Gayle Strege on Todd Oldham

Gayle Strege, curator of Ohio State’s Historic Costume & Textiles Collection, leads this gallery talk on fashion designer Todd Oldham’s use of embellishment and decoration in his work when many of his 1990s peers were focused on minimalism. Combining motifs and materials, ethnic and historic influences, pop culture references and everyday objects—all with a postmodern twist—his exuberant ensembles are the focus of the current exhibition All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion.

Since 1996, Strege has organized more than 20 fashion exhibitions at the university. She has a BA in fashion design from Mount Mary College (now University) in Milwaukee and an MA in museum studies from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Strege has worked in professional theater costuming as well as in collections management and exhibition installation at the Chicago Historical Society and American Textile History Museum, formerly in Lowell, MA. In addition to her work at Ohio State’s costume collection, Strege contributes to historic fashion and costume exhibitions for other museums, including the Wexner Center and its presentation of Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire (1999) and Mood River (2002).