Europeana Fashion International Conference 2015 Antwerp: Digital Fashion Futures (Day 2)

After a first day of speeches and lectures it was time to put all information of day 1 into practice on the second day of the Europeana Fashion Conference ‘Digital Fashion Futures’.

Through workshops and panel discussions about intellectual property, usage of the Europeana Fashion platform, prosumers and fashion online and what skills and competences are needed in a digital fashion era, the audience became an active participant during these sessions. The aim was to motivate, inspire and hand out tools to everyone for their journey of sharing historical costumes and collections in an online database.

 

New chances for the future

In her opening lecture Mila Ernst, project leader of Modemuze connects the themes of the day to the development of the project. Modemuze is an online platform initiated by seven Dutch museums and aims to connect their fashion and costume collections and present them as a source of inspiration to a broad audience of fashion lovers and professionals.

“Years of knowledge can be shared with the general public!”, says Mila Ernst. “It is an age where consumers become prosumers. There is so much knowledge amongst us.” Ernst described a subculture of people who have a fascination for historical costumes and are called re-enactors. They design their own dresses and wear them for historical dancing and accompanying soirees. There is a lot of knowledge hidden there.

And what about the costume pinners on Pinterest who yearn for more historical clothing online? Through Modemuze and Europeana Fashion, they will be able to access databases filled with items from their favorite times.

In order to achieve this, it is clear that collaboration with other parties is the key. As such, Modemuze works together with Europeana Fashion. The goal of Modemuze is to have more interactions with the general public.

For example, a group of fashion students got the opportunity to visit the archives of the Dutch Rijksmuseum to see the amount of treasures that are stored there. ”Online presence is a must. Interests are merging. The digital world opens up new chances for the future!”, says Mila Ernst.

 

Interacting with your audience

In her lecture, Kaat Debo Director of MoMu (Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp) couldn’t agree more.  But she expresses that analog and digital can coincide and complement each other. Kaat Debo explains that awareness and a digital strategy were needed in every department of the museum in order to become interactive with their public and digitalize their collections.

Together with the Artesis University College Antwerp they started the project ‘Open Fashion’. This is a database of the collections and library of MoMu, student portfolios from the Royal Academy of Arts and the Contemporary Fashion archive – an information network on the fashion industry set up through a cooperation between five European institutions.

Archiving and structuring their database seems to be a tough task for MoMu. “Not all the images can be uploaded due to intellectual property”, explains Debo. They try to solve this by making as much agreements with designers as possible. Another issue that occurs, is having an easy access digital management system comes with a price. Funding is needed.

On a positive note, however, MoMu receives many compliments on the way they interact and communicate with their audience through Facebook and Instagram. They notice that these mediums have a higher speed and reach a larger audience.

But it does not stop there. Building a 10 square meter interactive wall at the entrance of the museum was another stepping stone in their digital adventure. Visitors and people who walk by can swipe and press on fashion images related to the museum and get information about them.

What is next for this museum? For the future Kaat Debo sees an opportunity of uploading images from the archives on your smartphone. She also feels that having a shared donations tool gives the future an interesting perspective. Maybe it is even possible to donate an euro by using your fingerprint in an app? Who knows.

 

Influence of online developments, a workshop hosted by Modemuze

Clearly, online developments influence the professional attitude of everyone working in the fashion sector. In the workshop ‘Virtually Everyone’ – headed by Rachid Naas – a wide variety of the sector’s opinions were represented and dicussed.

Panel member Branko Popovich for instance, who is co-director of FASHIONCLASH and a freelance reporter, feels that online developments in terms of social media give him more creative freedom. “In the past we only had social networking sites such as Hyves and Myspace. There are so many new websites now. Borders disappear. Designers out of different countries come and join FASHIONCLASH. It gives more creativity.” FASHIONCLASH connects talent, various disciplines, cultures and a broad audience through fashion events and projects such as the annual FASHIONCLASH festival.

Jonathan Chippindale of Holition hopes that this discussion about digitalisation does not occur in the future anymore. ‘Your digital and business strategy should be the same. There are new challenges. We are experimenting, fear, risk but also huge opportunities. Which are difficult but exciting!’, he says enthusiastically. His company Holition, based in the UK, uses emerging technology to create digital experiences that bridge the gap between technology and retail.

Steven Dahlberg, who is the Fashion Director of men’s magazine JFK, feels that their magazine cannot be replaced by a digital version. ‘We make a magazine to be something people want to keep and save. Internet cannot replace the feel and smell of paper.’

 

Intellectual property and using the Europeana Fashion platform

Sharing collections from archives of museums online is a great and innovative idea, but some of the images are copyrighted as Kaat Debo mentioned in her lecture. The panel discussion “handling intellectual property in fashion images”, chaired by V&A’s Roxanne Peters, gives some directions for where to look for answers. Know the rules of intellectual property of the country you are in! Right management of intellectual property is everything. Be practical, protect yourself and manage your risks.

Luckily there is always an opportunity to use the Europeana Fashion platform to your advantage. In the workshop “Using the Europeana Fashion platform. Tools, best practices and user cases”, panelists described their experiences in using the platform by providing their digital content to it. Even if abbreviations such as ‘API’ or ‘HTML’ scare you, you will be able to join the Europeana Fashion content pool and learn all about how to do this, explains Ykje Wildenborg from Centraal Museum Utrecht.

And it is true, with so much information on new trends and developments one can feel lost and uneducated on these topics. Although it did not become quite clear how to overcome the challenges of the internet from the workshop ‘Skills and competences for the Digital Fashion Era’, there was a lot of space for experiences and information from some of the panelists.

Virtual Fashion Designer Jacob Kok for instance gave the audience the opportunity to experience virtual reality in a fashion environment by placing a virtual reality 3D device on their heads.

 

The End

In the closing session ’Europeana Fashion: Communicating Fashion Heritage Online’ communication director at Europeana Fashion Allessandra Arezzi Boza focused on the project’s Tumblr. They share never seen before collections for users to get inspired and share online. On their Tumblr they came up with a curation idea called: ‘SHOWCASE’, where participants have been asked to select some images from the Europeana Fashion database to illustrate what fashion heritage means to them.

This Europeana Fashion conference marks the end of three year collaboration between the initiating partners of the project and partners that have joined the project along the way. The road towards the online fashion database has been paved and many challenges overcome, but as the conference experiences indicate: there is still a lot to be achieved also. Both Europeana Fashion and Modemuze will continue to research and adapt their presence on the web and the way they connect to the larger fashion and costume domain.

 

 It’s especially https://order-essay-online.net important to address privacy in school settings where we’re seeing an increase in bullying