Timeless designs

For Angelenos, the name Anawalt is practically synonymous with home-and-garden supplies. For 84 years, the Anawalt Lumber Company has been a city staple, a welcome alternative to big-box hardware stores.

But for anthropologists, archaeologists and geographers across the globe, the name Anawalt is more likely to conjure images of ceremonial robes and shamanic costumes than plywood and potting soil. That's because Patricia Rieff Anawalt is an expert in the history of ethnographic clothing, particularly among non-industrialized cultures.

As a renowned researcher and founding director of the Fowler Museum at UCLA's Center for the Study of Regional Dress, Anawalt has changed the way scholars think about the role of textiles in the process of acculturation. Simply speaking, she brings clothing out of the closet, into the culture.

She is also the author of The Worldwide History of Dress, a 600-page tome to be published by Thames & Hudson, London, in November. Anawalt began the project in 1999, at the age of 75, and it consumed the next eight years of her life. It also features the Fowler prominently &emdash; a third of the pieces shown in Worldwide are textiles from the museum's collection.

See the complete story in UCLA Magazine Online.