Behind the Scenes at Museo del Traje

One of the objectives of Europeana Fashion portal is digitally disclosing the outstanding fashion-and costume collections of our partners. Due to the sensitivity and fragility of textiles, display of the collection in the physical world is always limited. Many objects are carefully preserved behind the scenes in a special storage area. Partner Museo del Traje in Madrid shows us around this rarely seen part of the museum where the actual preservation of fashion heritage takes place on a daily basis.

Textiles are fragile materials. Our storage area is organized depending on the nature of the materials of each collection. Many costumes are already protected in individual acid-free cotton bags, made-to-measure by our personnel, and we keep on producing these bags in order to store the whole collection.

Our goal is reducing manipulation to a minimum. Therefore, each bag has the garment number sewn in the outside, a small cut-out window protected with a semi-transparent acid-free fabric and a pocket in which we tuck a picture. This way we can identify the costume easily without opening the bag.

Well-preserved garments hang from padded hangers, while more fragile pieces and bigger outfits are kept in special boxes or in drawers.

A global anlaysis of conservation and display at Museo del Traje has been published by Carmen Pérez de Andrés (2008): “Una visión global sobre aspectos de conservación, restauración y montaje”, Indumenta. Revista del Museo del Traje (Madrid) 0: 23-32

Visit Museo del Traje’svirtual exhibitions and follow the museum on Facebook and Twitter.

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