Momentum got out of the office to celebrate Women’s History Month and took a trip to New York Historical for a guided tour of the exhibition Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore. As it turns out, the costume designs in period drama movies like Pride and Prejudice and Little Women were actually accurate.

Account Executive Katrina Dizon, who says she “prefers to dress like Adam Sandler 99% of the time,” said she was shocked at “how women were expected to look prim and proper everywhere they went 200 years ago, even at home! Societal expectations strictly dictated what clothes women wore, and they sure wore plenty of clothes.”

We all were interested to see how much women’s fashion evolved throughout the decades, mainly thanks to the small acts of rebellion that women did to challenge norms. The exhibition was a fantastic physical representation of just how much women’s roles have changed drastically over the years across race and class. There was a time when a woman wearing pants to work was scandalous, for example, and now we don’t even give it a second thought.

Another exhibit at the museum, the Gallery of Tiffany Lamps, featured over a hundred expertly crafted, magnificent pieces. This exhibition also highlighted the hidden contributions of women. Although Louis Tiffany paid them fairly for their labor, he did not credit them for their creative contributions.