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Stylists and fashion editors often describe the act of shopping as "adding pieces to your collection," as though the latest bucket bag were a work of art – and that choosing, buying and bringing it home were somehow on par with curating a museum exhibit. This characterization has always made me bristle, but I'm starting to come around, at least to the idea that there is merit in owning things that are worth preserving.

It started when my mother-in-law unexpectedly died a few years ago. It took us months to go through the clothes she had amassed – and preserved – throughout her life. Everyday garments were mixed in with cherished holiday outfits, stored in labeled boxes ("Sweaters: 1974") or tangled throughout several closets, from her 1967 column-style wedding dress and its floor-length white lace mantilla to boldly patterned home-sewn trousers worn as a teenager.

Soon after, the show "Roman d'une garde-robe" at Paris's Carnavalet Museum opened, surveying 30 years in the life of a single stylish Parisian, a saleswoman named Alice Alleaume, through the lens of her wardrobe. Compared to Alleume's Belle Epoque finery (she wore Lanvin, Worth and Doucet, among others), my mother-in-law's slacks and blouses may seem pedestrian, but they're banal only to fashion history. To me, they suggest another layer of understanding about (and a new appreciation for) a woman I'd only known in the last decade of her life.

I'm grateful that Japanese decluttering celebrity Marie Kondo's manifesto had not yet been published, or I might not have these layers of her cherished wardrobe to puzzle over.

Kondo espouses a method of divesting of anything that does not spark joy (she calls it KonMari for short – and also: branding); that may be a boon to Value Village, but her style of tough love can be ruthless.

It's true that there is a space and stuff crisis in North America, and crammed off-site storage facilities are evidence that we are in danger of being possessed by our possessions. (In the U.S., self-storage is a $25-billion industry.) Kondo urges people to purge – and in the spring especially we peddle castoffs at yard sales and unceremoniously bag the rest and pushed it through the flap of the donation bin, usually conveniently located in a liquor-store parking lot.

Now that my mother-in-law is gone, and there's no way to learn about the story and sentiment behind the clothes she chose (and then chose to keep), I find myself wishing she had pinned notes about occasions and dates to each garment, the way the late fashion plate Marjorie Merriweather Post did. The heir to the Postum (later, General Foods) fortune and at one time the wealthiest woman in America had an interest in dressing well, and as a collector of clothing, there are few like her. Only the fashion-mad Duke of Windsor's wardrobe comes close. It was amassed over 60 years and auctioned at Sotheby's in 1998, but it was divided into lots and dispersed.

Post knew better, and the statuesque heiress's wardrobe (carefully stored in trunks until 1997) is the subject of the comprehensive new exhibition "Ingenue to Icon" opening this week at the Hillwood Estate, Museum and Garden, her former residence in Washington, D.C. (an accompanying book will be published mid-June). Post's meticulously documented and preserved closet spans more than seven decades of not only historical fashion trends but of personal history; taken as a whole, it also reflects changing women's roles in the 20th century.

Nancy Rubin's 1995 biography of Post mentions that her father, C.W., lamented that his young daughter spent her entire allowance on clothing (a lifetime later, in 1971 at the age of 84, she was still spending more than $250,000 a year on apparel). Clothing became the noted art collector, socialite and businesswoman's first deliberate 'collection,' according to Howard Kurtz, Hillwood's associate curator of costume and textiles and a professor of design at George Mason University. "At the turn of the century, the Paris exposition was the first time that fashion was ever really shown to the public," he says. "From that moment, it took off and Marjorie was right there."

Merriweather's cataloguing began in 1903, when she pinned a handwritten tag on her ivory tulle and taffeta Sweet Sixteen birthday dress and continued until her death in 1973 – through four marriages and a life in art, business and philanthropy.

As Kurtz explains, no one else – not even socialites – were saving their dresses at the time. In the late 1930s, he says, Post sent out letters to a variety of museums asking them to consider taking her complete garment collection. "This was as the Met was just starting their costume collection," he notes. A letter in the Hillwood archives indicates that institutions replied but only with an interest in taking one or two pieces. "She had this moment of clarity," says Kurtz, "when she came back from Russia [her then-husband was ambassador] and saw that everything there was being dispersed, and the first thing she tried to save was her clothing."

Much like an art collection, a wardrobe can be a matter of interpretation and taste – and with Post, Kurtz suggests, her reliance on couture labels such as Worth and Callot Soeurs diminished as she became more confident in herself, instead working with dressmakers to express her own point of view. "You can see that [by the 1930s] she takes the lead. She is not going with major designers, or having a designer dictate. She's herself first."

Across the Atlantic, Edwardian socialite Heather Firbank made a similar move. Firbank put her clothes into storage in 1926; after her death in 1954, much of that wardrobe was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum and became the backbone of their now-famous 20th-century costume collection. As historian Jenny Lister points out in London Society Fashion, an item from the holdings has appeared in every single show of the V&A's permanent fashion galleries since they opened in 1962. Accessible to designers and researchers, her collection also inspired Cecil Beaton's Oscar-winning costume designs for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and was recently "invaluable" to Susannah Buxton's for Downton Abbey.

Firbank's carefully stored afternoon dresses, tea coats, tailored suiting and elaborate millinery (even sporting ensembles!) have provided insight into London society and made important contributions to English costume history. However, it wasn't until Lister and co-author Cassie Davies-Strodder undertook the research of their new book that the personal history behind Firbank's collection emerged. Through receipts and correspondence with dressmakers, they have reconstructed her daily routines, social engagements and even the evolution of her financial and social status – and in doing so, have gained a better understanding of her personality. Thanks to her famously well-preserved clothes, the story of the woman in the dress is known for the first time.

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