Year-End Update: Revisiting Scenes and People From 1986 View Stories : A Saggy Dress Story Stirs America

View has revisited some of the people and places it reported on in 1986 to update their stories. Among them:

--A shelter for the homeless that was itself homeless.

--An author who had new ideas about how to market and promote his book.

--The campaign to save Nancy Reagan’s 1981 inaugural gown, which is stretching under the weight of its bugle beads.

Every now and then, a crisis captures the heart of America.

Such was the case last June, when it was reported that Nancy Reagan’s 1981 Inaugural ball gown, displayed on a mannequin at the Smithsonian Museum, had a growing problem: It was growing. The one-shoulder white sheath was stretching and drooping to the floor under the weight of buckets of bugle beads that designer James Galanos had sewn on it.

Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau did strips on the dress in distress, and from this was born a save-the-gown movement. To stabilize the frock, $10,000 would be needed, and the Gramm-Rudman budget cuts made that impossible.

As Americans have done in so many times of need, they got excited, sent money and forgot all about it.

But the crisis is not over. Hems Across America fell short. Or, in this case, fell long.

“The dress is continuing to droop,” said Renee Kortum, director of external affairs at the Smithsonian Museum.

Californian Sent $1,000

Although a man from California sent $1,000, and children from sea to sea sent baby-sitting money, only $5,000 was raised, according to Kortum.

At the time Mrs. Reagan’s dress sagged into the news, museum officials seized the opportunity to tell America that other dresses in the much-visited First Ladies Hall were dissolving as well, including those worn by Julia Tyler, Sarah Jackson, Jane Pierce, Frances Cleveland and Ida McKinley.

Hanging a dress on a mannequin and exposing it to the elements, even to the subdued lighting in the hall, has the effect of wearing the dress every day for years. Colors fade, threads dissolve, seams rip apart and the dresses stretch, especially those that are heavily decorated.

The good news is that even though only $5,000 was gathered, the crisis prompted 12 interested people to form a group that is now planning gala fund-raisers in Los Angeles and Washington to raise $500,000 for a major renovation of the whole First Ladies Hall.

The dress-rescuers do not want their identities known yet, Kortum said, until their plans are more firm. But they are firm enough that the Smithsonian is planning to shut down the hall and either store the dresses or send the collection elsewhere, “hopefully to the West Coast,” said Kortum, while the hall is rebuilt.

“We’ve totally rescheduled the hall and are closing it down for 1988 and 1989,” said Kortum. “In 1990, the new Hall opens, with the gown from the new First Lady.”

One of the most frequently visited exhibits in the Smithsonian complex, the First Ladies Hall needs new drapes, carpets, paint and glass cases, as well as $70,000 worth of conservation work on old dresses, Kortum said. Funds for the renovation will all come from “private donations,” she said.