Following the series of great collaborations started in March 2013, the Centraal Museum Utrecht is the new curator of the Europeana Fashion Tumblr!

For this November, the Centraal Museum Utrecht – supporting member of the Europeana Fashion International Association and one of the original members of the Europeana Fashion project – has selected some of the most eccentric pieces from their collection to curate the Europeana Fashion Tumblr. The images will follow the overarching theme of all the other Europeana Fashion channels: the ‘extremes’ in fashion and costume, from the too big to the too small.

Bas Kosters, 2014, inv. nr. 33126. Collection Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Image & copyrights CMU/ Marc Deurloo.

The selection comprises pieces from the Museum’s contemporary collection, which includes the creations of international designers of the likes of Craig Green, Bas Kosters, Iris van Herpen, Jan Taminau, Hussein Chalayan, among others. The selection well represents the museum highly experimental view on fashion, expressed throughout the years with outstanding exhibitions, such as ‘HAIR! Human Hairs in Fashion and Art’ held from February to May 2016.

Craig Green, 2013-2014, inv. nr. 31872. Collection Centraal Museum; Utrecht. Image & copyrights CMU/ Ernst Moritz 2013-10-28.

The Centraal Museum is the oldest municipal museum in the Netherlands. It started its activity in 1830, on the top floor of the Utrecht town hall, thanks to the passionate amateur historian Mayor H.M.A.J. Van Asch van Wijck (1774 – 1843). It was when, after 1921, the Museum collection was merged with that of the many other peripheral private ones that it became the ‘central’ museum. In the same century, the museum also shifted its focus from antiquities to modern and contemporary fashion, design and art. Its attention to the contemporary brought the museum to collaborate with contemporary architects and designers in the renovation of the building and its interiors. Dutch designer Richard Hutton designed the Centraal Museum Chair and fashion designers’ duo Viktor & Rolf designed a denim suit with a green sash that served, though for a short time, as the museum attendants uniform.

Viktor&Rolf, 2005, inv. nr. 30036. Collection Centraal Museum, Utrecht; purchase with the support of Mondriaan Stichting 2005. Image & copyrights CMU/ Ernst Moritz 2005.

The Europeana Fashion counts 10.000 objects from the museum fashion collection. With pieces dating back to the fifteenth century, the collection is constituted both by garments, accessories and objects that document not only the history of fashion and costume, but of the wider fields of decorative and applied arts and its related practices.

Browse the collection on Europeana Fashion and don’t miss a post on the Tumblr!