"Most of us get dressed in the morning with only the vaguest notion of where the clothes on our backs come from. A 19th-century American Indian woman could tell you exactly who had hunted the animals from which her dress was taken. She would know who had tanned the hides, stitched them together and sewed hundreds of beads onto them, and what the pattern of those beads signified.

More than 50 of these dresses are on view in “Identity by Design: Tradition, Change and Celebration in Native Women’s Dresses,” at the New York branch of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. These are heavy garments, and not just because they are dripping with beads, coins and other ornaments. Each is weighted with the circumstance and life story of the woman who wore it, as well as the history of her tribe.

The show takes the form of a loose, informal conversation among the curators, Colleen Cutschall and Emil Her Many Horses, and six Indian women who are respected dressmakers. The wall text consists almost entirely of quotations from these artists. Their reminiscences and musings are sometimes cloying, but the absence of pedagogy is refreshing.

“Identity by Design” also challenges the stereotype of American Indian art as something that developed in isolation, with whatever materials were at hand. The dresses’ beads, cowrie shells and wool fabrics were acquired through intertribal and even intercontinental trade. A large wall map shows the trade routes: wool cloth from England, vermillion pigment from China, dentalium shells from the Maldives, beads from Venice.

One pleasure of the exhibition is seeing traditional designs evolve to incorporate novel items, like the tiny glass seed beads from Italy that inspired artists to develop more intricate patterns."

Get the Story:
In Tribal Dresses, Life Stories, Intricate Labor and Female Bonding (The New York Times 10/8)
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