Bettmann/CorbisMary Wilson, left, and Cindy Birdsong of the Supremes with Princess Margaret in 1971.MEMBERS may have come and gone during the original two-decade reign of the Supremes, but the sequins and bugle beads always remained the same.
“Glamour was our signature,” said Mary Wilson, a founding member of the group and, as its longest-running participant, the unofficial historian of the Supremes. “Even when we were 15 years old and auditioning for Motown Records, we were wearing pearls we bought from Woolworth. We were totally into dressing up.”
On Wednesday, the African American Museum in Philadelphia announced that it will present a collection of Supremes fashion and memorabilia beginning in January in an exhibition called “Come See About Me: The Mary Wilson Supremes Collection.” The show includes many gowns that Ms. Wilson has maintained or collected since the beginning of the group in 1959.
Ms. Wilson has long sought to protect the legacy of the group and to remind audiences of the significance of their breakthrough in music and on television. Fashion was an important part of that story. Dressing in glamorous gowns was a conscious decision, Ms. Wilson said, to portray themselves as women who had raised themselves from poor backgrounds and succeeded.
While many of their costumes were lost over the years, Ms. Wilson maintained a personal collection and said she acquired several pieces when they became available on eBay. The gowns, including the famous Bob Mackie designs and many by the costume designer Michael Travis, belonged to the group, so whenever a member (Florence Ballard, Diana Ross or Jean Terrell) would leave, she had to leave behind her dresses.
“Eventually I was the only one left, and that’s basically how I had the Supremes’ gowns,” Ms. Wilson said. “I put the old ones in a box.”
Some of them, beaded from head to toe with pearls and rhinestones, weighed around 30 pounds apiece. There was one set of pink dresses that members called their Queen Mother gowns after a performance in London, when, as Ms. Wilson recalled, they were introduced to Princess Margaret.
“She said, ‘Ooh, is that a wig you’re wearing?’ ” Ms. Wilson said. “And I recall that on the next day, there was a photograph on the cover of one of the newspapers where I was looking at Princess Margaret like I could kill her. It wasn’t what she said, it was the way she said it.”
As noted in her legal battles with Motown Records over the years, Ms. Wilson is very protective of the image of the Supremes. She believes many of their important costumes were lost when the company moved from Detroit to Los Angeles. But she holds out hope that she and those dresses someday will be together. Say, say, say it again, Ms. Wilson.
“And you should put this in bold print,” she said. “If anyone knows where they are, I want my gowns back.”
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