Michael Mamp first fell in love with fashion as a child in Detroit. His mother worked as a dress buyer for a department store, and Mamp remembers being fascinated by the garments, sitting on the floor of her office running his hands through long hems hanging from the rack.
“Clothing has been among the central purposes of my life for as long as I can remember,” Mamp, 51, says today.
The fashion historian and new director and curator of the LSU Textile and Costume Museum was pulled to Louisiana in 2022, first as an associate professor. He was lured by the museum’s collection, which consists of 10,000 pieces from the likes of Chanel, Givenchy and more. In April 2023, he succeeded longtime director and curator Pam Vinci and now spends much of his time storing, cataloging, evaluating and restoring the priceless garments.
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He hopes exhibits he’s curated like “Coming Home: Geoffrey Beene,” which is now on display with over 200 donated pieces worth more than $240,000, will help bring more attention to the museum.
“The LSU Textile and Costume Museum is a unique repository of fashion and textile artifacts that doesn’t exist at many universities to the extent that it does here,” he says. “If you name any major American or European designer from the 20th century, we’re bound to have it here. … This collection was a unique opportunity for me to take sort of what was a diamond in the rough and turn it into something that would hopefully gain more local and national recognition.”
Mamp spent 14 years in the fashion industry in cities like Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia.
As a student, he studied with the goal of becoming a professor in a fashion or apparel program but felt that hitting the books wasn’t enough.
“I felt that I needed to have some industry experience because as a student, I always thought that was something lacking in my experience in the classroom. … So, I went to work thinking that it would be a one- or two-year thing, and it turned out I was good at it,” he says.
Today, Mamp involves his undergrad and graduate students to curate exhibits that educate the public and tell a story. In class, he teaches his pupils on topics like fabric draping, history of textiles and more. Recognition from students is what keeps the fashion-fueled fire of his youth aflame today, he says.
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“I’ve won a few awards in my career, which are always nice to receive. But what means the most to me is when I receive an email from a student that sometimes will say ‘I didn’t do as well in your course as I wanted to, but I just wanted to let you know that this was a really meaningful learning experience,’” he says. “To me, that’s the biggest accomplishment.” lsu.edu/textilemuseum
This article was originally published in the October 2024 issue of 225 Magazine.