Vintage dresses on display

Today's designers of women's fashions might benefit from a Western Massachusetts exhibit of the finest women's wear from a bygone era.

Vintage dresses on display at the Mount Holyoke College art museum captivate their audience with a glimpse of what the well dressed women wore during the time after the Civil War to the start of the second World War.

Boratgh Som of Lowell told 22News she just can't get over those wedding gowns, “It's definitely very quality stuff, I mean it lasted, they look amazing, and also the women were very tiny, their waists were very tiny.”

Hanna Duff of Colorado Springs, Colorado agrees, “Some of them are exquisitely manufactured, like they were made yesterday and I'm also impressed by how women could have moved around around some of them just look so cumbersome, even the work clothes.”

Fashionable clothes from way back may be long out of style but still make quite an impression.

You can get close to these precursors to Prada at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum through the end of May.