Gowns, gown designs rendered in watercolor and ephemera like ball invitations and favors add sparkle to the stories of the spotlighted individuals in the Presbytere exhibit “Pioneers of Women’s Carnival.” The marquee object in a display dedicated to parade throws doubles down on sparkle.
Its origin was Nicola Wolf’s initiative for her first Krewe of Muses ride in 2001. On her own, she “decided to buy some red high-heeled pumps in a second-hand store,” said Wayne Phillips, Louisiana State Museum curator of costumes and textiles and Carnival collections. She decorated the shoes with feathers and beads and wrote “Krew of Muses 2001” on each with a silver paint pen and handed most of them out to friends along the route. One, she kept and later donated it to the State Museum. It’s on view in the exhibit today. “One thing we can brag about is that we have the very first Muses shoe in our collection,” Phillips said. ”And it’s a really sweet story.”
The first krewe, Les Mystérieuses (“the mysterious ones”), presented just two leap-year balls in 1896 and 1900 then disbanded. “I think the women who founded this organization were probably still a little bit ahead of their time,” Phillips said.
Behind them, though, rolled a staggering procession of trailblazers – all catalogued alphabetically on a tall vertical text display in the exhibit, Adonis through Young Ladies 23 Club. There are more than 70 krewe names in all on that wall text, with a few presaging the current trend toward Carnival sustainability by recycling krewe names.
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