenth-century decadents were in turn attracted by the gloomy associations connected with green as the color of decay and dangerous animals. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, greens were more or less popular, and the demand for certain shades for a long time was not even hampered by the knowledge of the deadly threat posed by the chemical dyes required to produce them.

Concept and script of the exhibition: Dr Maria Molenda
Curators: Justyna Żarnowska, Dr Maria Molenda
Stryszów Manor House (branch of the Wawel Royal Castle)
17.08.2024 – 03.11.2024