October 18, 2000
Undressing Hollywood
Collector presents program on silver screen fashions
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
From underwear and accessories to gowns and hats, Sandy Schreier gave the audience at the Milliken Auditorium the lowdown on silver screen dressing from Hollywood's earliest days.
For the 50-plus attendees at the Schreier's Hollywood Dressed and Undressed presentation, it was a chance to get a behind-the-scenes peek at glamorous people.
"Two years ago, scalpers were getting $1,000 a ticket for a play on Broadway," Schreier said. "It was a chance to see Nicole Kidman in the nude in "The Blue Room." Then when she went to the Oscars with her famous husband, the dress she wore created a media frenzy."
Schreier noted that these events are the perfect example of Hollywood dressed and undressed, which is also the name of a book she penned about famous fashion.
A couture and costume collector since she was a little girl growing up in Detroit, Schreier's talk was one of a series of Sunday afternoon lectures held concurrent with the Dennos Museum's Adorning the Body exhibit.
Schreier has more than 15,000 pieces in her personal collection. Over the years, she has loaned various portions of the collection to museum exhibits around the world. Much of her collection is in storage at various museums, the delicate fabrics protected by acid-free tissue.
She has also worked herself in the world of high fashion, getting a start by designing costumes for the Supremes and designing accessories for Yves St. Laurent in the 1960s. Schreier counts herself a friend to many stars, including Bette Midler, who she has helped outfit on numerous occasions.
Schreier said the history of Hollywood fashion can be traced directly to the big-name studio moguls. When men like Adolf Zucker, Sam Goldwyn and Bill Fox, European immigrants with no experience in movie making, started making movies they figured out a formula for success that still holds true today.
"These founding fathers of Hollywood knew that to get people to pay money for their movies they would have to have pretty girls with beautiful clothes," Schreier said.
Despite this formula, Schreier did not ignore men in her discussion. She noted that most actors wore their own clothes in their movies. Cary Grant worn his own suits, after refusing to wear the period costumes made for him because he felt they were too old-fashioned looking.
"Who was better looking and better dressed than Cary Grant," Schreier said. "He told men what to wear and he wore his own clothes his tailor made using fabric he selected himself."
Schreier's passion for fashion began when was she was a young girl. An avid movie buff, one day she discovered that studios were throwing away used costumes and would give them away free for the asking. So she began asking and asking, until eventually it all snowballed into a challenging career.
"When I was a little girl, I loved playing dress up," Schreier said. "But now I never wear anything from my collection unless a camera is pointed at me."
The next step in her acquisitions was into the land of couture, hand-made original dresses direct from famous designers. This led to some bold adventures for someone not afraid to make requests.
"Since I was 16 and could drive, I began going to homes in Grosse Pointe and asking if they had any gowns they were not using," Schreier said. "I, coming from those homes, knew they would be couture and many just gave them to me."
Today, she noted, it is sometimes hard to tell what is a costume and what is fashion or couture. At the end of her talk she showed some pictures of outrageous concoctions, many drawing chuckles from the audience.
"Fashion or costume?" she asked the crowd each time, sometimes stumping them. However, the $50,000 dress made to resemble torn newspapers pasted together, part of a Homeless Couture collection Schreier later told them, did not fool the crowd.
"Fashion," they chimed, perhaps a bit skeptically.