The buzziest shows emphasize contemporary fashion. But historic dress—the kind I mostly deal with—is a powerful draw, too, especially in the age of Game of Thrones, Outlander, and Poldark. Few museum visitors have ever handled a marble bust or a gilded snuffbox, but everyone wears clothes. Whether it’s a 17th-century silk doublet or an Imperial Russian court gown, anyone can look at a garment and evaluate it from a place of experience. Maybe that’s why people are mystified when I tell them what I do for a living. They can relate to the subject instantly—and, at the same time, can’t understand why my job requires years of training and a graduate degree (or two). Today, when seemingly everything, from cocktail menu to playlist, is described as being curated, “But what do you actually do?” is a question I get all the time—and a full answer involves mannequin mutilation and crotch-stuffing, writing and lecturing, bidding on eBay, researching history and art history, and honing a sense of style that both channels and transcends the sensibilities of any given era.

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I am not a fashion designer. The worst sin I can commit at my job is trying on the clothes in my care, or allowing someone else to, because museum pieces are for studying, preserving, and displaying, not for wearing. But it’s the wearing that gives them meaning. And it’s often the flaws in a garment—the discolorations, the smells, the split seams, the runaway sequins—that speak the loudest, poignant reminders of the lives lived in them.

An antique textile dealer once told me about a woman who called her, wanting to sell a black dress worn by her great-great-grandmother, who had died in the 1850s. Not another Victorian black dress, the dealer thought, rolling her eyes. The caller continued: “My great-great-grandmother was a slave.” The dealer nearly dropped the phone in shock, then invited the caller to name her price; documented slave clothes are as rare as Victorian black dresses are commonplace. The lesson was that sometimes, it’s the woman—or man—who makes the clothes, not the other way around. In other words, every wedding dress is special, but only Kate Middleton’s wedding dress could bring in $15 million in ticket sales during just two months on display at Buckingham Palace.

To most people, a preoccupation with clothing is superficial, if not borderline immoral; even the Bible asks: “Why do you worry about clothes?” But fashion historians are more inclined to agree with Oscar Wilde’s line from The Picture of Dorian Gray: “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.” Though some may see our jobs as frivolous, curators understand that clothes reveal ineffable truths about not just individual lives, but also collective values and experiences. Garments act as totems and taboos, and retain their power to impress or intimidate long after they were first worn. Things like Ku Klux Klan robes and Nazi uniforms are collected but rarely displayed by museums, precisely because they so powerfully evoke events and emotions most would prefer to forget. At the same time, old clothes acquire new and problematic meanings over time. Many museums are now reluctant to display fur garments because they may offend animal lovers, even though fur has been an integral element of dress for thousands of years.