Day 1 Europeana International Fashion Conference
Professionals from the museum and fashion industry got together with bloggers, journalists and other fashion enthusiasts today to attend the first day of the Europeana International Conference. Gathered in the Cenacolo di Sant’Apollonia in Florence, they enjoyed lectures in the bemusing auditorium and exchanged on fashion under the balmy Florentine sunshine.
Valerie Steele, Laudomia Pucci, Mariuccia Casadio and Kaat Debo. Image used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
The morning focussed on how archives, whether public or private, play an important role in stimulating creativity. How can the fashion industry interact with archival materials in the future? Stefania Ricci fromMuseo Salvatore Ferragamo illustrated how archival material can inspire new designs and Raffaello Napoleone from Pitti Immagine confirmed that “archives are places dedicated to memory that offer design inspiration.”
Another theme that recurred was the importance of being able to access fashion archives. Valerie Steele from Museum at FIT underlined how sharing images online alleviates obstacles like time and distance. Sonnet Stanfill from the V&A demonstrated how important access to archives was in preparation for her upcoming exhibition on Italian fashion. Kaat Debo from the MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp stressed the need to open up not only archives but also the workings of the museum in general in order to stay relevant as a museum.
Raffaello Napoleone, Valerie Steele, Laudomia Pucci, Mariuccia Casadio. Image used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
In the afternoon we moved on to galleries, libraries, archives and museums and their relationship to education. Linda Loppa from Polimoda emphasized the need for a renaissance in design and how the heritage of the past is needed to build the archeology of the future. Maria Luisa Frisa from IUAV University also added the necessity of discipline in learning visual languages as an underpinning for new creative processes and imagination. Louise Wallenberg took us through the development of the fashion studies program at Stockholm University, while Adelheid Rasche showed us the treasures of the Lipperheide Costume Library. Maria Canella from the University of Milan spoke about the importance of protecting archives and at the same transforming them into an engine of communication
As the day came to and end, the crowd headed off into the sparkly Florentine night for the gala dinner hosted on behalf of Polimoda. Go to our Flickr page to view all the photos or download the Europeana Fashion presentation.
Diane Pernet. Image used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
The conference's hostesses are all wearing Emilio Pucci scarves! Image used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/