Carmen Miranda, a fashion icon of the 20th century. Study of materials for the preventive conservation of sequins in a fruit turban from the Carmen Miranda Museum collection (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Abstract
Carmen Miranda was a Brazilian singer and performer who after a successful recording and screen career became a Broadway and Hollywood star between the 1930s and 1950s. Her style was an interpretation of the traditional Baiana costume worn by street sellers in the Brazilian state of Bahia. The characteristic appearance of Carmen Miranda became an instant hit and had begun to influence female fashion almost immediately after her arrival in the United States in 1939, reaching up to the present day. The collection is currently at the Carmen Miranda Museum, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This collection not only represents the story of Carmen Miranda, but it also illustrates the richness in the way her clothes were made, as well as the different materials used. These materials represent a challenge from the point of view of modern and contemporary textile’s conservation. The constituents are in constant interaction with each other, becoming a challenge with regards to the interventive conservation. This master’s research proposed to understand the range of materials used in the sequins of one of the most famous objects of the Carmen Miranda Collection, the tutti-frutti headdress. For this purpose, the morphological characterization was carried out by optical microscopy with polarized light; the identification and quantification of constituent chemical elements and stratigraphic distribution by scanning electron microscopy combined with energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (SEM-EDX); the identification of the chemical composition of organic compounds through the IR spectrum by infrared Fourier transform spectroscopyin attenuated total reflectance mode (FTIR-ATR). Protein compounds, cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate were identified as constituents’ materials. The alterations in the sequins´ surface were identified as well as three types of different corresponding fissures.
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References
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