Gone With the Wind dress faded forever

Efforts to restore several dresses from the film Gone With The Wind have shown that time has taken quite a toll on some of them. Scarlett O'Hara's green curtain dress is badly faded in areas. Her silk wedding veil is beyond repair.

Efforts to restore several dresses from the film Gone With The Wind have shown that time has taken quite a toll on some of them.

Scarlett O'Hara's green curtain dress is badly faded in areas. Her silk wedding veil is beyond repair.



But officials with Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas are pushing forward with efforts to get them into the best shape possible for the 75th anniversary of Oscar-winning Civil War movie in 2014.

Art conservator Cara Varnell has been working on the pieces to shore up the original stitching, remove alterations and decipher some of the changes that were made to the dresses over the decades. Varnell says color won't be added back into the faded areas of fabric.



The Ransom Center acquired the dresses in the 1980s when it took over the collection of movie producer David O. Selznick.