The cultural community of fashion – the galleries, libraries, archives of fashion houses and museums – are at the forefront in the preservation and conservation of historic garments, shoes, accessories, sketching, photography, and all things fashion. This community represents a fundamental source of inspiration for modern creativity.
It also pushes for the recognition of fashion as an art form in its own right, and so the preservation of this cultural heritage is central to the mission of the Europeana Fashion project. This is a best-practice network that aims to unite professionals in the field while also serving as instrument of knowledge, made possible with the advances made in digital technology.
Recently the project held a conference in Florence, Italy that embraced a congregation of academics, curators, professionals and students from all over Europe, including special guest Valerie Steele, director of the Fashion Museum at the New York Fashion Institute of Technology.
Europeana Fashion currently comprises 22 partners from 12 countries, featuring both private and public libraries, archives and collections. The conference formed part of an ongoing project that aims to create a large digital library on fashion in order to preserve memories, as well as to organise digital content on fashion – text and images – which can be accessed by the public or professionals seeking inspiration. It is entirely specialised and dedicated to fashion culture.
In general, the cultural communities are among the first to capitalise on modern technology as a far-reaching tool for representation and communication. Digitisation presents new ways to show fashion collections to a wider range of people anywhere in the world, whether via image galleries or high-definition videos with a professional appearance.
Technology is therefore the foundation of the Europeana Fashion project, which is dedicated to keep alive the memories of revolutionary designers, not to mention the conservation of historic past and contemporary fashion, while capturing the culture of our time for inspiration and reflection to inspire future generations.
