See how basketball and skiing athletic wear has become part of popular fashion, how surrealism in the fine arts in the 1930s has influenced fashion ever since and how the first couturier, Charles Worth, incorporated aesthetic ideas from Chinese and Japanese textiles into his great designs.

All these and more are in a new exhibition, "A Dialogue Across Time: Evolution and Change in Dress," in Room 317 of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall at Cornell University. The exhibition is free and open to the public and will be open until Aug. 22.

The exhibit is the outcome of research conducted by students in the course, Textiles and Apparel 675: Aesthetics and Meaning in World Dress, taught by Charlotte Jirousek, Cornell assistant professor of textiles and apparel in the College of Human Ecology. Each student conducted research and wrote a paper on a cross-cultural or cross-time comparison of dress. The exhibition illustrates that research, and demonstrates how social and cultural factors are reflected in appearance. Most of the garments and textiles used in the exhibition are drawn from the Cornell Costume Collection.

The exhibition is open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. To enter, request a key from Room 208, Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, the office for the Department of Textiles and Apparel Office.