The Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History is a non-profit organization located in Palm Beach County, Florida. It hosts the Barbie Museum exhibit.
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The Museum of Lifestyle Fashion History is presently located at the Boynton Beach Mall in the City of Boynton Beach, Florida.Previously, the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History was located in the Pineapple Grove Plaza in the 300-block of the Pineapple Grove Arts District in the City of Delray Beach, Florida. From 2003-2005, the Museum occupied, rent-free, an 8,000 square feet (740 m2) facility at the Pineapple Grove Plaza that was owned by AM Davis Mercantile. In year 2005, the plaza was sold to a new owner who demolished it for redevelopment which forced the Museum to go homeless along with another non-profit cultural group that was located in that same plaza.
The Museum had led efforts to temporarily occupy the old Downtown Delray Beach Library facility (which was being vacated by the library association) to keep from going homeless, however, an agency of the City of Delray Beach denied the Museum's request for temporary shelter.
After nearly four years of homelessness, in year 2009, the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History opened in a donated 8,000 square feet (740 m2) space at the Boynton Beach Mall in Boynton Beach, Florida. Renovations were done in the facility to create three gallery spaces to host permanent and rotating exhibitions and an education room to be used for school field trip visits. There are two permanent history exhibits at the Museum: the Fashion Treasures exhibit showcasing fashions from the 1800s to present; and the Barbie Museum gallery chronicling the anthropological impact of this world famous doll.
Additionally, since year 2004, the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History has been conducting Narrated Bus Tours of Historic Delray Beach, Florida.
The Barbie Museum is inside the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History in Boynton Beach, Florida at the Boynton Beach Mall.[1] The Barbie Museum at the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion is the only permanent Barbie Museum of its kind located in Palm Beach County, Florida and the entire State of Florida.
The exhibit display at the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History includes hundreds of vintage, original and collector edition Barbie dolls, her family members and friends; and clothes and accessories dating from the doll's beginning in 1959 to now.
Efforts were started in 1999 to raise monies to establish the non-profit Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History to feature a permanent gallery for the Barbie doll and the doll's popular culture history.[1][2][3] Additionally, to compliment the Barbie Museum, the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History has a permanent rotating small-format exhibit about fashion history from the late 1880s to present.
1999 idea developed for this unique museum devoted to Barbie doll history when then 27-year old Lori J. Durante conceived, organized and curated an exhibit entitled: "40 Years of the Barbie Doll: In Celebration of Women's History Month".[1][2][3] Durante had worked as a fashion stylist for Boca Raton Magazine and Worth Avenue Magazine and also a fashion writer for other publications. In 1998, Durante came up with a fashion news story idea about Barbie's 39th birthday for a news article she wrote for Jezebel Magazine. The research about the Barbie and the subsequent news story that Durante wrote inspired Durante to create an exhibit display about the doll for her 40th anniversary in 1999 to be located in Delray Beach,Florida.
For this exhibit display, Mattel, Inc. loaned to Lori J. Durante multi-cultural and collector edition Barbie dolls that came from the Mattel, Inc. archives in California. This small-format exhibit included a showcase of dolls from both Mattel and private collectors. The Barbie doll show became a blockbuster exhibit with more than 20,000 attendees from all over the State of Florida, the U.S. and from abroad. The exhibit became the number one exhibit in all of Palm Beach County, Florida and that attendance record for a locally created exhibit has not been broken yet.[1][2][3]
The idea developed in 1999 for this unique museum when then 27-year old Lori J. Durante conceived, organized and curated an exhibit entitled: "40 Years of the Barbie Doll: In Celebration of Women's History Month".[1][2][3] Durante had worked as a fashion stylist for Boca Raton Magazine and Worth Avenue Magazine and also a fashion writer for other publications. In 1998, Durante came up with a fashion news story idea about Barbie's 39th birthday for a news article she wrote for a new magazine in Atlanta, Georgia. The research about the Barbie and the subsequent news story that Durante wrote inspired Durante to create an exhibit display about the doll for her 40th anniversary in 1999 to be located in Delray Beach,Florida.For this exhibit display, Mattel, Inc. loaned to Lori J. Durante multi-cultural and collector edition Barbie dolls that came from the Mattel, Inc. archives in California.
This small-format exhibit included a showcase of dolls from both Mattel and private collectors. The Barbie doll show became a blockbuster exhibit with more than 20,000 attendees from all over the State of Florida, the U.S. and from abroad. The exhibit became the number one exhibit in all of Palm Beach County, Florida and that attendance record for a locally created exhibit has not yet been broken.
Since the establishment of the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History, this organization has presented more than twenty exhibitions including hosting traveling exhibits from the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D.C. The Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History is the only cultural organization in Palm Beach County that has been approved to present traveling exhibitions from the Smithsonian.
The Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History's permanent archival and artifact collection consists of more than 300 fashion items, clothes, accessories, household products, furnshings, decorative arts, toys and dolls; including ninety couture dresses designed by Arnold Scaasi that were given to the museum from a local historical society. The permanent fashion collection includes clothing by Chester Weinberg, Bill Blass, Hattie Carnegie and Stetson. Other exhibit galleries being planned at the Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History are for Lilly Pulitzer fashions; and also a gallery devoted to all-things Iris Apfel. Items from the Museum's permanent archival collection are shown alternately in the Museum's Fashion Treasures exhibit.