Look at What He Did! A Behind the Scenes Look at the Many Shades of Being Darcelle

Before starting the project, Erickson had been familiar with Darcelle’s reputation as a famous drag queen and immediately realized Cole’s connection to the 2018 OHS exhibit, Portland Psychedelic, which she also helped curate. One of the posters on display in Portland Psychedelic (on exhibit at OHS from July 10, 2018, to March 17, 2019) was from a performance at Caffé Espresso, Cole’s after-hours club that was influential during the 1960s in developing the psychedelic rock scene in Portland. These two seemingly unrelated exhibits share a very important connection — Walter Cole — and reinforce his significance here in Portland and beyond.

For Many Shades of Being Darcelle, Horn worked with Cole to sort through over 1,500 costumes, and together they selected eight dresses and a denim jacket that represent different periods in Darcelle’s career. The costumes are displayed roughly in chronological order from left to right, starting with Gracie Hansen's 1965 dress that Cole purchased after her death in 1985 — Cole altered many of Hansen’s dresses to fit his six-foot frame. When Cole began performing as Darcelle, he had little experience sewing, and the first garment he created was a pair of white leather pants that he constructed on his living room floor. According to Horn, Cole attributes his abilities to the fact that he comes from a long line of tailors, including his mother and grandmother — and, he continues to pass along this tradition by teaching his daughter to sew.

Cole’s sewing skills improved over the years, as evidenced by the increasingly intricate and clever designs through the decades, including a dress adorned with colorful, pressed marbles. Horn explained that Cole affixed the marbles to the dress with a type of hot glue: “Back then, hot glue guns didn’t exist, so you had to purchase chunks of glue that needed to be melted down.”

Displaying special garments such as these requires skill and expert attention. Erickson explained how Darcelle’s costumes, some of which weigh upwards of twenty-five pounds, had to be carefully handled by OHS’s Curator of Collections, Helen Fedchak, to fit dress forms and hangers specially designed to support the garments. OHS exhibit production staff also spent time getting all the details just right, including Darcelle’s orange extension cord that trailed behind while illuminating the Christmas tree dress.