The archive of a company is its heart, it preserves its memory and its DNA

Why are Fashion Archives so important?

The transition from the 20th to the 21st century, globalization and the financial crisis represented a turning point in both production and management for all manufacturing and industrial systems. The fashion system, being one of the strongest production sectors in the Italian panorama, must not forget the importance of a constant update in order to be competitive with respect to new emerging economic realities (China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc.). Due to its history, the true heritage of the Italian fashion system is contained in its archives, a heritage made up of ideas, images, testimonies of the protagonists of twentieth-century fashion whose preservation can involve aspects of scientific and cultural dissemination with a concrete aim of relaunch of the industrial and productive system, absolutely central in a largely post-industrial economy such as the Italian one is increasingly taking shape.

What is the Fashion Archive about?

Fashion archives are funds produced by a subject that belongs to the complex fashion system: archives of couturiers and stylists, archives of communication professionals (photographers, PR, etc.), business archives, archives of fashion periodical publishing, archives of trade bodies or institutions. These are archives that are complex by nature as they include very different typologies of documents: paper material, inspirational material, drawings, sketches, fashion sketches, fabric samples and small accessories, photographic archives, catalogues, advertising, press reviews, videos of fashion shows, product archives, paper documents and digital natives.

Which role do Fashion Archives play in a fashion brand?

The archive of a company is its heart, it preserves its memory and its DNA. The documents preserved in it allow us to reconstruct its history and heritage. They are a continuous source of inspiration for the Creative Director and his Design Office, they represent an invaluable heritage of technical knowledge for production and a source of primary importance for Marketing and Communication.

Why should a brand adopt a structured archive?

A company should equip itself with a well-structured archive because it rapresents one of its main assets. The archive not only protects its historical heritage, but is a continuous source of information and inspiration to keep the know-how alive, as well as the creativity and original style that distinguishes it and makes it unique.

Which are the main purposes of a Fashion Archive?

The main purposes of the archivist are that of conservation, protection of the Archive, its reorganization and its filing to guarantee its accessibility.

The Archive Manager collaborates also with the Design Office which will seek inspiration for the development of the line-up, the collection, a capsule within the repository of documents,

drawings, photographs and products. The relationship with the Marketing and Communication Offices is central in consideration of the fact that Heritage is one of the central values in the communication of fashion brands and that the archive can itself be the object of valorization with specific projects such as social media campaigns, websites, commemorative volumes, exhibitions, etc. The external communication lies also in the scientific field since the Fashion Archive constitutes a source of extraordinary interest for the study of the history of fashion, art, culture, society and economy. In the field of education, it represents an infinite repository of knowledge and inspiration for students of Design schools.

Tell us your experience about it

I was lucky enough as an archivist to participate in the project launched in 2009 by the General Directorate for the archives of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and the ANAI (Italian National Archives Association) which gave life to the portal of the Twentieth Century Fashion Archives (http://www.moda.san.beniculturali.it/wordpress/) to identify, enhance and make accessible a wide range of sources, until then little considered and unexplored, of the archival, bibliographic, iconographic and audiovisual heritage related to the Italian fashion. It was a pioneering phase of discovery and awareness of the importance of these documents for both the scientific world and by the designers and brands themselves.

Subsequently, I was able to work in numerous archives, dealing with different types of documents and products and carrying out various tasks: from safeguarding and protection, to reorganization, filing and digitization, to study and valorization, collaborating in the creation of sites, printed volumes and exhibitions.

What can the Fashion Archive course that you coordinate bring to the students?

The Fashion Archive course aims to provide the skills to tackle a project to enhance a fashion archive.

Students will be introduced to the complex world of fashion archives, to the subjects who create them (professionals, companies, organizations and institutions), to the different types of documents and products they preserve. Students will also work on a case study in collaboration with a leading company in the Italian fashion system.

The detailed analysis of the structure and contents of the chosen archive and the listening of the needs expressed by the client will be followed by the evaluation of all the potential uses of the documentation, particularly in the fields of Marketing and Communication. The students will then be guided to conceive and implement a valorization project that responds to the company’s needs to guarantee wide accessibility to the archive, to communicate its contents and to increase its visibility among a large audience of professionals, scholars and general visitors.