Arts&Life

exhibit

52 | NOVEMBER 21 • 2019 

In Pursuit of

Sandy Schreier’
s couture 

collection gets a high-

profi
 le exhibit at New York’
s 

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
S

andy Schreier goes way beyond 
thinking clothes can make the 
woman. For her, they make a 
personal collection — reaching almost 
15,000 items and counting. The latest 
acquisition, received in November, 
continues more than a half-century 
fascination with 
fashion-design artistry. 
Schreier, a lifelong Michigan resi-
dent, is about to share a selection of 
her favorite upscale garments with 
visitors at the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art (the MET) in New York City, 
where singular items from her hold-
ings intermittently have been shown to 
enhance various themes. 
“In Pursuit of Fashion: The Sandy 
Schreier Collection” will be on view 
Nov. 27-May 17 to showcase about 
80 of 165 promised gifts to the Met in 
keeping with its Collections Initiative 
celebrating the museum’
s 150th anni-
versary. Famed designers represented 
include Pierre Balmain, Christian 
Dior, Elsa Shiaparelli and Valentina.
“The only people who ever offered 
me collecting encouragement, besides 
my husband, were Met staff members,
” 
says Schreier, who began visiting the 
museum as a teenager and is thrilled 
about the display and the namesake 
catalog that accompanies it. “They 
gave me validation that I was doing 
something really wonderful.
“It didn’
t dawn on me how wonder-
ful it was until my husband, Sherwin, 

and I took our first trip to London in 
the 1970s and went to the Victoria and 
Albert Museum. There was an exhib-
it, ‘
Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil 
Beaton,
’
 that changed my life forever. 
“There were hundreds of pieces 
done by the great designers of the 
world, and there were pieces by the 
same designers I had. That’
s when it 
dawned on me that these weren’
t just 
pretty dresses. This was a serious col-
lection.
”
Schreier’
s venture into acquir-
ing high-power fashions began in 
childhood as she watched her father, 
Edward Miller, at Russeks, a local 
branch of the New York store that fea-
tured designer wear. With her dad as a 
manager, she got to meet well-dressed 
women in the area, and they began 
gifting her what they had worn for 
special occasions.
“When I was old enough to drive, I 
went to Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield 
Hills for any kind of dignified [home-
based] sale,
” Schreier recalls. “I let it be 
known to everybody that I was inter-
ested in clothes. 
“What really threw me over the top 
was starting to make television appear-
ances. People called me from all over 
the world. Print publicity also helped 
a lot.
”
In her search for high-power outfits, 
Schreier early on was introduced to 
designers as she did some modeling. 
Isaac Mizrahi, recently in Michigan 

Fashion

IMAGES COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART PHOTOS © NICHOLAS ALAN COPE

TOP: The Metropolitan Museum of 
Art created a book about Schreier’
s 
collecting and her collection.
ABOVE: 
Sandy Schreier and her late 
husband, Sherwin. 

continued on page 54

COURTESY SANDY SCHREIER