From a Historical Fashion Passion Project to Cornell: Lydia Olivieri’s Journey

Your interest in historical fashion started long before your Polygence project. Where did it begin?

My project really started when I was old enough to pick up a sewing needle. I’ve always loved sewing, fashion history, and all of those things. I’ve always been a creative person, and my dad taught me how to fix a stuffed animal once when I was a kid. One thing led to another, and it all led me here.

Before I was sewing, I was taping dresses together with paper towels and tape. Sewing has been a huge part of my creative process, and I think a lot of my intelligence comes from the problem-solving skills involved in it.

My introduction to historical fashion specifically was through American Girl dolls. I’m a huge fan of Felicity. I bought a Felicity doll when I was 17 with my own money. Last weekend, I found a box set of her books at an estate sale, and I freaked out and ran to get them.

I’ve loved American Girl dolls and historical fashion since kindergarten, when I first read those books. I started making historical fashion items for my dolls, and by middle school, I was making them for myself.

I decided I wanted to step it up, especially during COVID, when that was what I spent a lot of my time doing. A historical outfit isn’t just an outside layer like modern clothing. There are a lot of structural support and use-based garments that go into it. Once I had made all the underlying pieces, I knew it was time to jump to something larger.

What made you decide to pursue the project through Polygence?

I was getting to a point where I needed resources I didn’t have access to in terms of research and studying. It’s a huge undertaking to create something with historical methods and do it as realistically and accurately as possible.

But really, for me, it was something I did for myself and my interests. I think a lot of people saw it as a box checker or something I had been externally pushed to do, but it felt like getting help and support for something I knew I had always wanted to explore.

That dress took me so much further than I ever could have imagined. But it was nice because it felt like recognition of something I had always had within me, not necessarily something I did strictly within or through Polygence.

Polygence was an extension of a passion of mine that I felt was finally being seen.

You said the project had a ripple effect. Where did it take you?

I ended up at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as an intern, which is where the painting that inspired the dress is held. I got to walk past it every day and smile and wink at it, which was great.

I got into Cornell shortly after. I’m involved in the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection, and I do research through it frequently.

I’m an art history major now, and my second major is independent research. It’s very similar to the skills I built doing this project. I’ve always been unconventional. For whatever reason, the things I like are always things people tell me I can’t do.

My current project is about the art market, and that’s not a pre-existing field of study at really any school at the undergraduate level. But it’s what I’m interested in, and I’m the type of person who wants to pursue it even if the infrastructure isn’t there.

This summer, I’m at an art-tech company called DMINTI. I’m working with art by some of the biggest names in living contemporary art to create tech-inspired pieces that are being shown all over the world. I’m doing a little producing and a little development.

I’ve always really loved what Polygence brought me, and it has had a huge ripple effect on my life. I still sew. I just don’t do it for research purposes anymore. Being home for the summer, I’ve spent a lot of time in my sewing room, just as I did in high school.

How did the dress help others at Cornell understand your interests?

I’m sure I mentioned the dress somewhere in my college application, but it became much more interesting when I actually got to Cornell and was able to talk to professors about the work.

The fashion program at Cornell is very business-forward and merchandising-focused. I’ve never cared about that. If I did, I’d be making clothes I wanted to see in stores.

Being able to say, “This is actually my interest,” has almost created a reputation for me. I stand apart in the art history department because of fashion. I stand apart in the fashion department because of history. Among general history lovers, I have that hands-on, experimental element.

I exist between a lot of departments, but I think the dress gives a pretty good explanation of where I stand. It’s a sample of the kinds of things I do, how my brain works, and what I enjoy.

I also recently had a family reach out to me and say, “We watched your video, and we loved it. Our daughter is interested in doing what you do.” I ended up talking to someone who was basically my age when I made that dress. I had no idea that was going to happen.

How can hands-on work become a form of research?

I’m involved in a lot of niche communities. I’m really into the local music scene where I live, and I also cosplay, so I’m interested in the convention scene. I’ve always been connected to the communities that inspire me.

There are a lot of people doing what I’m doing. I just don’t think they’re branching out in the same way I did, although I wasn’t knowingly trying to be revolutionary.

On YouTube, there’s a huge community around experimental archaeology. People make ancient recipes and eat them to see how they feel. They sleep on medieval beds to see how they feel.

There has been a push in the history community for embodied knowledge, or knowledge of the body and the senses, to be considered a valid empirical form of research and knowledge.

Especially in the fashion history community, there’s a recent push for an academic to be able to say, “I believe this is true because I felt it. I literally walked a mile in the shoes,” and for that to be valid, empirical, re-creatable research.

I’m very much there for that.

What are you researching now, and where do you hope it leads?

My independent research major is focused on the sociological elements of the art market and how the market is formed by people and their understanding of art.

Art is so inherently subjective that creating a market around it is treacherous, difficult, and hard to understand. I’m seeking to understand it better, including the structures that are in place and why they’re there. I would really enjoy having a job in the art market.

I started feeling that way because, in art history classes, I realized I was more interested in what everyone else had to say about a piece than what I personally had to say about it. I had a really fun time sitting back and synthesizing, on a greater level, what art meant to people rather than what art meant to me.

