For more than five decades, Professor Kiki Smith ’71 has developed and curated the outstanding Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, a unique archive of over 4,000 (mostly everyday) American garments and accessories, covering two centuries of what women wore. The New York Times’s Chief Fashion Critic, Vanessa Friedman, has referred to the Collection as an “anthropological road map” to women’s lives, and the Collection now is used by teaching faculty across Smith’s curriculum.

Professor Smith has earned the College’s prestigious Sherrard Award for teaching and has, over many decades, also won the hearts and minds of former students, many of whom return regularly to help her curate the Collection as knowledgeable volunteers.

Her first book, REAL CLOTHES, REAL LIVES: 200 YEARS OF WHAT WOMEN WORE, is now in its second printing at Rizzoli. She is working on her next Rizzoli book: MAKING STRIDES: WOMEN IN PANTS.