This exhibition is themed as a tableaux-styled birthday party featuring three rooms, or “rings” with distinct styles that harmoniously complement each other: A Circus Party!, Clown Alley, and The Green Room. The fashions include childrenswear, activewear, special occasion attire, and performance costumes. All materials were selected from the designer’s existing collection of fabrics sourced over the past 15 years from multiple states in the US, or otherwise thrifted from local Chicago secondhand stores and online vendors. The impetus behind the exhibit is to celebrate the materiality and influence of circus on fashion and culture through the creation and display of artefacts highlighting historical influence and popular circus-rooted symbols. Why a birthday party? The artist celebrates a big milestone this month.  

Situated on a public street in the South Loop of Chicago, the display windows on the ground floor or the 618 S. Michigan Avenue building of Columbia College Chicago are an ideal site to showcase this work. Accessible to the public without needing to enter into an internal space and viewable 24 hours a day, this exhibit provides access to anyone who happens to pass by. Viewers can take their leisure to engage with the pieces, and the changing daylight exposure provides different types of visibility: in the direct sunlight of early morning, the sequin and rhinestone accents glimmer and sparkle. Afternoon light provides best viewing up close to the pieces, and night time creates an illuminated backdrop during building closure.

In the circus party tableau, adults are gathered for socializing. Their dress code prompt was “circus fashion” and they each wear ensembles inspired by famous historical circus artists or iconic symbols reflecting circus characters: the RingMistress, Mabel Stark’s Tiger, Jules Léotard, Lillian Leitzel, SweetHeart/Columbine, and The Guest of Honor (arriving fashionably late on July 16). The party is set amidst a backdrop of historical circus posters reproduced as shower curtains, a novel and durable material that allows for sustained re-use over time. This is the second exhibition by Jenny Leigh featuring these backdrops, and they are shared with a circus school in Ithaca, New York, Circus Culture, when not on display.  

Exterior view of A Circus Party! Image taken at night.

The SweetHeart unitard was originally fabricated in 2019 as part of a series on design research unitards. The garment is made of 4-way spandex fabric in metallic and holographic finishes, and is edged with cased elastic. The unitard’s composition includes 30+ pattern pieces serged together. The Columbine collar, here named after the character of Columbine from commedia dell-arte, is made of salvaged poufs from 1980s bridal veils and features faux pearl beads and a fishing line hem. 

Lillian Leitzel was a superstar aerialist of circus in the 1920s in the USA. She was often pictured as a ‘poster girl’ and featured in numerous human-interest articles in newspapers and magazines, and as such there is a deep written and pictorial history of her costumes. This look is a reproduction of one of her more famous costume styles featuring a babydoll silhouette with pleated skirt. To update this look for the 21st century, it was re-envisioned in contemporary synthetic fabrics to boost durability and longevity. 

This reproduction costume is made of stretch velvet in black, lined with a black spandex built-in camisole bra, and finished with a mauve spandex leotard torso with elasticated leg holes. Self-made straps add decorative and functional attachment at the top, and the removable overskirt was pleated in-house using a two-tone synthetic chiffon and finished with a gathered waistband with small ribbon roses around the body. 

The Tiger costume represents the history of animals in circus. Mabel Stark was a renowned animal trainer in 1920s circus in the USA, and this party guest decided to highlight the animals behind the act. In the history of circus-as-fashion-influence there is a pattern of animal imagery, represented here via the fabric choice and the selection of paste rhinestone animal brooches affixed to the hat. These brooches are from the Napier brand and were sourced secondhand via Etsy and eBay. The animals represented by the brooches include a seal balancing a ball on its nose, an elephant holding a flower, and a carousel horse. 

The tiger Look includes a flare-leg, v-neck sparkly Lurex tiger fabric finished with black fold-over elastic in a criss-cross pattern with adjustable strap hardware on the back. The cropped jacket is made of stretch velvet fabric with sequins, lined in black compression stretch fabric, and features large double-layered black mesh bell sleeves attached at the elbow. The faux fur collar was salvaged from a donated jacket and is removable for laundering. The black hat (from the artist’s personal wardrobe) is decorated with rhinestone and gold-tone circus animal brooches sourced via Etsy and eBay. 

Jules Léotard is credited as the inventor of the flying trapeze and the eponymous garment, the leotard. In this circus party ensemble, his famous leotard garment is topped with a shawl collar inspired by historical artifacts from the Milner Special Collections at Illinois State University, and carte-de-visite images of Leotard posing in costume. Jules is stationed next to a historical circus poster reproduction showing a diver wearing a similar silhouette, calling out the proximity between activewear apparel across disciplines. The star motif is persistent across the history of circus costume and is represented throughout this exhibit starting from Jules Léotard’s costume. 

This is a navy blue and gold ensemble in the silhouette of the original leotard. The navy blue jumbo spandex fabric of the garment base is embellished with gold metallic spandex star appliqués and edge binding of the same fabric. The shawl collar is made of navy sequin and spandex fabric, edged in thrifted gold bullion upholstery fringe, and embellished with secondhand star appliqués. Gold plastic sequins and silver metal spangles were hand-applied following historical sewing techniques. Champagne-tone bicone crystal beads top off the look. 