I think that’s in line with my original project. I wanted to understand how clothes shaped people’s lives, experiences, and relationships.

Now I’m interested in how art does that, but more specifically, how there is a market that is very opaque and difficult to break into or get knowledge about. I’m interested in how art shapes people’s lives to the point that there is now an institutional way to study that.

What advice would you give students who are choosing a research topic?

When I was interviewed a few years ago, I gave what I understood to be a pretty controversial answer to a similar question.

What I said was, “If you don’t know what you want to do, don’t do anything at all. Explore more, and when you find it, hit it.”

I remember my interviewer saying, “What? You’re telling people not to do Polygence?”

No. Polygence is amazing. You should pursue it if it’s within your reach and would be good support for you.

What I still believe, and what I believed at the time, is that passion drives everything. It is so central to everything I do.

In high school, I went to a vocational school focused on communications, broadcasting, journalism, and advertising. As soon as I chose that school, I was told by everyone, including the school, “You’re not going to get into an Ivy League school. You’re not going to be able to do it from here. We just don’t send our kids to those places.”

I said, “No, that’s not happening.”

I still have to explain myself all the time at college. People ask, “What’s your independent major? Why can’t you just choose a major?” I’m sure some people think it won’t yield the results I’m looking for, but I’m passionate about it, and I know that shines through.

My advice would be that if you feel like you have to explain your project to people, and they don’t immediately understand it but it makes sense to you, that’s when you know you have something great.

You shouldn’t look at other people’s projects and ask, “Which one of these should I replicate?” If you can’t see yourself doing the work or you’re not passionate about it, you’re not ready to do a project yet.

Wait, explore, and learn. Maybe there’s another universe where I never read the American Girl doll series, and I picked up a random book in high school about fashion history. I probably would have had the same feeling I did as a five-year-old.

Maybe you haven’t read that book yet. Maybe you haven’t taken that class yet.

Stick to your unconventional, wild dreams about what you want to do. If you’re passionate about it, that will be what people see first. People will allow for the discomfort that comes with not understanding something if you’re comfortable, confident, and sure that you have something special, because you probably do.

Why do you tell students to “be weird”?

In my independent research program, there are only about 15 of us per year from across the College of Arts and Sciences, and you have to apply to get in.

They are genuinely the smartest, brightest, most inspiring people I have ever met, and I’m surrounded every day by inspiring, smart people.

It’s because they’re doing things that don’t exist. I know people who are combining astrophysics and translation. I know people who are combining architecture and neuroscience. Those are two random examples, but every person’s project is that interesting and special, and they’re all that special as people. They’re unafraid.

We walk into class after huge assignments and big due dates and ask, “Does anyone know what they’re talking about? Do you understand your own project?”

It’s comforting to know that you don’t have to understand your project all the time. Being able to spend two and a half years fighting through that discomfort and lack of understanding purely because you want it that much is so beautiful and very human.

I think those are the people who are going to change the world because there’s nothing like it.

That feeds right back into my advice. My advice is to be weird. Just be weird. Be yourself. I don’t have a more eloquent way to put it.

I have gotten where I’ve gone in life by being unlike anyone else. People are drawn to that, and your experience will be unlike anyone else’s because of it.

Your skills, mindset, abilities, and perseverance will be unlike anyone else’s. You will meet people who are as persevering and determined as you, but they will never be exactly the same as you. That’s really important.

It’s not about being someone who has gotten in before. Be someone who hasn’t gotten in before. You’ll get in.

There’s a lot of grit in that room. It’s really cool. I think a lot of that confidence was born out of a project like this.

What do you want a student who sees your project to know?

If you’re thinking about doing something like this, you probably already have it in you.

Most people who don’t have a clearly defined passion for knowledge aren’t thinking, “How can I put more work into my life to figure out something that isn’t necessarily going to mean something to me?”

If knowledge and curiosity mean something to you, you’re in the right place.

So few people in this world, especially with the rise of assistive technologies, have the drive to do something that cannot be shortcut, cannot be done for you, and cannot be explained to you because you have to go do it yourself.

To tie it back to history, if you go to a museum and look at something someone made, you might think, “How did anyone have time to do that?”

Discomfort and discovery are really important for your brain. Putting your head down and doing a repetitive task is good for your brain. Doing a difficult task and doing something hard are good for your brain.

Life isn’t about trying to succeed by doing as few hard things as possible. It’s about seeing how many hard things you can do.

If you want to do a hard thing, that means you probably can do it, and you probably should. It will probably be really good for you, and you might really like it.

I don’t know many people who would willingly sit in front of a sewing machine for hours when they could just buy something. But I think that’s a pretty good analogy for Polygence.

If you could just Google something, get an okay answer, and be happy with it, you wouldn’t be here.

Acknowledge and nurture that part of yourself because it’s hard to come by, and it means something to the world, even if you don’t think it will.

I had no idea people would still be talking about my project. It was born out of curiosity and a thirst for knowledge and understanding. If you have that, it is literally the best thing you could have. Don’t let it go to waste.