Mae Colburn Inherits Grandmother's Collection of 632 Wool Skirts, Exploring Textile Legacy

New York textile artist Mae Colburn has inherited her grandmother Audrey's collection of 632 wool skirts, amassed from the 1960s to the 1990s. Audrey, born in 1922, sourced all skirts secondhand from thrift stores near her St Paul home, originally accumulating over a thousand before donating hundreds back. She stored the remaining skirts in basement boxes with newspaper, believing the ink repelled moths. Audrey, who played accordion with her musician father in South Minneapolis's Norwegian-American community, never identified as an artist or collector, but assessed skirts by touch for fabric quality, color, and pattern. She viewed them as material for other purposes, collecting various sizes for their fabric potential. Mae's mother once used skirt fabric strips in a graduate school weaving class to create a rag rug, setting a precedent for repurposing. Some skirts remain pristine, while others, like a pastel spring-weight wool skirt with mud splatters, carry untold stories. The collection is detailed in frankie magazine issue 131, available from the frankie shop or stockists.