Closet space is a precious commodity.
But in Jeff Mayer’s house, five of his six closets are crammed with clothes he doesn’t wear.
Mayer, 45 and an associate professor of fashion history and design at Syracuse University since 1992, has amassed a large private collection of vintage couture, perhaps one of the largest in Central New York.
More than 2,000 women’s wear garments compete for hanging room in the walk-in, hallway and attic closets of Mayer’s manicured Berkeley Drive home. There are so many Chanel jackets pressed against Bill Blass [10] beaded skirts that entire racks have to be removed in order to reach the tiers behind them.
Mayer’s storage space may not resemble the pristine shelves that line the white rooms at the Vogue offices, but unlike that famous fashion closet, his collection is rich in history and personal taste.
“I love beautiful things and beautiful clothing, because when it’s well done, it’s so perfect,” Mayer said. “Seeing a beautiful woman turned out in these outfits makes me so happy.”
Offset by the occasional estate sale, most of Mayer’s shopping is online, because, after all, he can shop on eBay even at 2 a.m.
Online vintage hunting isn’t just easier, it’s usually cheaper, too. An embroidered Bill Blass jacket hand-beaded by the House of Lesage [11] in Paris that retailed at $20,000 cost him just $500.
Bill Blass is a key flavor in Mayer’s palette. The thrust of the collection evokes Mayer’s interest in classic American couture by Blass and his contemporaries, such as Geoffrey Beene [12] and Donald Brooks.
This clean, approachable aesthetic with nostalgia for the `50s and `60s was something Mayer brought to his own line, Conover Mayer, which he co-designed with fellow SU fashion professor Todd Conover. Although Conover Mayer sold in the Mecca of high fashion retail – Bergdorf Goodman [13] – the label closed after an 11-year run in 2006. The company never recovered after its spring collection show was cancelled on Sept. 11, 2001.
Tucked in the farthest corner of Mayer’s sun-porch-turned-storage-room, samples from that line now hang in tandem with works from the designers that influenced them.
Mayer’s devotion to gathering examples of fashion history began the first summer he spent with his great aunt, Martha Caldwell, who taught fashion history, design and interior design at the University of Vermont.
Under his great aunt’s guidance from the age of 12, Mayer was enamored with the experience of clothing: the materials, the careful construction, the imagined stories of the women who wore such beautiful garments. Even at that young age, Mayer started collecting.
“I spent six summers with her. It was like I kept returning to this amazing internship,” Mayer said. “In 2004 when she died, 17 trunks showed up at my house. Unbeknownst to me, she had left me her entire collection.”
As the initial intent of his collection, Mayer sought to bring together clothes from 1800 to 1930 that reflect each decade’s fashion evolution. With his mind deeply buried in the styles of the past, Mayer earned a design degree from what is now the Portland Art Institute. He then studied fashion history at Linfield College in Oregon and went on to graduate work in museum studies and fashion history at the University of Connecticut.
With a background in garment preservation, Mayer is conscious of the vulnerable state of his collection. Continued contact with inhospitable temperatures and the oils on human hands can damage antique fabrics.
Mayer’s collection can’t hang unprotected in his house forever, which is why he may eventually donate it to the climate controlled facility of SU’s fashion program.
This would be a fitting resting place for a trove of garments that regularly travel to campus anyway. Toting canvas bags full of clothes to his classes each day, Mayer uses his collection to bring fashion history to life.
His students may not be able to hold an actual Ancient Greek peplos, but examining the draped creations of Mary McFadden informs their visual understanding.
Along with Bill Blass, Mary McFadden [14] gets top billing in Mayer’s collection. One of his closets solely houses her work, which eccentrically evokes ancient South American to Asian cultures. Mayer’s grouping of her couture garments is so large and encompassing that the designer contacted him six months ago about staging a retrospective exhibition of her career.
In 2008, Mayer designed, assembled and installed “Marie Antoinette: Styling the 18th-century Superstar,” [15]an exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art. With 20th-century designs worn by 48 opulently accessorized mannequins, the installation re-imagined how the infamous queen would have dressed as a modern “It Girl” of fashion.
“It was supposed to be pretty, like eating five pounds of sugar with a spoon,” Mayer said.
Couture-obsessed “It Girls” are an appropriate muse for a man like Mayer. Walk into his house, throw back the closet doors and you’ll no doubt believe a sorority of these women has invaded Mayer’s home.