Sequins and spangles are used to add flash and sparkle to performance costume across genres. Spangles are small metal disks with a hole in the center and were the precursor to sequins, which are mostly made of plastic, but can also be fabricated from gelatin, resin, precious metals, or glass. Attachment techniques vary across functional needs, and to add sequins to the Jules costume some images from past historical artefact research were consulted. 

In the image below, two costumes are detailed. The gold and red close-up is from an aerialist costume created by Izzy Patrowicz in the early 2020s, and shows faceted sequins attached with beads. The gold and green costume details are from an ensemble held by the Milner Special Collections at Illinois State University, and showcases spangles and star embellishment with bullion fringe and goldwork, created in the 1890s. Each of the attachment styles were used in the Jules costume, which utilized two sizes of gold plastic faceted sequins and silver metal spangles, along with embroidered and sequin/bead star appliqués.

The red & gold aerialist costume and green & gold acrobat costume were loaned to Jenny Leigh Du Puis by Izzy Patrowicz and the Milner Special Collections at Illinois State University, respectively, for the 2022 exhibition "Dressing the Circus" at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. 

The above images were taken by Du Puis as part of her costume research process, and provide valuable insights into costume fabrication techniques for circus artists over time.

Historically, the area where clowns prepare for a performance is known as Clown Alley. In this exhibit, the clown section is dubbed Clown Alley and represents the history of the clown as ubiquitous Halloween costume inspiration while celebrating famous clown costume silhouettes: The Pierrot-style two-piece ensemble, and the sacque (pronounced “sack”) clown jumpsuit. The inspiration behind this section was the persistence of the Clown as a character found in commercial pattern books at fabric stores all over the USA across decades. 

Embarking on a search for vintage and antique patterns, eBay and Etsy were used to source patterns from as early as 1919. Of these, Simplicity brand patterns from 1965, 1980, and 1995 were selected to produce costumes, and the fabrics for these were sourced in the form of secondhand yardage (Proud!), bedsheets (Nas-Clown-Car and Peas, Please!), and curtains (Pierrot’s Folly) to show how home textiles and fabric stashes can act as sources for garment projects. Celebrating the history of homemade costuming, this section features childrenswear set amidst a backdrop of juggling props and a clown nose curtain.   

To create the sequin pattern on the Peas, Please! costume, the following process was used. Each of the four jumpsuit pattern pieces for the body were traced onto the base fabric (a thrifted bedsheet) using a tracing wheel and wax transfer paper. These tracing lines are very faintly visible in the images below, seen as blue dots creating a perimeter. Within the tracing, different visual layouts were marked onto the green diamonds of the fabric using pencil, pen, or sharpie. There is a different sequin pattern on each of the four jumpsuit pieces, using multiple sizes of chartreuse plastic sequins. Some of the sequins are affixed using a clear bead at the center, and others use a green bead. 

Every sequin and bead was hand-sewn using a large oval embroidery hoop on a floor stand, and white silamide thread was used to attach the embellishments to the fabric. The process took approximately one week, and after completion each piece was cut out of the fabric following the blue tracing lines (see bottom left image, below). To protect the embellishment stitching and to reinforce the fabric, each section was flat-lined* using white cotton fabric taken from another thrifted bedsheet. The sleeves are made of a silk burnout velvet fabric that was a studio remnant, and the collar is a thrifted piece of vintage fabric yardage. Elastic casings for the wrists and neck were made using single-fold white bias tape (neck) and vintage rayon seam binding (wrists) with 1/4" elastic threaded through and secured to fit the mannequin. 

*Flat-lining is the process of treating two layers of fabric as one, usually by basting the layers together within the seam allowance prior to assembling the sections together into a garment.

In this space we see circus artists warming up in neon activewear. Circus artists perform superhuman feats with their bodies and it is integral to ensure that their muscles and limbs are loose and conditioned for the performance. 

This is represented in the form of activewear-influenced costuming developed in monochrome formats featuring neon 4-way stretch fabric in milliskin, stretch mesh, stretch velvet, and metallic/holographic spandex. 

The blue unitard is a stiltwalker off his stilts (have you ever tried to put a mannequin on stilts? Difficult.) showing the extra-long costume legs puddled around his feet. This look features a keyhole back and ¾ length sleeves. A holographic blue metallic spandex star is appliquéd to the chest.

The fabrics used in this look include metallic and holographic spandex, stretch mesh, stretch velvet, and milliskin. The neckline is edged with fold-over elastic.

The star appliqués on the Neons and the Jules Léotard looks were made by fusing WonderUnder to spandex, hand cutting the shapes, and ironing them on to the base garment, then using a zig-zag stitch around the perimeter to secure.

Filmed at night from the outside of the building, this short video provides a tour for those unable to attend in person. The video contains royalty-free background music sourced online.