Determined not to miss yet another new exhibition, and at the same time also to get a chance to really take a closer look at the new ROM, I marched off to the new Textiles & Costumes display space. It was worth the 'trip to Toronto' to borrow from the former leather town slogan.

The original ROM, now encircled by the Lee-Chin Crystal—the process of building this cantilevered steel structure had the fanciful title of Renaissance ROM—draws attention to itself as it never could before. Walking along Bloor Street toward Queen's Park and Avenue Road, the eye is drawn to the sharply pointed shapes, the brainchild of international architect, Daniel Libeskind. The ROM, therefore, is now more than ever a destination for locals and visitors alike.

This piece, however, is not about the ROM's now look, it is about opening of the Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles & Costumes. The addition to the ROM has ensured a new space for the huge collection of more than 50,000 pieces of textiles, textile artifacts, and costumes. On display just now are about 250 pieces, a mere drop in the ocean of textile wealth the museum owns. Naturally, the exhibit will change over time as pieces are removed to be replaced with others in rotation. This will ensures not only that visitors will get to see something new on future visits to this space, but also it will ensure that the artifacts are not damaged by light and other environmental effects that are hazardous to cloth.

The current exhibit features items from as early as the 1^st millennium BC to the current century. There is plenty of variety in the selection that reaches from the South American west coast to the Mediterranean, Middle East and Asia, from Africa to Europe and of course, to Canada. While we might think that the oldest piece in the exhibit would come from the Middle East, we discover with pleasurable surprise that the Andean Paracas culture, once thriving in the Paracas Peninsula of modern-day Peru is the source of an intricately woven and embroidered mantle dating from somewhere around 200BC - AD 200. This, of course, shows that for far too long we have undervalued the highly-developed cultures of the Americas.

Three looms of widely different societies bring to our attention that weaving is a very ancient craft and art form. On display is a Jacquard loom used by German immigrant Wilhelm Armbrust, who introduced this 'computerized' weaving to Canada when he settled in the Niagara peninsula, where he died in 1904 in Ridgeville. One uses the term 'computerized' because the loom used punch cards to control a sequence of operations, which allowed intricate patterns to be created. Alongside Armbrust's weaving, the exhibit also presents a Jacquard coverlet woven by Edward Graf on a loom he imported to Ontario from the United States. He also lived in the Niagara Peninsula, which had a substantial Pennsylvania German community, where he died in Gasline, near Port Colborne, the same year as his fellow weaver, Armbrust.

Far simpler looms from Togo and Cameroon in sub-Saharan Africa show that it took many different forms over the centuries to produce designs of huge variety. The materials on displayed on the looms are not attributed to any artisan. This is, of course, the case in the vast majority of materials on display. No one knows the name of the weaver of the lovely Tiraz fragment from mid-12th century Egypt, nor that of a tapestry square woven with linen and wool in the 4th-5th centuries in Egypt.

No one will ever know who wove the hinggi kombu, a man's ceremonial mantle from Indonesia's Eastern Sumba Island from around 1900-25 that features animal and plant designs. Nor will we know who created the design and who wove various European silks and other dress fabrics ranging from the 15^th century Italian Renaissance to the Baroque and then Rococo periods of 18^th century France.

But, it isn't just the fabrics of a wide variety that catch the eye, but the dresses and suits made from the simplest to the most fanciful materials and designs. In a sense one envies the ladies and gentlemen of earlier centuries, whose attire is far more eye-catching and elaborate, even elegant, than today's sorry excuses for fashion. Oh, for the days when men and women still knew that there is a difference between daytime and evening wear, between casual wear and clothing appropriate for the workplace. While the various items of attire on display are not the kind worn by common people, these items tell us a lot about ourselves today, when wearing evening shoes with jeans, or sneakers (or whatever they are called now) with a tuxedo are all right.

On display is a women's toga dress from London's Vivienne Westwood. Created as part of her Nostalgia of Mud series of 1982—her first to be shown in Paris—this T-shirt dress features a long train on which is printed Henri Matisse's design, Femme et singes (Women and monkeys). This is one of Matisse's many serigraphs; its origins can be found in his brief association with Les Fauves around 1905-7. Westwood apparently took the design off a lithograph created of Femme et singes after Matisse died in 1954. It, unfortunately, fails to catch the eye because Westwood had it reproduced in brown on a dull green cotton material, and in the display the train is wrapped awkwardly around the mannequin that holds the dress.

Thor Hansen (1903-74), who emigrated to Canada from Denmark in 1927, made it his career to develop a 'Canadian' style for commercial application. He based his designs on images from Canadian nature, which were reproduced in Ontario and Quebec for sale across Canada and the USA as furnishing materials. The design on display was intended for cottages and home dens.

There are two beautiful quilts, both from Ontario, in the display, an embroidered dress apron from England, a stunning Chinese empress' surcoat, a women's corset from c. 1880-85, a de Givinchy 1956 two-piece women's day suit, and many more items than can be listed here.

The clothing displays are, for the most part, walk-around to give the viewer a full look at the various pieces of attire, male and female. The display space is 6,499 square feet in size, with walls that soar up to 43 feet in height, giving the room a cathedral-like appearance. At its top there is one small window, which has been covered to avoid the daylight from damaging the materials on display. These spacious walls seem somehow wasted space, as is the large slanted box at the entrance of this gallery with a huge screen on which appear strangely unrelated images to the content of the textile gallery. Perhaps in time this will be more harmonized. Two other 21^st century touches speak to the subject at hand. One is a video of a men's suit being created by one of Toronto's few bespoke tailors (i.e. a custom-made suit) for donor William Harris, husband of the woman for whom the ROM's textile and costume gallery has been named. The other is a video of the process of creating a print design. It is quite delightful to follow.