New Europeana collaboration opens up access to a million fashion objects

Press Release - 4 May 2017 - Fashions curators, academics, students and enthusiasts can now discover and explore more than a million fashion images contributed by nearly 40 museums and fashion brand archives from 13 European countries on the Europeana platform.

Europeana Fashion brings together an incredible wealth of content including historical clothing and accessories, contemporary designs, catwalk photographs, drawings, sketches, catalogues and videos from museums and archives across Europe, and provides a range of exciting new features for users to explore them. The Europeana Fashion collection launches on the Europeana platform with new galleries curating the collection by themes, such as fashion illustrations, sportswear, prints, or Haute Couture, and highlights by fashion experts. Fashion lovers are invited to tailor the content themselves: they can now access exactly what they are looking for by using new filters including designers, techniques, materials, and types of clothing. The collection also features exclusive editorial content, including blog posts and online exhibitions. The first one to launch, “Past to Present: Fashion Re-Interpretations”, explores the inspiration and influence of historical costumes on contemporary fashion.

The Europeana platform provides a unique space for heritage institutions to showcase and share their collections online, enabling visitors to search and download high quality content: users can compare fashion movements and styles across time periods and regions across Europe. Contributing institutions include public museums, like the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), Les Arts Décoratifs (France), MoMu (Belgium), as well as fashion brand archives, such as the Missoni archive, the Emilio Pucci Archive and the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, and archives of fashion photographers, as Paul Van Riel and Etienne Tordoir, amongst many others.

Previously hosted on an independent website, the collection is now fully integrating to the Europeana platform to live alongside Europeana Art and Europeana Music. The collection will be curated by the Europeana Fashion International Association experts, who developed and enriched it over the past 5 years.

Marco Rendina, Technical Director, says “we are delighted to provide access to more than a million fashion items and join the bigger Europeana family to share the powerful advantages the platform has to offer”. The Fashion collection will benefit from the technical advancements and new features developed on the platform by the Europeana Foundation. Harry Verwayen, Europeana Deputy Director, says “Europeana Foundation is very pleased to increase our collaboration with the Europeana Fashion International Association, and to welcome their curatorial expertise on the Europeana platform”.

ENDS

Contact

Marta Franceschini - Europeana Fashion International Association

E: mfranceschini@europeanafashion.eu

Camille Tenneson - Europeana Foundation
E: Camille.Tenneson@europeana.eu

Eleanor Kenny - Europeana Foundation
E: Eleanor.Kenny@europeana.eu

Notes for editor

Europeana Collections are the result of a uniquely collaborative model and approach: the web platform is provided by Europeana, the content comes from institutions across Europe, while consortiums will provide the theme and editorial expertise to bring the content alive for visitors through blogs and online exhibitions. Europeana Music and Europeana Art were the first Europeana thematic collections to be delivered in this way.

The Europeana Fashion International Association is a non-profit organisation established in order to bring together and engage fashion institutions (both GLAMs - Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums - and the creative industry) in the valorisation and exploitation of fashion heritage online. One of the main objectives of the Association is to maintain and enrich the Europeana Fashion aggregator, through which more than one million fashion objects can be accessed, shared and promoted online, and that brings together more than 35 public and private archives and museums, coming from 13 European countries, in order to collect and give free access to high quality digital fashion content, ranging from
historical dresses to accessories, catwalk photographs, drawings, sketches, videos, and fashion catalogues.

Europeana is Europe's digital platform for cultural heritage, collecting and providing online access to tens of millions of digitised items from over 3,500 libraries, archives, audiovisual collections and museums across Europe, ranging from music, books, photos and paintings to television broadcasts and 3D objects. Europeana encourages and promotes the creative re-use of these vast cultural heritage collections in education, research, tourism and the creative industries.

Europeana DSI is co-financed by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility