Boston — Walking into this dimly lighted room on the first floor of the Museum of Fine Arts is a little like walking into your great-grandmother's attic, minus the dusty boxes and mothballs.
Of course, your great-grandmother would have to be a sartorial superhero to have clothing like this.
Dazzling muffs embellished with everything from fur to feathers grace one wall. Nearby, a mannequin wears an expertly wrapped and intricately woven sari with gold threads.
Brightly colored "stomachers," decorative pieces of fabric attached to the front of corsets, are laid flat in a display case for close examination.
All the items are part of "Head to Toe: Selections From the Costume Collection," a new exhibit that runs through July 29.
The show focuses primarily on unusual accessories, many of which are no longer used and were extremely cumbersome to wear.
One of the most fascinating items in the collection looks like a satin baby's shoe with a small tassel on the end. It's a "lotus-foot" shoe, an impossibly small-looking slipper, about the size of a lemon, which Japanese women wore after a lifetime of binding their feet.
The lotus-foot shoe isn't the only unusual fashion accessory. A wall covered in hats includes a "kokoshnik," a 19th-century embroidered Russian headdress that only married women could wear, and a Peruvian hat made between 400-800 A.D. Dozens of braids of human hair hang from it.
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